MSS 'Purple Peril' 0-4-0 Tank Engine

MSS Purple Locos: Back in 2002 MSS released a special purple loco in celebration of The Queens Golden Jubilee. The Certificates of Authenticity that were issued with these limited edition models stated that the production batch was limited to only 500 models world wide. It is not certain if all of these models were actually made up and sold. These locos had a special 'The Queens Golden Jubilee' motif and carried the Jubilee dates 1952-2002. Other than that the model was pretty much the same as a standard MSS. The cylinders on the model were black and it was fitted with gold coloured hand rails. There was a brass cap fitted to the smoke stack. The main difference was - the loco was purple!

Role on to 2012 and MSS decided to repeat the process for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee with another limited edition MSS Loco this time limited to only 250 models. Again, I do not know if all of these models were actually made up and sold. These locos have a special 'The Queens Diamond Jubilee' motif and carry the Jubilee dates 1952-2012. Again the model is fitted with black cylinders and with gold coloured hand rails. There is again a brass cap fitted to the smoke stack. The loco is the same colour purple as the previous Queens Golden Jubilee loco.

The packing boxes for these locos are the same albeit that they carry the respective Jubilee motif at the time of issue for either the Golden or Diamond Jubilee model being sold. At the time of the Diamond Jubilee a batch of 60 matching purple passenger coaches was also produced and these make for some nice colour matched rolling stock for the MSS purple locos.

Mamod Brass Locos: I've been made aware by a very good source that Mamod made a limited number of brass locos using the same approach as they did for the brass cars. However this model was not released as far as know and I have never seen a picture of this model.

MSS Brass Locos: It is understood that MSS attempted to make pressed brass panels for the loco but the tooling, which is now quite old, marked the brass with small scratches. Therefore, this was not considered to be a viable method to make the brass panels. MSS tried a different approach to making such a loco by experimenting with an antiqued brass finish to the panels and boiler and by producing an antiqued brass effect cast smoke box. A finished prototype was completed but the loco never made it into production. Note that the antiqued brass effect smoke boxes were used by MSS to produce a limited edition clock that was issued to celebrate the bicentenary 1806 - 2006 of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Whilst Alan Dunster was the proprietor of Dream Steam, he suggested to MSS that the antiqued brass effect boilers and smoke boxes be put together with plain purple panels to see if this would make for a good loco. This resulted in MSS supplying some samples to Dream Steam. Sadly this was as far as that project went.