R30401 Hornby Merchant Navy Steam Loco 35015 Rotterdam Lloyd

New release - pre-orders invited - expected during 2025. preauthkernow

The 30 locomotives of the class were all built at Eastleigh for express passenger duties on the Southern Railway and featured air-smooth casing and Bulleid’s revolutionary chain-driven valve gear. 

This locomotive was completed at Eastleigh Works and entered service in March 1945. It was numbered 21C15 and named ‘Rotterdam Lloyd’ in November 1945 after Dutch shipping company Rotterdamsche Lloyd, which operated passenger and mail services between Rotterdam and the Dutch East Indies, and became Royal Rotterdam Lloyd in 1947. The locomotive was renumbered to 35015 in June 1949, following the nationalisation of the railways the previous year, and was rebuilt at Eastleigh in June 1958. Always based at either Stewarts Lane or Nine Elms, it was withdrawn from the latter in February 1964 and scrapped in the following December.

The model captures the locomotive in striking experimental express passenger blue livery, applied by British Railway in the period between its post-nationalisation renumbering in June 1949 and its rebuilding into more conventional form in 1958. It features the early BR ‘cycling lion’ crest on the tender sides (Era 4).

This model was amended by Hornby in January 2025