Midland Railway Deeley class 4P 4-4-0 no. 1035. A recent Ebay find. Built from scratch with superb fully working inside motion. No provenance as to the builder but he certainly knew how to make a good model. I had it running at the recent Poachers running session and it performed without fault with my rake of five of Bernard Miller’s Midland bogie coaches. However, the livery is not perfect. The lining on the wheels is worn in places, the cylinders have lost their lining transfers and the numbers on the tender are dull. The crimson lake of the livery is a lovely deep colour and is smooth with no imperfections, (again no provenance of the painter). With more TLC and as time permits this impressive model has the potential to rise to another level of quality.
Unusually, this is a model of one of the few Midland Compounds that were built with shallow frames. Henry Fowler didn’t like those and had them all rebuilt with the deeper frames of the LMS compounds. Most models of this class are built from kits, which as far as I know, all have the deeper frames.