Accurascale Andrew Barclay Saddle Tank Decorated Samples Revealed

The decorated samples of these colourful tank locomotives have been assessed by the Accurascale engineering department and compared to photographs of the real locomotives, as well as the decoration templates created by Hattons for each locomotive.

Overall, the decorated samples are excellent and will certainly be up to the very best standards that the Hattons Originals releases were when they were first introduced a few years ago. However, there are some minor corrections that need implementing to get them to those high standards once again.

Accurascale noted on the NCB locomotive that the buffer shanks need to be black instead of red, and the handbrake centre section should be blue, not black. On the Caledonia Works locomotive, the lining on the cylinders does not extend to the full length of the cylinder, so this will be corrected too. "Efficient" also has some lining quirks which need correcting, including placement on the tank sides, the thickness and again around the cylinder ends.

On "Victory", the factory has created a sample with the wrong cab windows, the motion bracket is incorrectly painted black and the base of the buffer shanks should be black. Accurascale will also be tweaking the shade of crimson used on the decorated model for the final production models.

One further change Accurascale are looking to make is adjusting the three link chain couplings on all models to give them a slightly more realistic appearance.

Overall, these are very minor tweaks required to ready these locomotives for full production, which will now kick off in the coming weeks. This means that the delivery date to customers will be late Q4 of 2024.

Accurascale are locked into the production run size that Hattons specified with the factory, so there is only a finite amount still available to pre-order.

Anyone who has previously placed a pre-order for these locomotives with Hattons can rest assured that their pre-order is safe and has been transferred to Accurascale, unless they requested otherwise.