Author

Tom Slade

Date

25th February 2019

Reading Time

2 minutes

 

Class 321 Electrical Multiple Units (nick named Dusty bins)  are the work horse unit on the Great Eastern main line through Ingatestone on the Essex and Suffolk commuter trains. They come in 4 car formations, but run in multiple to cope with the peak hour demand, so we need a number of them. Although rolling stock for our Club layouts is owned by members (rather than the Club) it’s important on any layout that the stock looks and performs consistently.  So we need to get the colours broadly the same, and have the same ‘specification’ for the electrics, couplings etc to they can operate in multiple. So we are aiming to undertake a ‘crowd-building’ project to spread the work across a number of members.

We will be making the models from the kit produced by Bratchell Models. Chief Rolling Stock Engineer Chris has built many of their kits over the years and they are quite straight forward  (he tells us) but the aim is to encourage people to try one of the kits so we’re planning to work in a group, to be guided through the process and be able to help each other.  We’ve already got three members lined up to build a 321 (and another to build a Class 317) but could do with a couple more.  Here’s the picture of a built kit from Bratchell’s website

You don’t have to be an OO modeller – at least one of the four isn’t – so if you be interested in getting involved please drop us a line at Ingatestone at themrc.org.uk  (replacing the “at” with @ and removing the spaces…).