Accurascale unveils exclusive Class 37 D6724, supporting Heavy Tractor Group preservation

Accurascale has turned one of the Class 37’s most specific identities into a limited OO gauge release, and the prototype choice is the point. D6724 is the only locomotive in this run to wear British Rail green with small yellow warning panels, a finish that captures the type before decades of rebuilds, renumbering and sector liveries changed the class’s look forever. Pre-orders are open, delivery is set for Q2 2027, and the asking price is £189.95 for the DCC-ready version or £289.95 for the DCC sound-fitted model.

The preservation link gives the model its real weight. Accurascale says its work with heritage groups includes measurement, scanning, research and sound recording, while the sales themselves help fund restoration and operation. It also says it takes on production costs, packing, sales and distribution, which leaves preservation groups free to focus on the locomotives themselves. In this case, that means the Heavy Tractor Group, the registered charity based at the Great Central Railway in Loughborough, gets a commission that supports the care of 37714 and the group’s wider work.

D6724’s backstory is exactly the kind of thing serious diesel modelers will notice. Built at English Electric’s Vulcan Foundry in August 1961, with works number EE/VF2887/D603 and released on 25 August 1961, the locomotive went first to March and then Stratford. It worked passenger, parcels and freight turns, including the Manchester to Harwich boat train, before becoming 37024 under TOPS in February 1974. A collision in 1980 brought plated nose doors at both ends, then BREL Crewe returned it to traffic in October 1988 as 37714 in Railfreight Metals livery, one of the Class 37/7 Heavyweights.

Its later life is just as layered. It carried the Thornaby Depot name from September 1992 until the plates came off five months later, passed into EWS use, was stored in 2000, and went to Spain in May 2001 for AVE high-speed construction work. After returning to the UK in 2011, it later joined Direct Rail Services. The Great Central Railway says the Heavy Tractor Group formed in 2016 to care for the locomotive and formally acquired it by 2017, and describes 37714 as a regular and reliable performer in preservation.

That is why this release matters beyond being another high-spec Class 37. The tooling refinements are there, including an operating roof fan that works with DCC sound and also on DC layouts, improved glazing, upgraded grilles, refined bonnet-top doors, a die-cast body weighing about 695 grams, all-wheel drive, and printed and etched works plates and builder’s plaques in special packaging. But the deeper appeal is the story it carries: a 1961 Vulcan Foundry-built Class 37, still active at the Great Central Railway, now funding its own heritage circle while giving model buyers a sharply defined early-era BR green version no other model in the run will match.