The end of the journey for the Holden B12 Class
Hello and welcome to The Engine Shed!
Well, we’ve all just about recovered from last week’s announcement of the Wainwright H Class – what a response we had! It’s great to hear that so many of you are excited to add this new addition to your layouts in the future. Many of you were quick to add other suggestions for locos that you’d like to see, and we can assure you we have listened to each and every one of them and we will take them into consideration. As I’m sure you can appreciate we can’t promise your chosen loco will be put into production, but we do take them all into account.
The Holden B12 is approved!
So, on with this week’s edition. Whilst we don’t have a new 2017 announcement for you this week (do not fret, we will have some more for you soon) we are closing the book on one of 2016's highly anticipated releases, the Holden B12 Class.
The Decoration Sample for R3430 - LNER 4-6-0 Holden B12 Class
Originally announced at Warley in 2015 the B12 represented the last of our 2016 announcements and it’s been fantastic to be able to share with you, the Engine Shed reader, each part of the loco's journey.
The Holden B12 Class - A Brief History
B12 61574 Date unknown
The restrictions on locomotive weight and length were keenly felt by the Great Eastern Railway and whilst James Holden’s S46, D56 and H88 Claud Hamilton 4-4-0 designs were not unduly restricted, when he came to consider a 4-6-0 design for high performance express work, the inside cylinder was his only real option. To gain power, Holden was quick to embrace the idea of superheating and so in 1911, the first order was placed for his S69 class locomotive.
Under the GER, seventy one S69 engines were built, fifty one at Stratford and twenty at Wm Beardmore & Co. in Glasgow. The reason for the ‘odd’ locomotive arose when No.1506 was destroyed in a collision at Colchester when only five months old, the number was not re-used, the replacement being included as part of order M77 at Stratford.
The large enclosed cab with side windows and an extended roof were a noticeable feature of Holden’s design and allied to the large Belpaire firebox, decorative valance over the driving wheels and short 3,700 gallon tender, gave the impression of the locomotive being bigger than it actually was.
61565 at Nottingham March 1949
Allocated throughout East Anglian sheds, the S69 saw sterling service hauling the Liverpool Street-Norwich mainline trains, as well as the Harwich Boat Trains, Cambridge and Great Yarmouth services. At Grouping in 1923, the S69 became classified as the LNER B12 and extended its range to Doncaster, Leeds and Manchester. The LNER’s plans for 2-6-4T engines to operate services to Southend were abandoned following issues with the type’s stability and so a further ten B12 locomotives were ordered from Beyer, Peacock and Co to fill the void, the design being fitted with vacuum ejectors, Lenz poppet valves and dual air and vacuum brakes and classified as class B12/2.
With large scale upgrading to the permanent way by the LNER, it at last became possible to increase the weight of locomotives and so a larger, round topped boiler pattern, with a bigger superheater was introduced, along with modified valve gear, resulting in a new B12/3 classification. Further modifications were carried out to the boilers of nine of the twenty five Scottish engines, this resulted in the final variation of the class, the B12/4.
During 1944, due to their wide route availability, a number of the B12/3s were utilised to work on ambulance trains hauling air braked, American built stock, mainly in the West Country. To improve the loading gauge, the footsteps were cut back and holes cut into them, making them instantly recognisable in later years.
Seventy two locomotives entered British Rail service at Nationalisation in 1948, further withdrawals taking place at regular intervals until the last locomotive, No.61572, was withdrawn in September 1961 and it is this engine that is preserved at the North Norfolk Railway.
8572 Preserved at NNR
Creating the B12
Work on the Hornby B12 project began in November 2014 – almost two years ago - with a visit to our friends at North Norfolk Railway, the aim as always being to gather as much information as possible and take photographs and technical notes that would enable us to produce the most accurate 00 gauge model.
We'd be lost without our measuring stick!
Like with any of our models, this is not without its challenges. Our aim with locos like this is to pack as much weight into the chassis as possible, all the while maintaining the recognisable gap between the chassis and the boiler. We used our findings and lessons learned from designing our D16 to help us with this, and when we received the Stereo Sample in December it was clear that the process had worked!
The Running Sample arrived next and we were all on tenterhooks to see how it would perform on our test track. Some of the finer detail still needed attention, but nevertheless we ran it on the layout and filmed the action.
The weeks came and went and it seemed like an eternity until the decoration samples came through our door, so we were very excited when they arrived. Receiving the decoration samples always feels like the culmination of months and months of hard work – the end is in sight, that is until the Final Approval Sample arrives! And that is what we have to show today, the Final Approval Sample for the LNER livery. We had planned (and would have loved) to show you the decoration samples for the Late and Early BR liveries as well, but unfortunately these are still in transit from our Hong Kong office. However, watch this space as they are on their way and we'll show them to you as soon as possible.
The Final Approval Sample of R3430 LNER Holden B12 Class
Standing on the stage at Warley making the announcement and revealing a rough stereo sample seems like a lifetime ago, but we are finally here! Fingers crossed, only a matter of weeks lay between now and you running the B12 on your layout, but until then take a look at the video below that we quickly filmed and let us know what you think.
Well that about wraps it up for this week. You can still pre-order your B12 and we’d like to thank you again for the really positive response we’ve had on the Wainwright H Class, the progress of which is moving along nicely and we should have more updates for you soon.
Until next time, let us know what you think of the B12 and The Engine Shed in the usual places (Facebook, Twitter and our Official Fourms) and keep your eyes peeled, you never know when or where the next clue for our latest 2017 announcement will turn up, whilst out and about a few of us have manged to snap some pictures of some very interesting subjects that's for sure!
Until next time...
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