Steve Johnson Modelmaker
Brush Class
48 Co-CoDiesel-Electric
Five Class 47 type locomotives, D1702-D1706, were fitted with the Sulzer 12LVA24 V12 engine and classified as Class 48, as opposed to the standard Class 47 with its 12 cylinder twin bank engine. The engines were found to be unreliable in service and all were subsequently re-engined by 1971, whereupon they became standard Class 47's. The V12 units were sold to SNCF and used in their BB68000 Class. As no specific model of a Class 48 had been offered, so I have simply re-numbered a Bachmann Class 47 as D1702 with the earlier original cooler group! This sounds a simple conversion, but I understand that the roof detail is slightly different on a Class 48 on account of the different engine. These include twin exhaust ports for the 'V' type engine at the opposite end to a Class 47, different roof access panels to allow the 12-LVA engine to be removed and a slightly different arrangement of the cantrail grilles.
In August 2020, Model Rail announced their intention to produce a Class 48 from the retooled Heljan Class 47. This all sounds good, but the accompanying photograph showed a re-engined Class 48 fitted with a Serck cooler group! Hopefully a bit of research will be done and the differences I mentioned above will be taken into account and be correctly modelled.
|
|