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Dapol's new Class 68 locomotives


Nobby (John)
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Being built for DRS by Vossloh, derived fron their Euro-Light loco to suit British loading gauge (sometimes referred to as UK-Light). 

 

No other operator known to have ordered them so far. 

 

John

 

The rumour mill is rife with Chiltern Railways being interested.

 

Cheers,

Mick

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DRS will have complete control over the commercial rights to the identity of the DRS Class 68. The manufacturer may have abdicated their rights to DRS in this instance. When/if another operator starts using them, then the DB (for sake of argument) Class 68 would be a separate point of negotiation, even if using the existing tooling.

 

I wonder if there may be some similar agreement between DRS/Dapol as per the Freightliner/Bachmann Class 70? The first batch of 70001 were produced exclusively for Freightliner and only available from Freightliner themselves, before the general release of 70003/70006.

 

Only Dapol and DRS will know the answer to that. (And maybe a certain ex-Dapol employee..... :O ) :nono:

 

Cheers,

Mick

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The worry is that they will be the demise of the 20's and 37's on Flask trains......

 

I can't see the immediate removal of 20's and 37's on the likes of the flasks as they're nice and cheap to run. And there's the potential issue of axle loading on some of the lines they serve.

 

It was thought that the 66's would see off the heritage traction, but that certainly hasn't been the case as 66401-420 have been moved on to pastures new. The story from the recent open day at Kingmoor was that the remaining DRS 66's could be taken off-lease as the 68's come on-line. DRS have also been investing quite heavily in maintaining (and enlarging) their 37 fleet. Of the heritage stuff, I reckon the 47's will go first.

 

Cheers,

Mick

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This close to the shipping date, there must be at least one complete-ish 68 knocking around Valencia on test, or at least visible in the works compound. It's suprising that, aside from the official publicity pictures, there have been no sneaky photos on the net or in magazines, like in the good old days.

 

Are Vossloh / DRS stamping on any pictures before they hit the public domain or is no-one that interested anymore?

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In some way, the Class 68 looks quite similar (to me anyway) a mix between the Class 92 and the Class 67, especially since the Class 67 is also from Spain, but of an earlier design. Hopefully Dapol might release some prototype pics of the 68 in 00 gauge later this year or early 2014.  

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In some way, the Class 68 looks quite similar (to me anyway) a mix between the Class 92 and the Class 67, especially since the Class 67 is also from Spain, but of an earlier design.  

 

Maybe there's a similarity between the 67 and the 68 as it's the same factory....??

 

Cheers,

Mick

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Just by watching that video of the 68, the looks look a better than the mock ups no doubt. Personally I think it looks a lot better than when the Class 70 was released back in '09 in my opinion.

 

Still once again interesting to see it in model form about 2014/15.

Edited by HornbyA3Fan
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