Austrains' principal John Eassie has announced on the Austrains website that he intends to produce HO scale models of the NSWGR 30 Class 4-6-4 tank loco, and the C30T 4-6-0 tender locomotive. This has led to speculation that Ixion will now drop production of the ex-Shrike Models C30T. This is our official response.

Ixion Models will not "walk away" from producing the 30T. We are men of our word. 

Nor will we be walking away from our promised arrangement for Shrike Models 30T pre-paid customers.

We are disappointed that Austrains have announced that they are duplicating the 30T, which is likely to affect sales of both locos, but it is a free market. We wish John Eassie the best of success in all his endeavours, which have done so much to grow the modelling of Australian railways in HO scale.

The Ixion 30T is ready for production - the tooling is complete and waiting, as the decoration samples have shown. As a small company, we simply await enough sales of the 32 Class to top up our reserves sufficiently to be able to fund the 30T production run.

I hope this counters some of the speculation and rumour that seems so rife in the local modelling community and online forums.

Best wishes to all,

Lindsay O'Reilly,

Director, Ixion Model Railways.