Last month I was able to post the first pictures of the Arnold / Hornby N Gauge Brighton Belle fist off engineering prototype tooling that is being produced in the British 1.148 scale rather then the usual continental 1.160 scale. Courtesy of Simon Kohler of Hornby and with thanks to the Worthing Model Railway Club and their exquisite Nine Mills layout as the backdrop,  I am now able to post pictures of the first full running sample model.

This motorised sample; powered by an open frame motor located above the floor line inside the Driving Motor Brake Parlour Third drives both bogies via cardian drive shafts. Although the motor is slightly visible though the nicely flush glazed windows, from a normal viewing distance and with the all the table lamps it is not overly noticeable.

The wheel sets on this sample seemed to have deeper flanges than the more usual RP25 profile but these may of course not be representative of the final wheel sets being used.  It did look however if the underframes were notched to allow the required bogie swing but again this may not be as the model will finally appear.

This does however show that development of this interesting model is continuing at pace.

Edit 20/10/13: I can confirm from Hornby that the wheels and the underframe cut outs on this sample are not representative of how the final production models will be.