Bald Yins

I don't know how much excitement it's possible for narrow gauge modellers to take - and I know I'm late with the breaking news here - but the first of the Bachmann Baldwin tanks have broken cover.

(I nearly required fresh underwear, I don't mind admitting.)

Photo: Bachmann

These follow on from Heljan's L&B Manning Wardle models and are also expected to go on sale before the year is out.

We're hugely excited by these models because a Baldwin 4-6-0 is an iconic WHR loco, although very much in the modellers' licence zone as far as modern day Beddgelert is concerned, but we can dream.

The other reason is because I had never expected us to be able to have a realistic model of one of these locos,

Yes, there have been body kits around for a long time but no way of getting a chassis with the proper wheel arrangement - with the big gap between the 2nd and 3rd driving axles - unless you built your own from scratch (which I did once see done beautifully in a magazine article).

We've already got our reservation in with the lovely people at Festshop.

These engineering prototypes looked to have captured that perfectly as well as all the messy plumbing (to the eyes of those brought up on British designs) and I'm really looking forward to getting to see if they've captured that top heavy, about-to-roll-over-any-moment look of the real thing.

Hopefully the extra 1mm in the gauge hasn't spoiled that.