Factfile: Class 20/3
The English Electric Type 1 had been one of the unlikely success stories from British Railways’ Modernisation Plan of the mid-1950s. The first of over 200 locomotives appeared in 1957 and, while other smaller diesel electric classes fell by the wayside over the following decades, the
Class 20s continued to find plenty of work on freight traffic, especially merry-go-round coal services, into the 1990s.
Following privatisation of British
2
Rail, Direct Rail Services’ parent company, British
Nuclear Fuels Limited
(BNFL), acquired a number of redundant
Class 20s, with a view to overhauling them for use on nuclear flask workings around
Cumbria. The first five Type 1s were sent to Brush at
Loughborough in
1995 and emerged as 20301-305, while a second batch of rebuilds was authorised in 1998, after DRS won the contract for moving all nuclear flask traffic. This time, the rebuilding work for 20306-311 was contracted to Rfs/wabtec at Doncaster.
As DRS continued to gain traffic, four more Class 20s were also treated at Doncaster, eventually forming 20312315. All 15 Class 20/3s received similar modifications, most notably a set a long-range fuel tanks, plated-over ends and reinforced window surrounds, plus an array of new electronic engine management equipment to bring them up to contemporary standards. However, the Brush and Rfs/wabtec overhauled machines did show a few minor differences, most notably the lack of central square headlights on 20301-5.
In recent years, DRS began disposing of its Class 20/3 fleet. Harry Needle bought 20311/14 in 2012, while GBRF leased a number of locomotives for London Underground stock moves. Others have been stripped for spares or scrapped, with a handful of examples still on DRS’ books (20301-5/8/9/12), all currently in storage and likely to be put up for sale. Their last sustained period of main line use was the 2019 RHTT season, while 20302/5 hauled a farewell railtour in January 2020.
help identify a slipping tyre – and this is something I don’t ever recall seeing on RTR ‘OO’ locomotives before. Bravo!
RUNNING TO WIN
Opening up the model is simple: just a pair of screws hold the bodyshell in place and, with these removed, it easily lifts away to reveal the chassis block and circuit board. A Plux22 decoder socket is provided and a DCC sound speaker comes preinstalled. Beneath the PCB is a diminutive, centrally mounted motor with twin brass flywheels, that powers all four axles. Performance proved to be quiet, sure-footed and responsive straight from the box. The directional and cab interior lighting is impressive, with a number of options available to both digital and analogue users, with full instructions provided with the model.
After the prescribed period of running in, performance improved further, with superb slow-speed running on Dc/analogue control. While our usual Model Rail test facility is still not available to us, it coped with my own basic test track perfectly and had no difficulty hauling as much stock as
I would ever realistically ask of it.
Bachmann is offering three versions of the Class 20/3 initially, with the original iteration of DRS livery (as 20306) and HNRC orange/black (20311) being the other livery options. I’ve long hoped that Bachmann would offer a ‘dummy’, unpowered Class 20 for dinosaurs like me who don’t use DCC. Like a HST power/ dummy car twin pack, it would allow me to replicate a pair of ‘20s’ in double-headed or top-and-tail form without having to resort to disconnecting one drive unit.
Alas, we can’t have everything. What we do have here, though, is a real showstopper of a model, one that raises the bar even further for diesel-outline models in ‘OO’. Following the GWR ‘94XX’ that so impressed us a couple of months ago, Bachmann Europe has made an impressive start to 2021. With Bachmann also revamping the ‘standard’ Class 20, ‘Chopper’ fans have cause to cheer! (GD)