Hornby’s original ‘Merchant Navy’ is a super model but it doesn’t cover all variations to the fleet. GRAHAM MUSPRATT adapts one of the first to enter traffic into its immediately pre-British Railways condition.
Above: With its new smoke deflectors and cowl, 21C7 now models the locomotive as it was in 1947 while still retaining Southern Railway wartime black.
Hornby has produced a model of Bulleid airsmoothed ‘Merchant Navy’ 4-6-2 21C7Aberdeen Commonwealth in Southern Railway wartime black in its most recent collection of new ‘Merchants’ for ‘OO’. It is finished in early condition (HM169) with the 'widows peak' front end and without smoke deflectors, but it didn’t stay in this condition for long.
It was one of the first batch of ten ‘Merchant Navy‘ class ‘Pacifics’, released to traffic in June 1942 in malachite green livery, but it was quickly repainted in plain black as a wartime measure. 21C7 remained in this condition until August 1944 when it gained the more familiar cowl above the smokebox and short flared smoke deflectors. It gained the standard length and style of smoke deflectors whilst still in black in June 1947.
As my modelling period is between 1946 and 1949, I wanted to ‘forward date’ the locomotive to the condition…
