HORNBY MAUNSELL CATTLE WAGON
The Southern Railway was quite slow to introduce its own rolling stock, and continued to build to inherited designs, particularly from the SECR, as that’s where Chief Mechanical Engineer Richard Maunsell had come from. However, new designs gradually appeared and the first Maunsell-designed SR cattle wagon appeared in 1930. The most significant development in Diagram 1529 was the use of a 10ft 6in all-steel underframe in place of timber. They were vacuumbraked and fitted with Maunsell brake gear, having a short handbrake lever positioned inboard of the wheels. In 1947, Bulleid updated the design (Diagram 1530) with plywood ends, internally reinforced with metal, and sheet aluminium roofs. Bulleid also repositioned the brake lever and mechanism, apparently to protect it from falling ‘detritus’. In all, 101 examples were built. Hornby’s latest rolling stock introduction is the Maunsell-designed cattle wagon and two examples are currently available in BR livery, differing only in the running number. My immediate impression was that Hornby has raised the bar yet again, in terms of both finesse and quality of assembly. Second impression is that it weighs remarkably little, at just 37g (1¼oz). A couple of whitemetal cows would be all that’s needed if you want to add weight, but I’m not sure how easy it would be to dismantle the model to put them in. With the exception of Oxford’s new LNER offering (MR226), available cattle wagon models are extremely long in the tooth. There’s the old Airfix kit, a Dapol model inherited from Hornby-dublo, and a Bachmann model dating from Mainline days, so the time was certainly ripe for something to 21st century standards. What’s so different, and good, about this model? Well, for a start, the horizontal bars are fine wire. The timber plank sides are commendably thin with very delicate diagonal ‘angle-iron’ braces. The slots for the moveable bulkheads, which reduced the size of the interior in order to pack the animals more tightly, are correctly modelled on both sides, and the wash-out slots at floor level are carried across the ends as well as the sides. If that’s not enough, the underside of the floor planking is depicted, outside the solebars.
CLASSY CHASSIS
Turning to the underframe, I’m not a wagon brake gear connoisseur, but there’s a lot depicted on this chassis, including brake blocks in line with the wheel treads, V-hangers, cross-levers and cylinder. This detail renders the flexible plastic selfcentring mechanism for the NEM coupler pockets pretty inconspicuous. The coupler pockets are held in place by screws, so they could be easily removed by anyone wishing to fit scale couplings. Standard tension-lock couplers are fitted in the NEM pockets. The bufferbeams carry vacuum pipes and turned and blackened metal bufferheads. Wheelsets are the turned and blackened metal split-spoke type, with plastic bushes on metal axles. The axleguards and springs are finely detailed and there are slim plastic tie-rods between the W-irons. The finish is matt bauxite, with the a minimal amount of small lettering, all neatly printed and legible under magnification. A builder’s plate and data are printed on the solebars. Versions in Southern Railway livery are also being produced, as is the plywood-ended Bulleid version. This is one of those models that poses a problem when it comes to awarding a score. I could easily give it a raft of tens, but if I do that, what happens next time, when they raise the bar still further? I just wish these had been available when I had my ‘Black Dog Halt’ layout. The pigs could have travelled to the Harris bacon factory in style.