Passenger Train Set LMS 5600 (Hornby No 501)

Past Exhibit
Passenger Train Set LMS 5600 (Hornby No 501) Hornby Post-war train sets (i)
location:
Arch Two , Area 25 The Legend of Hornby
Shelf 1

A boxed maroon clockwork 0-4-0 Hornby gauge 0 No. 501 Passenger Train Set (LMS loco 5600), from ~1947.

The Hornby 501 locomotive

The 501 locomotive was a marginally updated version of the No.1 locomotive, and appeared after WW2, when the restarting of production probably seemed like a good time to renumber some ranges so that individual items finally had their own identification numbers, rather than being referred to as a plethora of "M", "No.1", "No.2", "No.2 Special" etc. -prefixed descriptions.

When Hornby was making generic locomotive outlines it probably made more sense to have a limited number of loco styles with simple colour/company variations, but now that Hornby was moving to making a larger range of realistic models of specific locomotives, this system was no longer going to work. If the Dublo range demanded a new catalogue numbering system, it made sense to apply the new scheme to the new gauge 0 variants, too.

The original locomotive

Any relation between the Hornby No1 locos (et. al.) and their nominal real-life counterparts is always going to be rather tenuous and more interesting from a socio-historical perspective than from engineering viewpoint but ... the number 5600 belonged to the LMS Prince of Wales (1911), the first locomotive in the 245-strong Prince of Wales Class, which the LMS inherited from the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) and renumbered in (1923?), starting with number 5600.

These were 4-6-0 express passenger locomotives, so any resemblance to the original is due to paintwork.