Dapol Streamlined Railcar

[melmerby]

I have replaced the decoder with the blanking plate and as far as I can tell everything is running exactly as it should on DC. Interior lights on, front and rear lights reversing with direction.

So why wont it work properly with a decoder? I've tried a Lenz Silver 21+ and a TCS 21 pin.

 

Now going to try another brand new Lenz 21

 

Keith

 

With new decoder I can set and read the address but the motor will not run & the lights will not operate. There must be something amiss with the circuit board.

Definitely needs to go back for replacement.

Edited December 2, 2017 by melmerby

[swiftbeam]

A slight adjustment of the standard interior after a full drive train tweak!

 

The whole interior was airbrushed with rail match and doors added according to the GW A.E.C Diesel Railcars book, page 88 and 92. The floor is totally the wrong colour and so are the seats, but they were done before I got book :-(

[melmerby]

Still no joy with a Brand new Lenz Silver 21+

Works on DC on the rolling road complete with directional lighting, zilch on DCC although the decoder's CVs can be read or written to whilst in the railcar.

 

My No.12 is now packed up and on it's way back to Rails.

 

Keith

[vulcanbomber]

Who supplied the passengers for your railcar?

[KymN]

​Hatton's has advised that the DCC fitted 4D-011-004D Streamlined Railcar 8 in GWR lined chocolate and cream with Twin Cities crest has been cancelled from production, and so has cancelled my order. The non-DCC version has sold out there.  Fortunately Kernow has the non-DCC ones in stock, so I have gone that way.

[mvwilson]

Been waiting for the sound decoder to arrive whilst i painted the interior and fitted passengers. In the letterbox this morning so all fitted and finally put back together.

[Coppercap]

Been waiting for the sound decoder to arrive whilst i painted the interior and fitted passengers. In the letterbox this morning so all fitted and finally put back together.

You allow passengers to travel in the luggage compartment? Surely not?

I know it's difficult to find them, but with '1930s' passengers, both men and women, more really need to be wearing hats, even when on board a train. Such was the fashion at the time.

[longchap]

​Hatton's has advised that the DCC fitted 4D-011-004D Streamlined Railcar 8 in GWR lined chocolate and cream with Twin Cities crest has been cancelled from production, and so has cancelled my order. The non-DCC version has sold out there.  Fortunately Kernow has the non-DCC ones in stock, so I have gone that way.

 

 . . . and now today, after receiving the same message regarding cancellation yesterday, I'm advised by Hattons that the said model is now in stock and available for purchase for £142.70.

 

It must be a miracle!

 

Hello, left hand calling right hand. Do you have any idea what's going on?

 

Bill

 

(content with my unchipped Twin Cities  No 8 for now)

[KymN]

 . . . and now today, after receiving the same message regarding cancellation yesterday, I'm advised by Hattons that the said model is now in stock and available for purchase for £142.70.

 

(content with my unchipped Twin Cities  No 8 for now)

 

As far as Hattons is concerned 'too late she cried as she waved her wooden leg'. I have an unchipped one already despatched from Camborne.

[Neal Ball]

You allow passengers to travel in the luggage compartment? Surely not?

I know it's difficult to find them, but with '1930s' passengers, both men and women, more really need to be wearing hats, even when on board a train. Such was the fashion at the time.

 

 

And of course 1930's passengers would have been wearing brown / grey etc. rather than our modern vibrant colours.

[Neal Ball]

A slight adjustment of the standard interior after a full drive train tweak!

 

The whole interior was airbrushed with rail match and doors added according to the GW A.E.C Diesel Railcars book, page 88 and 92. The floor is totally the wrong colour and so are the seats, but they were done before I got book :-(

 

How did you get the driver to stay in place? Every time I glue him to his seat, the body knocks him off! Last chap suffered a broken arm :-)

[Coppercap]

And of course 1930's passengers would have been wearing brown / grey etc. rather than our modern vibrant colours.

I think in summer they were sometimes allowed to ditch the drab and wear brighter clothes, judging by pre-war colour photos (if it could be afforded, the slow colour film then was usually only possible to use on bright sunny days).

[Karhedron]

I agree, colour film was expensive in the 1930s but even then, people were starting to document the everyday world and brightly coloured clothes do show up more than you might expect.

[woodenhead]

I agree, colour film was expensive in the 1930s but even then, people were starting to document the everyday world and brightly coloured clothes do show up more than you might expect.

