It's been a colourful few days here at Accurascale Towers, as we have been assessing and evaluating the decorated samples of the Andrew Barclay tank engines which we have taken over following the closure of Hattons. 

Following on from our colourful reveal last week of our O gauge Ruston 88DS decorated samples, we're thinking of selling sunglasses so you can cope with this kaleidoscope of colour!

Overall, they're excellent and will certainly be up to the very best standards that the Hattons Originals errr... original (!) releases were. However, there are some minor corrections that need implementing to get them to those high standards once again.

We 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 have 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. We will also be tweaking the shade.

One further change we are looking to make is adjusting the three link chain couplings 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.

We 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 us, unless they requested otherwise.

Pre-order yours today, with no money down, directly via the Accurascale website below, for £99.95 per loco.

Pre-Order Your Andrew Barclay Tank Loco Here!