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Bachmann announce Class 117 and Class 121 at Collectors Club event


Andy Y
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3 hours ago, fiftyfour fiftyfour said:

does anyone have a recommended source of replacement buffers for the blue/grey 121? I've concluded that the squared ovals are just wrong for that unit with that P125 "set" number.


I have a book by Colin J Marsden, ‘Motive Power Recognition 3: DMU’S. On the front cover is a photo’ of class  that 121, P125, complete with the clipped buffers - squared ovals. So, it seems it is right to have them. The photo’ dates from about 1980. The book is dated 1982. I hope that is of help.

 

Best regards,

 

 Rob.

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On 29/06/2020 at 15:57, smithdom said:

I'm planning to model the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway, whose Class 117 is, I believe the one scanned for this offering. The one on the GWR is in a green livery (mostly) but has corridoor connections and head and tail lights. It seems from photos that the Bachmann 117 in green has neither whereas the blue & grey has both. Am I missing something?

https://www.gwsr.com/enthusiasts/miscellaneous/DMURailcar_1.html

To confirm your second question, the 117s did not have any lights fitted when built and only acquired them in the late 70s so both green and early blue versions should omit these. BTW you will note the picture is very much not the Bachmann model but my blue Lima based one

IMG_20200405_112322.jpg

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I visited one of my regular model shops to possibly order a network southeast one, but they said nothings been mentioned yet, but the Bachmann website says "July" Lets hope it is then

 

Thank you to everyone so far who has posted up picturesso far, I think definitley be parting with my remotored Lima one at some point soon!

 

NL

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50 minutes ago, Market65 said:


I have a book by Colin J Marsden, ‘Motive Power Recognition 3: DMU’S. On the front cover is a photo’ of class  that 121, P125, complete with the clipped buffers - squared ovals. So, it seems it is right to have them. The photo’ dates from about 1980. The book is dated 1982. I hope that is of help.

 

Best regards,

 

 Rob.

every photo pulled up by Flickr has round ones! My era is c1985/6 by which time it certainly had round ones...

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Is it just me or do those windscreen wipers look massively thick? I have seen elsewhere complaints that the motors are noisy in these too, just wondered what the general feeling was about how these compare with the Dapol version?

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16 hours ago, dibber25 said:

The more variations you make, the more complex the tools become - the more expensive, the more prone to failure, and the more obvious the change of slides on the finished model. If it's just a different combination of roof and side, then you might do it but if it starts involving  end corners on the same tool, it can't bee done and you have to have a complete second tool. The cost of tooling these days post-Covid and the collapse of exchange rates is truly eye-watering. (CJL)

 

I am sure that is right. But I hope that the pent up demand for 116/118s etc is noted somewhere, given that the differences are not so great in the grand scheme of things. 

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10 hours ago, aureol40012 said:

Yeah, and I guess biffo’s isn’t out yet as we’d have heard on here?

I guess it depends on what you mean by generic, with the exception of the rolls Royce engined emu's they all pretty much sound the same, only the bubble cars sound different, as they have a different exhaust setup, but 108s, 117s, 101s all have leyland 680 engines, with the same control system. The SWD file (which is on bachmanns 101) is very good nice and loud, and then you have Jamie Goodwins sounds which Richard from roads and rails has put a video of on here, the only difference is they only have 2 engine startups, and not 4 which is on the Bachmann 117, I wouldn't be surprised if that was an easy fix for them though.

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I think this will be the definitive first generation set of DMUs - can’t see anyway they would tool up at the cost of a house for something the general public will consider looks very similar. It’s 117, if you want a 116 , squint....!

 

 

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38 minutes ago, pheaton said:

I guess it depends on what you mean by generic, with the exception of the rolls Royce engined emu's they all pretty much sound the same, only the bubble cars sound different, as they have a different exhaust setup, but 108s, 117s, 101s all have leyland 680 engines, with the same control system. The SWD file (which is on bachmanns 101) is very good nice and loud, and then you have Jamie Goodwins sounds which Richard from roads and rails has put a video of on here, the only difference is they only have 2 engine startups, and not 4 which is on the Bachmann 117, I wouldn't be surprised if that was an easy fix for them though.

 

You also have the Digitrains activedrive sound for Zimo. It's very good (we have it installed in our 121 on Oldshaw).

 

Guy

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11 hours ago, pheaton said:

Cheltenham model centre dont currently make there own sound files, they normally load with biffo's 


The file CMC are currently loading is the Howes DMU file but with 4 engine starts.

 

They are not tied to a single supplier and can do others including Biff .

