The Locomotive fleet here at Battersea Stewarts Lane, comprises of models of some of the most powerful diesel Locomotive's to operate on Britains railways, the General Motor's Class 59 and the Brush Class 60.

These Locomotive's can be found working the heaviest trains in the country, driven by HG crews between quarries in the Mendip hills to London and beyond, serving terminals such as Allington ( Kent ), Hothfield, Ardingly, Sevington, Purley, Crawley etc.

The trains are themselves impressive, utilising fleets of modern air braked 'bogie box' and 'bogie hopper' type wagons, however, the really impressive side of the operation are the so called 'jumbo' workings.

Instead of running separate trains all the way from the quarries to the different terminals at, say, Purley, Allington and Crawley, three seperate 'portions' are worked as one 'jumbo' train, by one Locomotive as far as London, where it is then broken down into three single portions and worked forward from there, thus saving valuable pathing space on the main lines.

These workings can be formed of up to three trains in one, sometimes reaching 5½ thousand tonnes in weight, which is nothing by American standards but it is impressive all the same !

When the loads have been delivered at their respective terminals, the wagons are tripped back into London and then formed into the 'jumbo empties', returning to the quarries as three trains in one.

The Class 59 and 60 Locomotives have always been a part of the life of HG crews and our model fleet represents this.

However, due to the non-availability of suitable high capacity 'bogie box' and 'bogie hopper' wagons, our powerful Locomotive fleet is highly under utilised, scratching around on any traffic that we can find for them until a decent range of suitable modern wagons appear for them to really get their teeth into !

This is not to say that decent modern wagon models are not available, they are, but not the ones that 'I work with or have worked with in the past' and which are therefore in the remit of this site.

As a Locomotive Driver, I regularly work with all variants of the Class 59 and Class 60 Locomotive, which we have models of.

Here are some pictures of our machines, although our 59 005 and 59 104 will be added at a later date...

I have also enclosed some prototype pictures of 59 203, which was involved in a minor collision with some stop blocks a few years ago.

Class 59/0, 59/1 & 59/2

Class 60