The British Railways Mk1 was the designation given to BR’s first standard design of main line coaching stock, and one of its most successful. Built from 1951 until the early 1960s to augment and replace the array of ‘Big Four’ and earlier ‘pre-grouping’ designs inherited from the LMS, LNER, GWR and SR, BR took the best features from several of these types to produce the new steel-bodied design. As a result, the Mk1 was stronger and safer than any of the inherited types that came before it.

Whilst new coaches like the Mk2s and Mk3s would later displace much of the standard Mk1 coaching stock fleet, specialist vehicles including luggage and parcels coaches remained in traffic much longer due to their versatility and the fact that like-for-like replacements were not included in the Mk2, Mk3 etc. build programmes. More than a thousand Mk1 Brake Gangwayed (BG) vehicles were built and by the start of the 1990s, well over half remained in traffic although many modifications had been made to suit new operational requirements or to simply provide a new lease of life.

A notable change came about in 1994 when some BGs were converted to ‘Super BGs’. Used by the then-new Rail Express Systems (RES) to transport mail, the Super BGs were high security vehicles made so by the plating over of their bodyside windows and the sealing of the gangway doors; meanwhile the four pairs of double doors on each side were replaced with roller shutters providing higher security as well as larger openings to aid the loading and unloading of mail. Tail lights were also fitted to either end and the coaches ran on B4 bogies allow them to travel at speeds of up to 100mph. Transferring to EWS ownership following Privatisation, the Super BGs became largely redundant in mid-2003 when EWS lost the contract to operate Royal Mail services.

This Graham Farish model is the perfect addition to any Rail Express Systems fleet and employs a detailed bodyshell, with fine mouldings of the roller shutter doors, including the shutter vanes which are engraved individually, and the guard’s door with its adjacent handrails. At each end the corridor connector, handrails, ETH equipment and tail lights are each moulded crisply, whilst below the solebar the truss rod frames are modelled with great finesse, flanked by the battery boxes, dynamo and other auxiliary equipment. Blackened metal wheelsets are fitted to each bogie to ensure free-running, and not only does this model run well but it looks well too, with the vibrant RES livery reproduced using authentic colours, logos and fonts to add the finishing touches.

MODEL FEATURES:

• Graham Farish N Scale
• Era 8
• Pristine Rail Express Systems livery
• Running No. 94465
• BR1 Bogies
• Length 134mm (over couplings)