 

 

Edited by Phil Bullock
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15 hours ago, Rich Papper said:

Going slightly OT I really wish that photographer would caption his photos correctly.  He hasn't got the name of the location correct (it is Ruscombe, complete with Ruscombe church visible in the background, barely half a mile in a straight line, Waltham St Lawrence is over 2 miles away and isn't a railway location in any sense of the word).  If photographers can't get location details correct I'm sometimes left wondering about the accuracy of other detail in their caption and he has got book captions wrong in the past.

 

Regrettably this particular photographer, while taking some excellent quality photos  seems to make a habit of not getting location details right, especially in that area.

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38 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Going slightly OT I really wish that photographer would caption his photos correctly.  He hasn't got the name of the location correct (it is Ruscombe, complete with Ruscombe church visible in the background, barely half a mile in a straight line, Waltham St Lawrence is over 2 miles away and isn't a railway location in any sense of the word).  If photographers can't get location details correct I'm sometimes left wondering about the accuracy of other detail in their caption and he has got book captions wrong in the past.

 

Regrettably this particular photographer, while taking some excellent quality photos  seems to make a habit of not getting location details right, especially in that area.

Staying off topic for a further moment, I'm afraid that some (perhaps even 'many') photographers didn't care particularly about the details, their priority was the picture. For every one who logged all the details in his notebook (Casserley, Mensing etc) there was one who didn't. The great George Heiron was one of the worst - his 'captions' often just a poetic "such and such talks to the sky" (which you could see from the picture anyway, and nothing about when, where or what it was. Then, there were those who gave a location as St. Hilda's crossing or such - somewhere that's not on any railway map and with no clue what line it was on, never mind between which stations. Figuring that out was one of the challenges of being an editor. But to return to the 117s, my memories of the early 1960s are that some Pressed Steels (they weren't 117s until much later) had marker lights and lining and some didn't. The dark green became dull and drab very quickly and the satin finish on the Bachmann model is very much ex-works, new. I'm sure I've posted this before, but here's one in absolutely original condition - no lights, no lining, and the roof dome is cream - a perfect match to the station valancing. It might be white that's discoloured, of course, but it's cream, nevertheless. Doesn't make quite such an attractive proposition as the later, lined and lights, version depicted by Bachmann. And, so far, I still haven't been able to find out if Bachmann's red inner buffer beams are correct or not. (CJL)

117 at Staines.jpeg

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20 minutes ago, dibber25 said:

Staying off topic for a further moment, I'm afraid that some (perhaps even 'many') photographers didn't care particularly about the details, their priority was the picture. For every one who logged all the details in his notebook (Casserley, Mensing etc) there was one who didn't. The great George Heiron was one of the worst - his 'captions' often just a poetic "such and such talks to the sky" (which you could see from the picture anyway, and nothing about when, where or what it was. Then, there were those who gave a location as St. Hilda's crossing or such - somewhere that's not on any railway map and with no clue what line it was on, never mind between which stations. Figuring that out was one of the challenges of being an editor. But to return to the 117s, my memories of the early 1960s are that some Pressed Steels (they weren't 117s until much later) had marker lights and lining and some didn't. The dark green became dull and drab very quickly and the satin finish on the Bachmann model is very much ex-works, new. I'm sure I've posted this before, but here's one in absolutely original condition - no lights, no lining, and the roof dome is cream - a perfect match to the station valancing. It might be white that's discoloured, of course, but it's cream, nevertheless. Doesn't make quite such an attractive proposition as the later, lined and lights, version depicted by Bachmann. And, so far, I still haven't been able to find out if Bachmann's red inner buffer beams are correct or not. (CJL)

117 at Staines.jpeg

 

So I take it this uncaptioned location is Staines West? ;)

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3 hours ago, rob D2 said:

I think this will be the definitive first generation set of DMUs - can’t see anyway they would tool up at the cost of a house for something the general public will consider looks very similar. It’s 117, if you want a 116 , squint....!

 

 

Squinting might get you a 118 but not a 116. And you are assuming that a lot of different tooling would be required when that probably isn't really the case - small step to a 118, slightly bigger one to a 116 because of the different layout to the middle coach.  

 

As for the 'general public' I doubt that is where the market for £300 DMU's is, it is with those who value the small prototypical differences. It is a bit like saying that manufacturers should not bother making more than, say, two types of coach in any style, a brake 2nd and a corridor 2nd. But fortunately that isn't true anymore, even different lengths of underframe being accommodated.

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3 hours ago, rob D2 said:

I think this will be the definitive first generation set of DMUs - can’t see anyway they would tool up at the cost of a house for something the general public will consider looks very similar. It’s 117, if you want a 116 , squint....!

