Graham Farish 372-033DS, N-Scale class 4073 steam locomotive

It must be clear by now to anyone reading my blog that I simply love nice-looking, colourful models. It's also clear that I could really care a little bit more about realism. But that's who I am and it doesn't seem like it's going to change. And today I'm going to describe another vivid purchase that doesn't fit my current collection of trains at all.

The product I will focus on is an N-scale replica of a British Class 4073 (or Castle Class) steam engine. The model is manufactured by the Graham Farish company and is factory equipped with a DCC decoder and a sound module. I knew absolutely nothing about British locomotives when I was placing the order. The only reason I went for it was its look. But the purchase made me read about the original, so now I actually do know something. Better late than never, right?

Here's the original I fell in love with. Road number 5029 named "Nunney Castle". The picture is taken from its Wikipedia page.

This is my first Graham Farish locomotive. I'm not really sure what to expect. It comes in a pretty regular box and is additionally wrapped in a thin white paper.

Taking into account the potential resell value, I have gently removed the plastic enclosure from the paper wrap. Three pieces of documentation were released in the process.

The documentation includes:

• Owner's manual - disassembly, lubrication, etc.
• DCC information - functions, programming, etc.
• Collector's Club entry form

The most interesting for me is of course the DCC guide. It gives a quick overview of what the model is capable of. This product offers 28 functions in total.

Removing the packaging layer by layer takes a moment. But here it is - the beautifully green "Nunney Castle".

First impression? It looks fantastic!

As I was placing the model on the track I've noticed the pilot wheels were not really attached to the boiler part above it. For a moment I thought something was broken. But no, that's the way it's supposed to be. And I guess I need to be careful when moving the locomotive.

Let's see some more photos before we jump into details...


I think the pictures speak for themselves. The model is stunning. And it's not just nice or colourful. It's also incredibly detailed with a huge number of separately applied parts. It's hard to believe that this level of precision is achievable for an off-the-shelf small scale product. The painting is super crisp with easily readable labels and flawlessly applied different paints. It's the most beautiful model I own so far.

Let's talk about functions. The first surprise? The model does not feature any headlights. In fact it does not offer any lights at all! And it's completely dark at night. It's a little bit shocking but justified. If you go back to the photo of the original, you'll see it did not have any sort of lighting either. So it's not a missing feature - it's the realism.

But of course we still have plenty of digital functions to play with. Those are mostly different sounds, and different whistles in particular. They are loud and pleasing to the ear but it's also obvious some frequencies are difficult to reproduce properly inside such a small model. So while there's nothing to really complain about, one should not expect every single note to be crystal clear.

A very interesting aspect of the digital control on this model is how the brake function works. The behaviour I've experienced in other products enables the brakes (affecting both speed and the produced sound) as soon as the DCC throttle is set to zero. That's not the case here. On the Graham Farish model reducing the speed on the controller only eliminates the theoretical "steam power" that would be transferred to the pistons but it does not enable the brakes. This means the locomotive will free run for many, many more meters unless the F2 function is explicitly invoked by the user. It looks really, really cool and I just wonder whether this simulation is true to scale...

How does it run? I did not get the chance to use the model a lot. After all it's the middle of the G-Scale season now, and I won't be coming back to the small scale fun until late autumn. But I did manage to test it a little and was pretty happy with its performance. It runs nice at lower speeds and is not extremely noisy at higher ones. The movement is smooth without any breaks. It did derail once on my Kato switch but the rail connection is not perfect there and I was really pushing it going at full speed.

Here's a video showing the engine's performance.

How do I like it? I absolutely love it. And I knew I'd love the engine the moment I first saw it. That is of course unless there was something really bad about its performance. But there isn't. The model offers a nice selection of DCC and sound functions and they all work just fine. The running characteristics seem OK, too. And of course the details and the colours are fantastic. What could a miniature worlds lover like me want on top of that? Probably nothing. The Graham Farish product has it all.

ps. Of course I'm still dreaming about an N-scale engine with a real steam generator. But that is a completely different story...