Garden Railway Forum

It may be way out of your budget range but I would consider an LGB Stainz in the mix.
As a first loco it would be fine, great runner, will pull a considerable load, built like a brick dunny, reliable, plenty of parts available and some are available for relative little money. https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_fro ... z&_sacat=0
The prices on the link are Australian Dollars so to get UK pounds roughly halve the value. $1AU = 50p approx.
Plus they can be bashed to Anglicise as well, have look at G-Rik's blog to see how he did his for inspiration.

Not sure how much they would cost in UK, but I have used the Hartland Mighty Mack locos and am more than satisfied with them. Good to start with unmodified, but if you want to move onto bashing, their motor blocks are easy to access and use.

http://www.h-l-w.com/mighty-mack.html

Picking up on Greg's theme, quite a few of my locos use LGB ToyTrain motor blocks for their motive power. Don't be put off by the label. The motor blocks aren't at all toylike. They are well engineered mechanisms. It depends on whether you want something to run off the shelf or you're prepared to do a bit of work in using the motor blocks as a reliable basis for a bash or scratchbuilt.

Here's an example of one of my bashes of a rather tatty (and cheap) eBay purchase.

Before ..... .
And after ..... .
A description of the bash here - https://riksrailway.blogspot.com/2017/0 ... rt-of.html

Rik