rapidotrains

It's about the same number of moulds as a complex Canadian locomotive. Because it lacks all of the underbody piping, the mould quantity is manageable. On some of our passenger cars with all of the underbody equipment, the mould count can reach as high as 19. -Jason

Hi all, Sorry for the lack of updates of late. Things have been a bit mad here and at one of our factories in China (not the APT-E one, thankfully). I will post some mould progress photos this week, starting with the ones below, taken a week ago. Boy is it going to be tight.... Hopefully we'll have a sample at Warley otherwise we'll dress Bill in an APT-E costume and have him doing pirouettes on top of the Locomotion display table. -Jason Here's the Power Car roof and belly: And here are a few of the growing collection of APT-E mould bases.

Hi all, I am pleased to report that, as of yesterday, tooling on the Rapido APT-E has officially BEGUN. Woo-hoo! -Jason

The REALTRACK Class 144s (and 143s) were made at our first factory. It's not a "Rapido" model as the factory made it to REALTRACK's specs. So the brilliant reception the 144s got is entirely due to the hard work of Charlie and his team and Rapido can't take any of the credit. In contrast, the APT-E is a Rapido model. We'll gladly take the credit for its successes (and failures - though not so gladly). We're still using that factory for a lot of our production as they do great work, but many of our newer models are produced at the MLW factory. The lead times at the first factory are measured in years whereas the lead times at the MLW factory are measured in months. The APT-E is being made at the MLW factory, and if we do any more projects with Charlie (and we hope to!) they will be produced at the MLW factory as well. -Jason

Hi all, This is so crazy I had to share it with you. On the real APT-E, one of Kit's colleagues always brought a massive sandwich. They used it to prop the door open on TC2. So of course we decided to include the door, propped open by the sandwich. How many model train manufacturers get these kinds of emails from their engineers in China? "Will all door be opened after assembling? If yes, suggest don't to make separate parts for the sandwich , because too small to install, there are mounting holes under the door, we only can choose one status for the door, ------Open or Close? "This is another kind of door, do we need to make it be opened and add sandwich?" See attached. Our new tagline is: The Rapido APT-E May or May Not Include Sandwich -Jason

Well, not exactly. It was only delayed three or four years due to lack of demand.... That's still a LONG TIME. You can read the whole story here: http://www.rapidotrains.com/rapidonews59.html -Jason

First CNC sample to test the tilt and close-coupling system: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/88792-apt-e-factory-drawings/page-2&do=findComment&comment=1555696 Best regards, Jason

This should get things back on track. The first factory drawings are here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/88792-apt-e-factory-drawings/ -Jason

Hi Martin, There most definitely will be two speakers. It will whoosh at both ends. -Jason

Hi all, Below is an overlay of the 3D scan data onto the train as we had designed it from the blueprints. The 3D scan data is in grey. You can see how it is different. Our engineer is now working to reshape our model to fit the scan. In this view, he's actually already started. -Jason

I just love reading the measurements in British layout articles... "Well, I used 25mm x 100mm timber for the baseboards..." Mate, we call that a 1x4. "..covered with a sheet of 610x2440mm plywood on top..." And we call that a 2x8 foot sheet. Here in Canada, we're bilingual. Ask anyone their weight or height, and it's in pounds and feet/inches. Building supplies are all imperial, but plywood thickness is metric, as are architectural drawings. Distances are in m and km, and temperature is in Celsius. The green grocers are a mix - some stuff is in grams and some is in pounds. This is the kind of stuff you will definitely get wrong if you are an American or a British actor trying to play a Canadian. Just as I am sure I get stuff wrong when I am talking to Brits or Americans (I made the mistake of asking for cutlery in an American supermarket once). There are certain things you only understand once you've lived in a place for a long time. I confounded two ladies at Superdrug in Birmingham city centre when I asked for Q-Tips. Finally the manager figured out I wanted cotton buds. The lady at Sainsbury's quickly figured out that I wanted to see what was "on offer" rather than "on sale." Don't get me started on Paracetamol vs. Tylenol - the same drug whose names are taken from different parts of a really long scientific name. There are hundreds of examples like this, the most egregious one being a religious Jewish friend of mine from Canada who was living in Cambridge for a year. She was trying to show she was modern by exclaiming loud and proud that she "wears pants." A lot of religious religious women wear skirts rather than trousers, but I am pretty sure that almost all of them wear pants.... -Jason

We only work in cubits. -Jason

Hi Paul, That will be shown in the factory drawings which I will start sharing next week (hopefully). When I am at the factory next month we will make a CNC sample to ensure that the tilt and close coupling system works before we cut the steel moulds. Our chief engineer who designed the mechanics of the model is now working on the FL9, so he passed the project to our second engineer. When I sent the scans to the new engineer his response was "when I reduce it to 1/87 it's the wrong size!" Evidently he was lacking one rather key piece of information..... -Jason

