Just a quick glimpse of the new delivery - the N Gauge G.Farish (Bachmann) BR Class 20 20063 which is weathered and also DCC ready - also came with snow plough attached which I may or may not leave on. These units are becoming hard to find in N Gauge and by the looks of it increasing in cost - a couple are available from the normal model specialists for around £119 and I managed to find a couple at the Alexandra Palace London Festival or Railway Modelling last weekend - £76 for Rail Freight Grey or £102 BR Blue.
Others I've found are the D8204 & D8134 variants via ebay recently going for around the £50 mark as running but perhaps a little TLC needed but these have the bulbous number mount on the front which was not what I was looking for. Sadly I missed on the same 20063 several weeks back and a snip at £75.

Mine was in the £90 bracket but as it will be the last loco I'll get for the layout AND it was my birthday last weekend I figured I'd go for it.

Paul  

Lovely looking model, weathering looks spot on.

It is getting harder and harder to tell N and OO apart such is the level of detailing!

John :)

The Class 20 looks like a refugee from the USA

Happy Birthday for last week!
You might be interested in a couple of examples of  an Australian class 20

http://www.hothamvalleyrailway.com.au/g_50.htm

also for  6 cylinder versions with much the same body work

http://www.railtasmania.com/loco/loco.php?id=y
and
Photographs - S.A.R. Broad Gauge 800-class diesel locomotives

Personally I think the Australian versions look better but the design reflects a more generous loading gauge.

Enjoy your model!

Cheers

Trevor 

Those look good Trevor, I really like the Maroon colour.

Australian class 20 colours are all great - good to see such different livery from the BR Blue & Green. 
Does anybody know if these loco's 'pushed' freight wagons - I've only seen footage of them pulling freight with either cab in front or cab behind setups. It seems rather unlikely they 'pushed' any sizeable load of wagons as the view from the extended can side windows would be rather limiting but for my limited size shunting yards on my layout I think I'm allowed some modellers licence :-)

Then again, those steam loco drivers certainly did push a number of coaches or wagons as part of daily business so I don't see why the diesel drivers couldn't .. unless BR company policy stopped that practice.

cheers
Paul   

The Midland Railway Locos ( the F and G classes were their mainline locos between Midland (near Perth) and Walkaway (near Geraldton) for the limited time that the locos were in MRWA ownership before being taken over by the WAGR and painted in Larch Green and lined Red after which they almost never went back to that area being allocated to south of Perth
Similarly with the Tasmanian locos, their Y class was also the "biggest power" they had for a number of years until the Bell Bay line was built and locos with three times the power were ordered. 

The SAR 800 class were bought to dieselise the Port Adelaide area so they shunted the Port Adelaide/Gillman and Dry Creek yards, ran transfer freights to Adelaide and Dry Creek as well as running some of the few loco hauled passenger trains around the Adelaide area and local freights including Port Stanvac (oil trains), Tonsley (picking up Chryslers car output) and occasional mainline runs.

Towards the end of their lives, they were used on longer distance wheat train runs although they did have some longer trips in SAR days mainly to Wallaroo. They did do a lot of "shoving" and I remember seeing them pushing loads where they were rated for up to 2000 tons in the Dry Creek Yard shunting. As far as vision is concerned, the weather was a bit more clement here so leaning out the window for the crews to see a bit better down the long side was not an issue here.   You can probably google most of the areas I have mentioned here but they look nothing like that now. 

There were also similar locos in Queensland ( the 1600 and 1620 classes) which you can get an idea about at
https://sites.google.com/site/queenslandgreattrains/Home/historical-diesel-locos/1600-1620-class

Hope this helps


Trevor

Always good to hear some historical insight of the 'real thing' whilst we all interact on the model aspects of trains in the main - the 1616 circa 2011 has a real snazzy paint job compared to a year before when it looked rather sorry for itself.Thanks for the confirmation these loco's did do their fair share of 'shoving' …

Paul