 

 

I'm not sure the Class 117 is really aimed at the general public, an obsolete and uninteresting (to them) DMU at around 300 quid ! And given that Bachmann have already done several other DMU types, I remain hopeful a 116 will eventually appear.

 

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Fair enough, I get that this isn’t train set, but seeing as the glamour is really with locos....I’d expect even a lot of modellers to say “ close enough “ for their branchlines,

 

But of course, hope I’m wrong , and that the sales success of these spur future DMUs 

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5 hours ago, Lord_Woody said:

Is it just me or do those windscreen wipers look massively thick? I have seen elsewhere complaints that the motors are noisy in these too, just wondered what the general feeling was about how these compare with the Dapol version?

 

My own take on these is that compared with the Dapol bubble cars, the wipers are much of a muchness, there isn't that great a difference between them. The Dapol cab glazing I would say is marginally better, being less prismatic about the edges, which perhaps makes you notice the wipers less. The Dapol body stands up really quite well except for the guards door error (on the 121) and undersized roof vents, but the paint finish on the Dapol units which while good just isn't quite as refined. The yellow on the cab ends of one of my 122s is a bit caked in paint which obliterates some finer detail, not to mention the upside down W masquerading as an M which I have yet to fix. The interior and chassis detail on the Bachmann units are considerably ahead of the game, having that flat floor (no bulge, no step up) in the passenger area of the DMS over the drive bogie is nothing short of excellent. Some have said the seats are too high up, perhaps a smidge, but its leagues ahead of the seat padding being up near the window level with the floor not much lower.

 

I'll take the Bachmann mechanism over the Dapol one in a heartbeat, each of my Dapol 122 units draw more current than a pair of Bachmann 117s running in multiple, and that is after I modified my Dapol units to run single bogie powered. When running at full pelt, yes, my motors are less quiet than that of others. However, I don't remember these units as high speed thrash monsters, at a sedate trundle and up to around 50mph they are more than quiet enough for me.

 

The 116 is high on my wish list now. The differences are subtle enough with the DMS and DMBS that not much tooling alteration is needed. Roof domes, 2 digit headcode on Green and plain blue, guards door handrails; it was good enough for Dapol with the 121/122! A TS would be needed which would be the big cost, but that would also be the icing on the cake for me. I'd be very happy indeed to run a 117 TCL with an otherwise class 116 for a variation of 4 car unit that wasn't all too uncommon in the late '80s early '90s Birmingham area.

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4 hours ago, Coppercap said:

 

So I take it this uncaptioned location is Staines West? ;)

Yes, but as I was talking about the unit rather than the location I didn't think it mattered. The train was the evening/late afternoon through working from Paddington which - assuming we believe the blind - went back to Southall, which sounds logical as this was a return service for London commuters so no point going all the way back to Pdn when the depot was at Southall. I was just thinking we had almost all liveries of 117 to Staines West up to and including the white with a blue stripe. No plain Rail blue, I think, and the branch had gone before NSE came into being. Last train was lined green/syp, rail tours brought B&G and 'First & Last' was white/blue stripe.  (CJL)

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40 minutes ago, rob D2 said:

Bachmann 117 and cheapo Dapol 121, with motor removed , for a lash up ?

 

My one concern with the Bachmann drivetrain is that to fit those motors into the bogies and with such a low current draw even when stalled, they have to be very small, so I wouldn't want to add too much of a trailing load.

 

I'd leave the motor and drivetrain in and strip out the idler gears to the axles of the Dapol model with the motor disconnested. Less rolling resistance than just pulling the driveshafts and motor, much less work than stripping it down to get at the motor, and easier to reinstate.

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All the talk of Class 117s being too similar to a 116 - that didn't stop Bachmann from producing a series of low density DMUs after the Class 108, we got the 105, original (and arguably more obscure) Derby Lightweight, and a 101 despite there being the "competing" Limby 101 - so Bachmann clearly understand the DMU market and seem keen to maximise the use of the mechanical bits of any models to make further designs.  Having invested all this moolah in a new underframe with what sounds like very good mechanicals, it would be more of a surprise if they didn't make a 116, although I suspect a 120 might be further up the queue, or a 119 if the slightly different underframe of the 120 is a problem (in fact the 119 has a better chance because of the important NSE livery option which was never carried by the 120).  Also, in theory, a two car Class 114 could be an option for the long underframe unit and whilst superficially similar to a 108 apart from the length, being a very early DMU type they had a very long life and later emerged as Post Office conversions, which could make for interesting sales options.

So personally I doubt very much if the Class 117 has killed off the chance of a 116 in the same way the 108 didn't kill off the production of further low density units.  And modellers seem to be snapping up these units in spite of the price, so it seems that Bachmann have managed to move us off the price sensitive obstacle to quality three car units.

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