5 inch gauge Britannia "Lord Hurcomb"

"Lord Hurcomb" returns, one of the nicest Britannias I've driven in any scale. A powerful, thoroughly well sorted and devilishly quick locomotive that caught more than one driver out when I took it to the club last time it was with us in 2009 - it needed a careful hand on the regulator to avoid going into curves at highly inappropriate speeds!

I originally bought the engine in 2008 - it sold shortly afterwards to a customer of ours who already owned several very good engines. It had occasional use in his hands before coming back to us a year later when he bought a fine 7 1/4 inch gauge LNER B1 from us.

Since then, it has been in the hands of a collector who ran it infrequently. For much of the last ten years it has been stored in a dehumidified plastic inflatable cocoon - the same type as he uses for his classic cars - alongside a B1. It looks virtually identical to when we last had it (if slightly more polished).

I won't dilate at length here - for more information there's a few hundred words of enthusiastic prose I wrote about the engine last time it was here in the archive, along with pictures and video taken of the engine at that time.

The pictures opposite were taken this week. The engine has had a boiler test with new certification issued; on the rolling road it runs the same as it always did - mechanically quiet, with the promise of a great deal of go at the end of the regulator.