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Attractive Locos to Collect


Sir TophamHatt

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Does anyone have any ideas of attractive locos to collect?

 

I haven't really noticed before but the City of Truro is quite an attractive looking engine. I know it's personal preference but any that are particularly high on your list to collect? Or one train you're really glad to own?

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Where to start? So many, how about:

 

LMS Princess Coronation/Duchess, de-streamlined. Yes, it's a cliche but possibly the finest hour of British steam

Bulleid air smoothed and rebuilt pacifics, both MN and BoB/WC, flawed brilliance and in rebuilt form some of the finest looking of any kettles

GWR Castle, there is something especially elegant about GWR 4-6-0s and the Castles were the finest of themall IMO

Pennsylvania Railroad T1 Duplex, Raymond Loewy styling, perhaps the most striking kettles?

New Haven I5 Hudson, aesthetic brilliance

Class 47, two tone green, a design classic

E444, production series, blue/grey, Italian greatness

E428 castano/Isabella, third series, tremendous!!!

E636 castano/isabello, Italian quirkiness, maybe an acquired taste but a taste which is compelling once acquired

Class 87, BR blue

DB Br103, cream/redwith skirts, a genuine icon

 

Plenty more but that's enough.

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My advise is: for God's sake grab an Ivatt Atlantic in GNR livery while you can, they don't come any more attractive than those, then look out for a Brighton Atlantic to go with it when someone announces a pre-grouping version.  Everything else after that will just be personal preference, but you might just consider a GNR Stirling single to keep the Ivatt Atlantic company. At that point you might start looking into how to build/paint coaches, wagons to go with them. Whayay you have got a hobby. Happy day! What more did you want out of life. Where's the beer?

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Where to start? So many, how about:

 

LMS Princess Coronation/Duchess, de-streamlined. Yes, it's a cliche but possibly the finest hour of British steam

Bulleid air smoothed and rebuilt pacifics, both MN and BoB/WC, flawed brilliance and in rebuilt form some of the finest looking of any kettles

GWR Castle, there is something especially elegant about GWR 4-6-0s and the Castles were the finest of themall IMO

...Class 47, two tone green, a design classic

...Class 87, BR blue

...

Plenty more but that's enough.

 

Personal taste, I guess, but most design gurus would put a Western high up the list of pretty British diesels and it may also have been Misha Black's best design (I'd agree. and I'm not generally a Western fanboy).

 

For the electrics, I think classes 81-85 are pretty special; all designed to have a family look. Clean, very 50s modern in that peculiarly restrained British way.

 

I have a soft spot for the looks of the Clayton. They may be notorious as one of the least successful British diesel designs, but the aesthetics were pretty bang-on, especially when enhanced by the original and rather lovely two-tone green paint job.

 

Ken Grange's styling of the HST is also very purposeful - to my eye they look best in their original blue/grey "flying banana" livery, while the modern redesign of the light units has rather spoiled the smooth good looks of the face.

 

Lots of people will have massively different views about the finest-looking steam locos.

 

I think the D16 and B12 family from the GER are very fine-looking locomotives.

 

For purposeful power, the Southern's Schools class is hard to beat.

 

And I confess to having a huge soft spot for Bulleid's Q1, pure Bauhaus smuggled onto the railway while everyone else was distracted.

 

To the OP - happy collecting!

 

Paul

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Most steam locomotives in pre-grouping livery. The C class in fully lined SECR livery is stunning (if you can get one now for a realistic price) and the NRM DELTIC is really good eye candy. Also the class 03 as 03179 in NSE livery is pretty. The H&P Peckett is certainly the prettiest of the first release trio.

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I really like the late Victorian small 0-6-0s - good examples available as models are the J15, Dean goods and C class - which remained essential for moving freight on secondary routes into the 1960s, when road transport finally eliminated their role. The general format had been well developed by the 1870s, and they are consistently workmanlike and 'honest' machines; yet harmoniously styled and finished almost without exception. (The LB&SCR managed to weird up one of their designs by incongruously sticking two domes on, but that's Brighton's celebrated lack of taste all over, it must have looked unexceptional to eyes accustomed to Fatty's beach hut.)

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The saying is  - Go West - where two locos really do it for me - The Manor Class - I don't know why (the design is somehow tighter than the Grange, it is overall more appealing..)

But for outstanding harmony in design and the purest steam locomotive beauty it can only be the Collet 4575 Prairie tank..

Nothing comes close - It demonstrates the heart of a great designer..

Which is why I have one immortalized in brass at O scale...

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