We're delighted to announce our latest Railway Icons announcement in partnership with our friends at Locomotion Models, the National Railway Museum and Bachmann Europe - the mighty NER Independent Snowplough in OO Gauge!

The North Eastern Railway’s wooden bodied snowplough is now available for the first time as a ready to run model. Used across the North East of England to keep important routes open during the harsh Winter months, the distinctive vehicles, most often used in pairs, can now find a home on your layout too.

This impressive vehicle is supplied either as a single model in NER livery or as twin packs in LNER and BR colours. Engineering samples have been revealed with decorated samples expected shortly. Stay tuned for more updates on the project, with final delivery expected in 2026.

The North Eastern Railway had some of the most varied terrain of any pre-grouping railway in the British Isles. Whilst some areas of the network were relatively flat, the hills of the North Yorkshire moors and Northern Pennines resulted in several demanding routes with high altitudes and stiff gradients, many of which could be blocked by drifting snow and winter blizzards.

These lines remaining open was essential to keeping the wheels of industry in Northern England turning, and to ensure this, the North Eastern Railway invested in a fleet of distinctive 6-wheel snowploughs, with the first being constructed in 1887.

The snowploughs would be coupled in front of a pair of powerful locos, and ‘charged’ at the snowdrift, dislodging the snow and clearing the line with the use of the distinctive wedge shaped ‘nose’ of the snowplough.

In total, twenty four snowploughs were built for the NER between 1887 and 1907, with initial body designs built from wood and later from steel. It is testament to the quality of construction that many of these snowploughs survived through the decades and remained in service with both the LNER and British Rail, with the last example surviving until 1975 in BR ownership!

The snowploughs could be seen across the north east throughout the year, being stabled awaiting their seasonal duties during the warmer months, and placed in strategic locations once the colder weather set in. One of the most famous routes was the ‘Stainmore’ line, a transpennine route climbing to almost 1,400 feet above sea level, the highest point on British Railway’s network until closure in the 1960s.

This was made nationally famous in 1955 with the British Transport Film documentary ‘Snowdrift at Bleath Gill’, where a NER snowplough, along with a Standard 2MT locomotive, a track gang of fifty men, and a hastily gathered film crew, worked to free a goods train that had been stranded in the snow at the summit for over four days.

In recognition of their importance both on and off the screen, three NER snowploughs survive to this day, including 1891-built No.12, which was selected for preservation as part of the National Collection. It has been splendidly restored to its full NER indian red finish, and is now on display at Locomotion at Shildon - in the heart of the North Eastern Railway’s territory which it has always called its home.