Class 52 Western Diesel update 20 December 2016
The demand and level of interest in this locomotive project has been huge and significantly exceeded all our expectations. The builders have prepared detailed drawings, which they submitted to us sometime ago. Although the drawings were very good and revealing, we know that the ‘Western’ body shape, especially around the cab ends, is very difficult to produce accurately. After careful consideration we decided that we needed to get the shape and the locomotive details absolutely correct, so in November we arranged to scan D1015 Western Champion at Kidderminster, thanks to the involvement of the Western Traction Group who could not have been more helpful.
We now have the scans that provide amazing 3-D detail of the locomotive including the cab interior, the engine room and also underneath the bogies and chassis frames. We have extensively photographed the locomotive and also a separate bogie removed from an engine to provide further detailed information for the builders. The builders will now work on a pre-production sample, which we hope to receive in the first quarter of 2017. The objective is to have production of the ‘Western’ during the summer of 2017 and models ready for delivery to customers by December 2017.