29 September 2023
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Designed and tooled for 2mm:1ft scale, this all-new model holds great promise for industrial railway fans – here's why...
A surprise announcement came in Bachmann’s quarterly Autumn announcements with an all-new N gauge Hunslet Austerity/J94 via the EFE Rail brand, a model designed and tooled by Kernow MRC. Although we have seen a OO Austerity from EFE, that traced its lineage back to DJM. This N gauge model, which is all new, owes nothing to the proposed DJM model.
It’s a huge step forward in dimensions and appearance from the aged Graham Farish model which has been out of production for many years now, and is a welcome model of an industrially widespread type.
From 1943 to 1946, 377 Hunslet Austerities were built for the War Department and 75 for the LNER which were classed as J94. EFE has produced two BR-liveried J94s, including our review sample with early emblem as allocated to Darlington from 1949. Two in distinctly different BCB liveries, one in Manchester Ship Canal grey and one in the Wemyss Private Railway brown livery. Over the years there are many more liveries that can be chosen.
The model is fitted with a six-pin decoder harness inside the cab, positioned at floor level which can be accessed by removing two chassis screws and lifting the cab off.
There are some variants accommodated within the tooling as the late-BR model of late-crest 68075 features the extended bunker. Another minor difference between models is whether they have single or double strengthening fillets behind the bufferbeams and also smokebox doors with and without numberplates.
Want to know more? Read Andy York's full review for the December 2023 issue of BRM.
