◆ GAUGE‘O’

◆ MODEL Heljan Class 58, Railfreight ‘red stripe’ livery (un-numbered)

◆ PRICE£749.00

◆ AVAILABILITY Heljan stockists Web www.heljan.co.uk

Heljan’s ‘O’ gauge range of BR diesels continues to grow, and the latest addition has just arrived, in the bone ‐shaped form of the Class 58. Having rendered BR’s last Doncaster-built diesel in ‘OO’, the Heljan team has created an even better version in 7mm scale.

When introduced in the early 1980s, the ‘58’ presented something completely different to BR’s existing traction fleet. Furthermore, the class also launched the new Railfreight sector’s identity, marking a departure from the ‘corporate’ Rail blue livery hitherto applied to everything. The type certainly caught my imagination as a child, although I’d be frustrated in my efforts to ‘cop’ more than a handful of examples, as they seldom ran through my neck of the woods. Only when I was older, and could afford to travel further afield, did I see more of them, just before their early withdrawal by EWS.

In this first production run, Heljan has produced seven versions, spread across ‘red stripe’ Railfreight, coal sub-sector triple-grey, Mainline blue and EWS liveries. A mix of numbered (and named) and un-numbered versions are available and our sample is one of the latter.

Sporting the original Railfreight livery – perhaps the most attractive scheme worn by the ‘58s’ – the model requires some heavy lifting, weighing in at nearly 2.5kg. Packaged in Heljan’s usual foam-lined box, the locomotive comes bolted to a wooden plinth for safety.