I had the privilege of seeing two of these when they first came out in the 90's and yes they were beautiful. Bob Head, who had the scale model of the Saltash bridge across his 'pond' in gauge 1 had the prototype and an as then unbuilt one too. We had a guided tour by Bob of his Aster collection and he told the story that the Count upset the company by letting Bob have the prototype. An amazing collection seeing huge tables full of virtually all the models Aster had made and drip trays to collect residue from running them. He was a really nice gent, certainly a worthy guardian of such a superb collection and I've often wondered what happened to them all when he passed away.
