Yeesh, there's two ways to go with this. In the spirit of e's comment one could ask what you plan to do with the rugby players. e, you forgot that Hooker's Army wouldn't be well known across the pond.
So, Enzo, what do you call 'professional women' over there?
Nope, never heard of it. The local PBS station seems to be stuck on the same 6 BBC shows and I, for one, am heartily tired of Hyacinth. There're obviously other shows available. If I still could get WHYY great old movies would be available Saturday nights but we can't have two PBS stations on our cable. The heck of it is we have about 8 channels with nothing on them.
In a manner of speaking, the Standards were LMS: The Next Generation. The
2MTs and 4MTs, both tanks and tender engines, were simply reworked Ivatt designs. The 5MT was a reworked Black 5. The Britannias and Clans were in many ways a smaller version of the Duchess class. It's hardly surprising really. Mr Riddles, the CME of British Railways, was an LMS man through and through.
Dunno about the "well built" business. They were built by the same erecting shops that had built engines for the Big Four. Crewe, Doncaster, Eastleigh, Swindon... they all built Standards.
However, you have a point with the "good-looking" side of things. The Standards were built for utility and ease of maintenance, not for looks. Something as good looking as a Claughton (voice offstage: "He's banging on about them flippin' Claughtons again!") was a nightmare to maintain, because all the hot and/or moving bits were hidden behind nice valances, splashers and low running plates.
The Standards had high running plates simply to provide access, but that gave them a very "American" appearance which took a bit of getting used to. Just think about the reaction that Bulleid's Q1 and Ivatt's 4MT had when they appeared some years before the Standards. Both were built with high or non-existent running plates. Both were considered frightful to look at, but became very popular indeed with their running and maintenance crews.
Nevertheless, I think the Britannias were some of the most handsome engines ever built in the UK. Not a patch on Claughtons, though... ;-)
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