In images: Graham Farish Class 350/450 livery samples

Progress with Bachmann Europe's forthcoming Class 350 and 450 EMUs for 2mm:1ft scale/N gauge for its Graham Farish brand has seen encouraging signs of final development, as livery samples of two prominent liveries have been shown.

Related: Watch a tour of Bachmann's London Festival of Railway Modelling stand to see livery and engineering prototype samples of models under development, only with the May 2023 digital issue and printed subscriber copies of BRM – out now.  

With modern liveries usually more complex than ever before, making full use of vinyl-printing technology, model manufacturers are often faced with difficult decisions on how best these can be miniaturised. The  soon-to-arrive Class 350 and 450s from Graham Farish are no different, as the following images illustrate... 

Class 350 Transpennine Express

Transpennine Express livery is complex, with its different hues reflecting the light with a metallic sheen, separated by lines which taper out in width from front to back.

Directional lighting is fitted as standard, controlled by a six-pin decoder if running DCC.

It's quite easy to forget that these are 2mm:1ft scale from the imagery provided, as a quick glance at the ventilation fan and rivets (bottom-right) in the image above shows. Pantographs can be raised or lowered.

Manufacturers were often squeamish at the magnification of N gauge models in printed model reviews, on paper less than a decade ago. It leaves no prisoners! Now, less so. Note the dot-matrix window-mounted destination board. 

Class 450 Southwest Trains 

Bar the orange pin stripe, it's difficult to find a straight line in sight on South West Trains' livery. This also makes it harder for a manufacturer to determine reference points for colour changes. We're looking forward to seeing these for review!

Fitted with bogie collector shoes, these units have adapted bogies from those fitted to the Class 350s, while lacking the pantograph.

The sealed pantograph well retains detail on the Class 450, even though the pantograph is omitted. Note too the difference in style of ventilation grille between this model, and that fitted to the Class 350, above.

Look out for our review of these models on World of Railways, with a more in-depth analysis in BRM as they arrive with retailers this year.

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