Here is our other Pearse locomotive, Welshpool & Llanfair The Earl in lined black. These were top of the range models back in the day with RC control, steam stop valve, boiler blowdown/level valve, steam whistle(also RC controlled). Pearse blurred the line between the assembly line of Accucraft and the one off "bespoke"models. Here is our Earl pulling Accucraft coaches on a snowy afternoon.
Actually, Donald Pearse, who died around ten years ago, formed the basis from which Accucraft UK was built back in 2004 by Ian and Sandy Pearse, Donald’s son and daughter-in-law. Most, if not all, of Donald Pearse’s locos had been built by then, including yours. Donald was not only a fine model engineer, but a man full of innovative ideas about the direction that model steam locomotion was taking, and realised that the small-scale production of hand-made steam model in a little workshop - virtually a one-man band - was not going to make much money. His last design, and without doubt the most impressive, was the mighty SAR/WHR Beyer-Garratt NG/G16, of which probably around 400 examples were built, including my own. It was, back then, and still is, a mighty tour-de-force of model engineering that, had it been made here in UK, might have cost three times as much as the £4000 of the originals. Even the rare used example is selling for the new price.
A few years back Sandy very kindly gave me permission to have a loco nameplate made to honour his dad, whom I knew briefly, and ‘Donald Pearse CME’, now over twelve years old and counting, is a mainstay of any of our exhibition shows.