LNER Gresley A3 class no. 2744 Grand Parade. I have recently acquired this lovely model from auction. It has been built and painted to a professional standard from the DJH kit. Judging from certain details, it could have been produced by one of the DJH factory team of builders themselves, although no certificates came with it as provenance. I am normally not a fan of DJH factory built LNER green models as I think their usual colour is too bright, https://www.djhmodelloco.co.uk/prodpage.asp?productid=3423 but this model is an exception as the colour is to my eyes very good for Doncaster green. Perhaps one built before they changed to the brighter green? Or perhaps produced by another very capable builder and painter? Powered by a motor with a delrin drive gearbox via plunger pickups. A modification to the bogie springing is all I have needed to make to enable it to travel around the Poachers test track without de-railing. This kit has been around a number of years now and I have built two others, Salmon Trout in LNER green and The White Knight in BR green. The kit is excellent and builds into a very proto-typical looking model. Fairly easy to build as well. You just need to shake the box of bits and they all fall into place. Just a shame that whoever the painter was, he originally made it no. 4480 Enterprise (very likely an example of the tail wagging the dog, or in this case the client wagging the painter). That loco was never a left hand drive loco whilst in LNER days. Carefully we have changed the cabside and buffer beam numbers to 2744 and the nameplates to Grand Parade, the name and number of one of the locos built at Doncaster in 1928 as left hand drive. As Peter Coster writes in Irwell Press’s fabulous “The Book of the A3 Pacifics” there were of course two Grand Parades, the first was destroyed in the Castlecary accident in 1937. This model depicts the second one, built in 1938 to replace the wrecked original loco. Mr. Coster writes that they “differ only in the boiler number and tender number” failing to spot that the second Grand Parade had steps behind the front buffer beam and the first did not.