I suppose saying everyone wore drab clothing is like saying all medieval lords walked around in suits of armour all day long.

[Tim Dubya]

Rule one!

[melmerby]

I suppose saying everyone wore drab clothing is like saying all medieval lords walked around in suits of armour all day long.

With a servant walking behind banging two coconut shells together, no doubt.

 

Keith

[The Johnster]

Hats were common attire until perhaps the early 60s, and men's attire was much more drab than nowadays, but women's summer wear could be quite brightly coloured.  A part of the traditional 'steam era' scene in third class would be a good proportion of men in working clothes; overalls, dust coats, and the like.  These would be wearing flat caps, Andy Capp style.  The proportion of working men would be less on long distance expresses.

 

My passengers, on a 1950s South Wales mining valley's branch, are rather too colourful and well dressed in general, also tall and handsome, for realism.  A population a little more stunted and consumptive, dressed less smartly than nice people from 'that London', and generally hunched and depressed is what I'm after.  HO people would be the right size, but still too smartly turned out and urbane.  More overweight women are needed as well, and all probably need hats.

[JDW]

Hats were common attire until perhaps the early 60s, and men's attire was much more drab than nowadays, but women's summer wear could be quite brightly coloured.  A part of the traditional 'steam era' scene in third class would be a good proportion of men in working clothes; overalls, dust coats, and the like.  These would be wearing flat caps, Andy Capp style.  The proportion of working men would be less on long distance expresses.

 

My passengers, on a 1950s South Wales mining valley's branch, are rather too colourful and well dressed in general, also tall and handsome, for realism.  A population a little more stunted and consumptive, dressed less smartly than nice people from 'that London', and generally hunched and depressed is what I'm after.  HO people would be the right size, but still too smartly turned out and urbane.  More overweight women are needed as well, and all probably need hats.

 

It's true, but I'm glad you said it mot me.  Wanna borrow a tin hat?

 

I might have misread the start of the second paragraph.  Are you saying they are too colourful, well dressed, tall and handsome to be realistic, or they are too colourful and well dressed in general but that they are tall and handsome, for realism?  Not knowing that part of the world that well, I can only guess... 

 

Back on topic though, it's neither my era nor region but it looks like a cracking little model of an interesting prototype!  

[The Johnster]

It's true, but I'm glad you said it mot me.  Wanna borrow a tin hat?

 

I might have misread the start of the second paragraph.  Are you saying they are too colourful, well dressed, tall and handsome to be realistic, or they are too colourful and well dressed in general but that they are tall and handsome, for realism?  Not knowing that part of the world that well, I can only guess... 

 

Back on topic though, it's neither my era nor region but it looks like a cracking little model of an interesting prototype!  

 

 

Well, I remember the valleys as a child in the 50s and early 60s from visiting rellys up there; most of my Cardiffian peers were barely aware that the valleys existed and thought the world stopped at Tongwynlais, a view still not uncommon in Cardiff.  Conversely, many valleys people only see Cardiff on rugby international days and think it's always like that!

 

By the 50s, the glory days of the coal industry were over and it was at the top of a terminal decline, poverty had been endemic for decades and the Great Depression had not been recovered from.  The Brave New World of nationalised railways and coal, with better working conditions and fairer pay, held out a hope never fully realised, though pithead baths were making a very significant impact on day to day family life in many homes.  The area's geography promotes high rainfall and overcast skies, and the general appearance of everything was grim and run down, enhanced by coal dust, except for the fleeting glory of a few bright days in summer.  Hillsides once wooded were bare, the trees all long gone for pitprops, now imported from Scandinavia and Russia.

 

Beneath the grim, semi Dickensian, exterior were warm, friendly, generous, witty, well read and informed, and often very well educated people with a well known passion for choral singing that extended into classical music and literature.  It sounds corny as I write it, but there genuinely was a phenomenal community spirit and a small s socialism that pervaded everything.

 

But the downside of it was reflected in the appearance of the people, who in general dressed for the weather, so big overcoats, hats, and umbrellas were the norm, and were often old and worn themselves; Sunday best was reserved for that purpose and the odd funeral or wedding.  Shoes were repaired where nowadays they would be replaced in even the poorest families, and kids wore handmedowns; some clothes must have circulated around neigbourhoods for generations!  Years of poor diet had stunted them, and they looked a poor lot against the type of passenger usually provided in RTP packs, who seem to be based on well fed and stylish London Commuters.  My Bachmann station staff and loco crews are quite imposing gentlemen by valleys standards, and I am after some more diverse Modelu types; the guard carrying a lamp, hunched against the cold in his greatcoat, is more the sort of thing I need.

