At the London Festival of Railway Modelling held last Saturday, 16 March at Alexandra Palace, Bachmann Europe Plc revealed engineering prototypes of new models of anchor-mounted tank wagons in its Graham Farish range.

The new models will include 14-ton and 20-ton variants of Class A and Class B anchor-mounted tank wagons, which is the first time they will have been produced in N Scale.

Options on both the Class A and Class B wagons include a bottom outlet pipe and associated handwheel mounted on top of the tank, a steam heating inlet valve, and a straight or cranked air vent.

The top catwalks and filler will be available either centrally or offset, and with or without the ladders for providing to the catwalks. When ladders are fitted, they will constructed from fine metal etches.

On each model, the brake gear and brake levers are fitted separately as standard, and the filler cap has distinctive securing clamps. A metal underframe provides an unobstructed view through the frames when seen from above.

Couplings are the standard N scale type fitted via NEM pockets, and the wheelsets with either spoked or three-hole disc wheels.

Liveries

Although prototypes were on display at the Festival, livery variants, prices, and availability will not be made until the beginning of May in the Summer 2024 instalment of British Railway Announcements.

Last month, Bachmann announced that it was introducing Graham Farish N scale versions of LMS twin diesel locomotives 1000/10001, and followed the release last November of a limited edition model of the Graham Farish N scale Ivatt 2MT No. 46441 in BR Lined Maroon livery.

Our British Railway Announcements programme has been very successful since we adopted this strategy in 2020, providing our customers and consumers with concise information about new products, their price, and availability from the very outset.

Notwithstanding this success, it is important for any business to listen to feedback and act upon it, and we recognise that some of our customers and consumers would appreciate a little longer between the announcement and release of some new products to help them plan their future purchases.

This is particularly relevant when it comes to new tooling projects, which will come as a total surprise, as opposed to re-runs and re-liveries of existing tooling that are somewhat more predictable when you consider that Bachmann strives to maintain a broad and coherent product range.

We recognise that ad-hoc announcements like this can burden our valued retailers and their human resources, and therefore we will continue to use the British Railway Announcements mechanism to reveal details such as item numbers, livery variants, pricing and availability for these new tooling products.

It is important to stress that such products may not be delivered within the usual three-month period following their initial unveiling, but at the time of inclusion in a British Railway Announcements clear availability information will be provided and any changes to this will be communicated via the Bachmann website as is already our policy.

Richard Proudman, Rail Brand Manager for Bachmann Europe