Hornby unveils Planet steam loco, Terrier Fenchurch and Clan Line update

Hornby’s summer wave put three very different steam stories in the same OO-gauge box, and that made the June 9 announcement easier to sort than most. At the top sat the newly tooled Liverpool and Manchester Railway Planet, the Terrier No. 72 Fenchurch for preservation-minded Southern fans, and BR Late Green Merchant Navy No. 35028 Clan Line, a flagship rebuild with sound and steam effects built in. Hornby also tied the launch to coaches, wagons and digital accessories, which meant this was not just a shelf of locomotives, but a range aimed at layouts that need stock to run.

Planet is the headline for Era 1 modellers, full stop. Hornby described it as a newly tooled OO-gauge version of Robert Stephenson’s L&MR Planet, the locomotive built in 1830 by Robert Stephenson and Company for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. It sits inside Hornby’s wider Era 1 steam program and, just as importantly, it completes a neat trio alongside the company’s earlier Rocket and Lion. For collectors of the earliest railway prototypes, that matters: this is the rare sort of model that gives a modern ready-to-run fleet a piece of locomotive history that usually lives in books, museum cases or one-off brass builds.

Fenchurch is the quieter pick, but not the less important one. Hornby said No. 72 Fenchurch entered service in 1872 and was the first of fifty Stroudley-designed Terriers built between 1872 and 1880, with 10 examples still in existence. That gives the model a double appeal: it carries one of the most recognizable small steam shapes in British modelling, and it has the preservation-era credibility that keeps Terrier releases near the top of wish lists. For Newhaven Harbour Company and Southern Region layouts, it is the kind of locomotive that can anchor a scene without overpowering it.

Clan Line is the one that solves the most practical layout problems. Hornby said the Merchant Navy class locomotive entered service in December 1948, received its name at Southampton Docks in January 1951, and was rebuilt in 1959. One of only 30 in the class, it has the late-steam presence that Southern Region modellers look for, and the new model adds sprung metal buffers, NEM tension-lock couplings, a 21-pin HM7000 decoder and speaker, plus integrated steam-generator technology. Hornby’s own community blog said Clan Line had already been a popular pick with pre-orderers, which fits the brief: this is the release for anyone who wants a showpiece that also plays nicely with digital operation.

Taken together, the line-up showed Hornby working across the whole OO audience at once. Planet is the collector’s talking point, Fenchurch serves the preservation crowd, and Clan Line is the one that brings the richest DCC spec sheet to the table. That breadth is what gives the summer drop its shape, and why this launch felt less like a single release than a carefully staged pass across the history of British steam.