 

I am saying, tin hat at the ready and dugout prepared for the bombardment, that the RTP people available are too colourful, healthy looking, tall, and handsome to represent people who coughed because of silicosis from the mines, or were stooped by work, and whose diet would be regarded as lethal nowadays.  They were lovely people though, and some of them were my relatives!

 

Thank you for your positive comments about Cwmdimbath.  It is not a model of a prototype, though is 'inspired' in a very general way by Abergwynfi, two valleys over.  The location is real and exists to the north east of Bridgend, the Dimbath stream being a tributary of the Ogwr Fach (River Ogmore), which runs through what is a farmed valley at it's lower end and a steep heavily wooded defile among the mountains at it's upper end.  There is coal beneath it right enough, but the place was never in reality host to a mining village or it's railway; these are the products of my own fevered imagination.  It was, in reality, literally undermined from pits in the neighbouring Ogwr and Rhondda valleys, which link underground.  Tondu provides the locos and stock for this area, and I model locos on that basis.  The real Cwmdimbath is a pleasant place for a walk on a warm autumn day when the trees are at their most colourful; it is a rare glimpse of the untrammelled sylvan loveliness that all the valleys must have possessed before the industrial revolution destroyed it for ever.

 

There are few people about, though the trains carry a smattering of passengers.  There are none on the platform, though there are a couple of sheep, who probably do not have tickets.  Sheep get everywhere in the valleys.  The climate and the fact that the village is small enough for everyone to hear the trains coming as they blast up the steep bank just out of sight (they know the timetable by heart anyway) mean that nobody local hangs around on the station.  There are some railway staff about, huddled by doorways and thinking about the next cup of tea or pushing barrows on the goods dock.  There is also a cat, Taliesin, who sits on a pile of boxes on the goods dock and supervises.  He is the official rodent control officer, but seems to do very little work!

[bayern]

You allow passengers to travel in the luggage compartment? Surely not?

I know it's difficult to find them, but with '1930s' passengers, both men and women, more really need to be wearing hats, even when on board a train. Such was the fashion at the time.

Actually most Gentlemen removed there hats on entering a compartment as the Railcar has a bus type interior that may not be the case.

[Coppercap]

Actually most Gentlemen removed there hats on entering a compartment as the Railcar has a bus type interior that may not be the case.

I dunno, there's plenty of photos of men wearing hats on board trains in that period. They may well have doffed them to the ladies when boarding and when entering a compartment, or when another lady joined them, but many photos suggest they often put them back on their heads.

[KNP]

Railcar varnish drying quietly in the bay platform so thought I would take a quick picture.

 

 

I have painted the floor and engine hump black with a light grey wash to make it look used and I am very pleased how well this has concealed it.

The seats are Olive Green, Beige Brown woodwork and Buff panelling.

Passengers are from the Dart Castings passenger range with two Noch workmen I found in a box!!!

The drivers from the Modelu range (OO scale) but because the cab is cramped I had to file a large bit of their bottoms and remove there feet to get them to fit. I am seriously thinking about replacing them with some HO figures but haven't decided yet.

You will notice how large the windows are so the figures are very much on view more so than in a normal carriage.

 

Externally, roof repainted and weathered, light weathering to doors, grills, window surrounds etc.

Bogies repainted.

Whole lot varnished with my favourite brush applied UV varnish to protect, I think another coat is needed as earlier I noticed I had missed a bit!!!

Edited December 19, 2017 by KNP

[JDW]

That looks excellent Kevin, you've hit just the right level of weathering I think.  The model looks great out of the box but a bit shiny, your weathering - especially dulling the roof - has given it some 'weight'.

[Silver Sidelines]

'mawddwy1' (on Flickr) has a lot to answer for!

 

http://flic.kr/p/22pro4a


Ex GWR Railcar - Dapol


Ex GWR Railcars - Dapol left, Lima/Hornby right

Edited December 21, 2017 by Silver Sidelines

[JDW]

I was wondering how long til someone posts a pic of the two side by side (apologies if its been done already and I've missed it!), I don't know how likely they were to be seen together but they do look good