The Wickham trolley and trailer has become one of the smallest ready-to-run powered models to be produced for ‘O’ gauge. MIKE WILD inspects Ellis Clark Trains’ first home-grown powered model.
The Wickham-built permanent way trolley and trailer vehicles are full of charm. We were all taken with the ‘OO’ gauge offering from Bachmann in 2016 (HM114), and now we are equally captivated by the new ‘O’ gauge product from Ellis Clark Trains.
The trolley type is the Wickham Type 27A which was introduced to the British Railways Western Region in 1949. The first of these vehicles were completed one year earlier for the Nigerian Railways in Appa and provided a convenient means for permanent way crews and their tools and equipment to move to worksites on the railway with a light and easy to use vehicle.
Above: The Ellis Clark Trains Wickham Type 27A Inspection Trolley and trailers are wonderful additions for ‘O’ gauge.
The Type 27A Wickham trolleys were powered by a Ford 10hp engine and gearbox and they were capable of hauling up to two trailers which were built with and without sides. Brakes were rather rudimentary affairs, but these vehicles remained in service with British Railways into the 1990s and several have been preserved.
Ellis Cla…
