This week I hauled out the airbrush and weathered up this 7mm scale Dapol Class 08. I’m pretty pleased with the results.
Why do I have this?
Well, I grew up with British-inspired models in 7mm (0 scale) – specifically, the Big Big Trains from Tri-ang, which were sold at local department stores at Christmastime. The star of the show was the Blue Flier – an impressive (for the time) locomotive fashioned on the Beyer Peacock “Hymek” diesel hydraulic, with a set of Mk2 coaches, all in a British Railways-inspired blue scheme.
The Big-Big Train catalogue did not include a Class 08, it probably should have – it would’ve been an ideal model for this range of battery-powered toys. Its boxy outline would’ve been perfect for containing a block of D cells.
In any case, later on I ran into many Class 08s in 4mm (00 scale) on friends’ layouts. The Class 08 was based on an LMS design, built between 1953 and 1962. For British Railways, they became one of the largest fleets of locomotives with about 1,000 examples on the rails. For some reason, railfans applied the nickname “Gronk” to Class 08s, as well a Class 09 and Class 13 diesel switchers (sorry: “shunters” in UK parlance).
I always liked the look of the Class 08, even though I never owned one in 4mm. The design expresses the sort of “low-speed grunt” that was essential in a diesel shunter. And the siderods added a wonderful bit of animation as model locomotives waddled down a track.
Their compact size, ubiquity, and long life have made the Class 08 popular subjects for models. Many manufacturers have produced them over the years – including Rovex, Tri-ang, Hornby, Lima, and Bachmann in 4mm… Graham Farish in N scale… and Dapol in 7mm.
My example is a Dapol plastic/diecast hybrid in 7mm. I fitted it with a Loksound 5 decoder loaded with the appropriate Class 08 sounds, with a big speaker in its own enclosure located behind the front grille. This was the easiest DCC installation I’ve ever done: A roof panel (above the hand rail on the side of the locomotive) pops off to reveal a standard DCC plug. Literally, I required no tools to do this upgrade once I’d soldered the two wires from the decoder to the speaker.
While my primary interest in 7mm scale is the Great Western Railway in the Edwardian era, I could not resist adding one of these to my collection as a reminder of my Big-Big Trains, and of those 4mm models that everyone but me seemed to own.
At some point, I’ll fit it with a crew. And then think about something for it to shove about on a layout…
The Model Railway Show 