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Purchased and reviewed by John Evans
Gazette - November 2017 - Vol 20 Issue 5
Minerva Model Railways

While my interests are firmly with the Midland and the LMS, in my later teenage years in the 1950s I lived in South Wales and took the opportunity to travel almost all of the, now long since closed, branch lines in the area. Consequently, when Minerva Models announced the production of an 87xx Pannier Tank at a very reasonable price, and, remembering rides on the Merthyr to Brecon freight after the end of passenger services, I took the plunge and ordered my first ever ready to run locomotive which I collected at Telford this year. The model comes DCC ready and can be purchased ready fitted with a chip including sound version if you wish. I bought the analogue version.

The locomotive comes well protected in substantial packaging. It has a resin/plastic body with a metal chassis and weighs in at 765 grams. Dimensions appear to be accurate in all respects and the cab interior and backhead detail is exquisite. Rivet detail is well produced and a neat touch is metal lifting rings on the tank top. In the box there is an assortment of plastic add-on accessories – fire irons, tool boxes, vacuum pipes, etc. I am not a fan of plastic vacuum and steam heating pipes and will replace these with lost wax brass ones. Another small criticism is the very light springs on the buffers and couplings. The centre driving wheels are lightly sprung with jointed coupling rods and all the wheels have a couple of millimetres sideplay which means the locomotive should negotiate curves down to around one metre radius despite the long wheelbase. My loco came as ordered in unlined GWR green with a neat `Great Western` transfer printed on the side. It is available in a variety of finishes and by now the 57xx variant should have appeared. Cabside number plates are not provided and details are given of where to purchase these.

I ran the locomotive on a rolling road for 30 minutes in each direction before testing it on the Bo’ness Group’s layout. Slow running is impressive and haulage more than adequate. 35 four-wheel wagons were handled with ease at all speeds. Eight Exley coaches taken around the layout at a scale 30 mph, but this was at the limit and required careful driving to avoid slipping. All in all a very impressive ready to run locomotive at a very reasonable price that should have wide appeal. The GWR built over 800 of them, none of which were auto fitted. The current price is I believe £265 but pre-ordering saved me a substantial amount. O gauge ready to run at this price is going to change the market for this scale, but maybe the downside is that kits and skills will Cab detail gradually disappear.