Heljan ‘43XX’ 2‑6‑0
◆ GAUGE ‘O’ ◆ MODEL Heljan HJ4320 Churchward ‘43XX’ 2‑6‑0 No. 4375, GWR plain green ◆ PRICE £779.99 ◆ AVAILABILITY Heljan stockists
The ‘43XX’ provided the foundations for the ‘Black Five’ and ‘B1’ – how will Heljan’s new GWR ‘O’ gauge locomotive fare in our tests?
Is there anything more painful for the British to do than admit that Americans do something better? You’d think that it’s the last thing that the ultra-conservative Great Western Railway would ever do, but you’d be wrong. For a start, there was nothing conservative about GWR locomotive development before the First World War. Swindon built the country’s most innovative locomotives and it was decades before its competitors caught up. Chief engineer George Jackson Churchward happily borrowed ideas from other countries – France and the US in particular – and married them to his own forward-thinking concepts. The GWR’S ‘43XX’ 2-6-0 typified this philosophy. US railroads had locomotives designed to haul both freight and passenger trains. The 2-6-0 was also a popular wheel arrangement. At this time, Britain’s locomotive fleet was divided between ‘passenger’ and ‘mineral’. Most mineral locomotives were 0-6-0s.
ENDURING DESIGN
The ‘43XX’ was Britain’s purpose-designed mixed-traffic locomotive, providing the foundations for the likes of the ‘Black Five’ and ‘B1’. For engineers such as Gresley, Maunsell, Stanier, H.G. Ivatt and George Hughes, the ‘Mogul’ was the wheel arrangement of choice for a mid-sized locomotive. Although not universally liked by crews, the ‘43XX’ that had everything: power for freight, a turn of speed for passenger trains and good looks. They served the GWR from the Edwardian era right the way through to the ‘Swinging Sixties’. Heljan could have brought ‘O’ gauge Great Western modellers ‘Kings’, ‘Castles’ or even ‘Halls’ and ‘Granges’. Instead, it’s gone for this unsung hero – and what a cracking job it has done. Some models look right straight from the box and this is one of them. The shape and proportions appear to be spot on, and Heljan’s design team has done a splendid job of capturing the ‘face’. Our review sample – No. 4375 in GWR unlined green – looks right from every angle. The cab, the tender, the area around the motion bracket – it’s all convincing. Highlights include the covers over the washout plugs, the hinged metal fallplate (complete with chequerplate) and the rolled-up weather sheet. The cab is excellent, with lots of backplate detail. In fact, you can’t help but look for the steam atomiser coil in the cab roof (it’s about the only thing that’s missing!). Automatic Train Control was fitted to seven ‘43XXS’ in 1928, with the rest of the class
receiving it from 1930. This was about the same time as the cab porthole windows were removed. Photographic evidence is thin on the ground, but if No. 4375 had this combination, it would have been for a very short period. Other than that, Heljan has done its homework well, as this class was an absolute minefield of detail differences. There are a couple of questionable areas. The way that the top tender lamp iron fixes to the tender doesn’t look right and there are two prominent mould seams along the shoulders of the boiler, which detract a little from the finish.
RUB OF THE GREEN
The finish matches the high standards set elsewhere. This was the GWR’S wartime austerity livery, which lacked the bright embellishments you’d expect to find. The shade of green looks right and the Great Western
The shade of green looks right and the Great Western typeface is the right size and weight
typeface – no coat of arms or garter crest here – is the right size and weight. The cabside numberplates are printed plastic mouldings but they really are excellent, being the right combination of ‘brass’ and black, and topped off with a fine red line. If only those on Heljan’s ‘OO’ gauge ‘47XX’ were up to the same standard! This is Heljan’s second ‘O’ gauge GWR locomotive. The ‘Large Prairie’ (MR254) looked just as good but it had one vital flaw – accessing the DCC socket was an absolute nightmare. Happily, the ‘43XX’ is much better in this regard. The ESU decoder interface (the model is designed to take the Loksound V4.0 decoder) is located in the tender and all you need to do is remove six screws to release the body. Sound aficionados will find a speaker under the locomotive (and not the tender, as described in the instructions). However, the ‘43XX’ does feel a little fragile in places, particularly around the cab and tender handrails. The ATC conduit along the running plate edge feels particularly vulnerable. You’ll really need some kind of secure cradle to hold the ’43’, for it’s not just accessing the decoder socket that requires it to be turned upside-down, you’ll need to do this to unscrew it from its wooden plinth (the tender vacuum pipe came off doing this) and again to fix the pony truck. The ATC shoe is another likely candidate for falling off. Heljan has consistently proven that it can do diesels in ‘O’ gauge. The ‘43XX’ is proof that it can do steam too. We await further Heljan ‘O’ gauge steam models with interest.