HO Haidar DF3

[jjb1970]

One of the nicer developments of modelling of the last 20 years or so has been the proliferation of RTR models for countries which has opened up lots of possibilities that were the preserve of kit builders or scratch builders not so long ago. One of these countries is China, a few years ago Bachmann Europe brought their Chinese outline stuff into the UK but then seemed to lose interest (indicating sales weren't sufficient to justify the effort), beyond Bachmann there is now a multitude of manufacturers serving the Chinese market. And the wonders of on-line ordering mean that these models are available outside China without too much trouble. Prices are quite high (perhaps counter to expectations) but so are standards of detail and quality.

This is a DF3 in HO from Haidar, it's an old model now (not sure when it came out but I think late 00's/early 2010's) but can still be found. If you do a web search there's a guy in HK with stock for US$119 for this green version and US$149 post paid for the blue version which is a complete steal. I bought my examples from him and his service was excellent. The DF was China's first generation diesel electric locomotive first built at Dalian but with production at several locomotive works. As was rather common with technology in that part of the world in the 1950's it was basically a Chinese license built copy of a locomotive from the USSR which itself used a diesel engine based on a Fairbanks Morse design, however the Chinese DF looked very different. The DF evolved into the DF3, intended to be double unit locomotives apparently they were more commonly used singly. When I first visited China in the early 90's they were still quite visible but even then later designs (particularly the ubiquitous DF4 family) were much more common and as far as I know they have long since been retired though I wouldn't be surprised if there is a survivor or two in out of the way industrial lines.

The model is superbly done, the number of separately fitted parts is a bit bonkers. Haidar make brass models (or made, I haven't seen or heard much from them for a while) and this plastic DF3 is pretty much equivalent to brass in detail. The DF/DF3 is also done by N27 and Charming Hao, the Charming Hao is probably the best version (Charming Hao really are top notch) but given you can get this for US$119 it's well worth a punt and stands up extremely well against the newer alternatives.

 

 

[jjb1970]

As an engineer I can almost feel the pain of this locomotive......then again it indicates that the old 'made in China' gags were always a bit unfair if things still work in this state:

 

https://youtu.be/KmDaDB8OCYw