Hi all, The 3D scan renderings have arrived, and here are some screen grabs. They look very impressive! It means we can get the nose shape bang on. I've left the contours on these drawings - those lines will not actually be visible on the model. There will be one difference between our model and these renderings. The real nose is full of all sorts of hills and valleys. We'll need to smooth it out for the model as there is no way to create a subtle wibble in 4mm scale. When we have some updated drawings from our factory, I will start a new thread with renderings for discussion. Best regards, Jason

Hi Colin, I haven't received any email from you at all. Did you email through our web site? That should not be a problem. We have not yet decided whether there will be two decoders or one - it depends on the reliability of the connectors between cars. Depending on the silent decoder you use, you should be able to change the directional lights through the CV settings. At this point they are designed to be on all the time, DC or DCC. We already have a lot of wires running from car to car, and if the interior lights are controlled from the decoder it will add even more. Hmmm... I am sure this is something we can arrange with Locomotion. The trailer cars will be unnumbered. Depending on the number of orders we receive, we can include water slide transfers with a selection of plausible numbers. Or I am sure one of the many transfers suppliers will be able to make them in a jiffy. Not at all! Those were very logical questions and I am sure others were wondering the same thing. I'm just sorry I didn't receive your emails. -Jason

For those of you following this thread who haven't seen "Carry On APT-E" yet, here it is: http://youtu.be/qEXHtdLIeUI -Jason

Nice work! -Jason

I think an affordable, easy and good-looking catenary system is inevitable. The next generation of modellers is not going to be interested in the 1960s and earlier, so catenary is going to be necessary. When that day comes, a P train can do well. Until more people have catenary, I think it would be too risky to produce. I personally love looking at well-modelled wires. Watching a model electric with its coat hanger up and engaged with the catenary is really wonderful. -Jason

I ordered mine two weeks ago and my order number was pi. It was better than Bill's - his order number was the square root of -1. I doubt he'll ever see his train seeing as his order number is a mathematical impossibility.

Gosh - In this view the APT-E appears to be very happy to see us! -Jason

Our goal is indeed to have one decoder and connectors between the cars. If we find that this causes too many problems, we'll go to two decoders. But we think we can do it with one. -Jason

Hi all, Here is a sample of the 3D scan. I have 30 of these from different angles. Tim is assembling them into one 3D model and he expects to have that ready by the end of next week. Then we can start modifying the model drawings. It's pretty neat to move this around on my desktop... -Jason

The DCC version does indeed work on DC track and you will hear the engine sounds. As for whether you can use the user-controlled sounds, that depends on what extra doo-dads you have attached to your DC system. The decoder is a LokSound. -Jason

Hi all, OK - I am back in Canada and my (replacement) computer is back up and running though when I mentioned to my wife that I needed to go to the basement and answer emails all day she threw the kitchen table at me. Ow. My MacBook Pro, known to his friends as Mr. Lemon, died again on Thursday while on East Coast to Edinburgh. Thank God for the three-year warranty, as this machine has died four times. I think the repair guy is inviting me to his daughter's wedding, because with all of these repairs I've paid for it. Because there is a holiday here in Canada next week, the only way I would have access to my documents and emails before next Friday was to buy a new, three-year-old MacBook Pro and transfer from my backup. So I'm now writing to you from Mr. Lemon's cousin, Mr. Hopefully-Not-As-Much-of-a-Lemon. That was $1350 I didn't budget for. Isn't modern technology wonderful? I now have a backlog of 300 emails to get through. So if you've emailed me and not received a response, there was a good reason.... We're working on a video from the event which should be ready this week. I am proud to say that the production values in our video are FAR LOWER than those of Andy's video. In fact, the usefulness quotient is also far lower. You'll see what I mean when you watch the video. So I am very grateful to Andy for taking the time to interview Kit and the team for posterity and for interviewing me for posterior. I find it amazing that Kit remembers names and dates the way he does. I can't remember what I had for lunch on Wednesday. When I have some more time in the next few days I will go through the entire thread and address any of the questions that haven't been answered yet. A lot of the questions I saw during my brief flashes of internet access while in Scotland the other day have been answered in Andy's film, so it might be worth watching that in the meantime if you haven't already. Talk to you soon, Jason

I rarely cry when a celebrity dies but I admit I did when I got the news that Lis Sladen had died. I had no idea she was even sick and it hit like a brick. We lost Lis, Caroline John and Mary Tamm in the space of about a year. Not good for us fans of 1970s Doctor Who, especially as they were all still very much active in the worlds of Doctor Who fiction. -Jason