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Class 29

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Class 40 EE Type 4

Class 41 'Warship'

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Class 43 'Warship'

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Class 47 Brush Type 4

Class 48 Brush Type 4

Class 50 EE Type 5

Class 52 'Western'

Class 53 'Falcon'

Class 55 'Deltic'

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The Class 29

As part of the Pilot Scheme, ten diesel-electric Type 2 locomotives were ordered from North British for evaluation. A similar batch of locomotives was also ordered but employing hydraulic transmission later becoming Class 22. They were powered by a MAN engine driving a GEC generator and traction motors. With the rush for dieselisation, follow on orders were made before the type was properly evaluated. The first thirty-eight locomotives were originally allocated to the Eastern Region with the last twenty going to the Scottish Region. Many problems were found with the design and they were all moved to Eastfield Depot in the Scottish Region, were warranty work could be carried out by nearby North British.

In an effort to solve the problems with the class, twenty were rebuilt with Paxman engines becoming Class 29. Appearing from 1963, the rebuilt locomotives featured a four digit headcode panel replacing the discs and nose doors of the original and other minor modifications.

Dapol announced that they would produce a model of this class back in November 2010 at the Warley Show. It finally arrived at the end of January 2020!

On arrival, the box featured the same mistake as their Class 21, describing the locomotive as a Diesel-Hydraulic. It is of course, a diesel-electric! My version is D6114 in two tone green with small yellow warning panel. It looks quite good and captures the prototypes unique looks. The light green does look a bit bright! Unlike the Class 21, the Class 29 does have the red circle MU code applied on the front. The model has finely etched grilles, but again, no scavenger fan under the roof grille. Something I have now fitted. The other odd roof detail are the exhaust ports. The original MAN engined Class 21's had a single offset port. When rebuilt with the Paxman engine, the Class 29 gained two ports in the centre, the original port being blanked off. Curiously, the blanked off port is picked out in black, but the two new ports are rounded rectangular mouldings. It might have been better to have holes with grilles. The headcode panel displays '..1.' at both ends. I think this is something that will have to be changed too.

Learning from previous experience with the Class 21, I will fit a Dapol Imperium decoder. For those with JMRI Decoder Pro, I found using the TCS MC6 settings worked quite well. Not surprising perhaps as it is thought the Imperium is a LaisDCC decoder, which is a sort of a copy of the TCS MC6.

Previous models of the class include the Hornby model. Not one of their best attempts, it fails to capture the look of the prototype.

Q Kits and MTK have also produced kits of the class.