Vonzack

I made a similar request on the Dapol Digest for the NMT coaches, but with the Gaugemaster announcement, I would say the prospect of Dapol doing them may be further away.

Hi @Peter J, I have had exactly the same experience with the wagons, it's really disappointing. I want to run a rake of 21 wagons, but I can't seem to run more than 6 or 7 without the coupling being unreliable. @gedlee's post is interesting, but we shouldn't really have to be doing things like this to get them running well out of the box. I've swapped the Rapido couplings on mine for the Dapol dummy knuckles to close the gaps between the wagons and these usually sort some of the traditional coupling issues out. However it looks to be the design at fault in this case, the NEM pocket drops down on a small angled arm and I think this deflects upwards under tension and the wagons just uncouple. If the wagons were lighter this might not happen, but even a small rake quickly seems to overwhelm the coupler arms. Dapol do seem to prefer using a kinematic coupler, but I wonder if these would have been better with a more traditional NEM pocket attached to the wagon bogies. I posted an exploded view of the wagons on the N Gauge Forum, so you can see how they are put together here - https://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?topic=43805.msg588274#msg588274 Hope you get your issues sorted. Cheers, Mark.

Shown out of stock at the moment though. Try an ebay Search for the above NEMCOUP

Hi, I think @ChrisJM reached out to me via the YouTube video, so I hadn't seen this thread until now, but I'll copy my response in case it's of help to anybody. Cheers, Mark.

Are they basic shape errors, or are they design/cost limitations. I think what we see with the 142 is the later and maybe Dapol should have been upfront with people about what they were getting. Certainly seeing all the PCB through the windows didn't go down well either, but where else is it going to go in that model?

Well, I couldn't resist another Northern Rail one at £60 and as far as I can tell, nothing at all wrong with it apart from the outer Dapol card sleeve was missing. I ran one at the Lincoln show and there were allot of people pointing and saying oooh look a 142, I din't hear anybody complain about the Tumblehome or windows. if it looks and quacks like a duck, well it's a duck.

Another vote for the 'shrink ray'.

There is a thread in the Rapido section for these. Ben said on the 15th March that these were in production currently. Shouldn't be too long now. Cheers.

My Northern 142 runs very well and has already had it's first Exhibition outing for the Lincoln & District MRE.

I can see me having a few of these to go in my RevolutioN TEAs.

This is fantastic news, been hoping somebody would announce this in 2mm for years now. Where do I click? Would like to see a GNER liveried version, as it stayed on them for a long time.

@bridgiesimon - Sorry no real update on the PXAs at the moment. I should have some time to pick all this stuff up now. I'll produce some of the brake gear, but will probably print it inside the wagon to keep the volume to a minimum. @Marbelup - I thought the ripples were support residue too when I got the print as I'd seen something similar on the FUD Binliner containers, but it can't be removed and it is the actual surface. Weirdly and I think you can see this from the pictures, the insides of the wagon are smooth as are the buffer details and the top lip of the wagon side. I think on the 4th picture down, you can see where I've attacked part of the side to see if it would rub off. It's the only print to date that I've received like this and allot of my models have large flat sides, so I think it's just a printing glitch. When I order the next test print, hopefully it will be correct. @Snowwolflair - I will have to give Heptane a go, is there one in particular you use? Cheers, Mark.

This may be a senior moment so bear with me, but I'm certain one of the reasons for the window heights was because of the chassis and interior fitment, ie if the windows went lower down you would see the chassis block. Didn't all of the EP's and livery samples we saw have interior's? Looking at the photo's on Hattons site and FB, looks like only pickups run through the couplings, so directional lighting would need a second decoder. I think you can make out a circuit board at each end, but difficult to say without a shot of both vehicles with the tops off. Also, Looks to be a big gap between the vehicles too when coupled. Hopefully we'll get some better shots soon and it'll be clearer what we're getting.

Oooh, sound fitted 60's I will be looking forward to, as long as they are still hefty, got to pull those Revolution TEAs. HKA's, visually for me, the main difference is the brake wheel is on the wagon side on the HHA model rather than the bogie as in the EP image. Looking at images on the web though, the majority of HHAs seem to have the brake wheels on the bogies. I guess the new tooling is to allow the fitment of buffers for the outer ends more that anything else. Not sure about the re-run of the Voyager without it being re-tooled. No NEM pockets on the ends, fiddly couplings between the coaches of the set and it wasn't really geared well for me.

One of the easiest ways I've found to run our Exhibition Layout is to use a laptop and the free JMRI Software to talk to our Digitrax Command Station. Setting routes on JMRI is very simple and you can then either action them from the defined list, or create a Panel with appropriate buttons. The main benefit of us using JMRI though, is that we can pre-allocate throttles for all of the loco's in the Fiddle Yard at the start of the day, so there's no Acquiring and Despatching of loco addresses to be done for your operators. They just run through the list of loco's until they find the one they are wanting to run and open the throttle, it may take a few attempts to get used to the JMRI Throttle, but it really is quite handy for shows where you need to keep things moving. Any shunting at the front is then done on a Digitrax hand throttle. Cheers, Mark.