N Gauge Class 221 Super Voyager new batch

[bmthtrains - David]

Surprised to see Dapol announcing a new run of their 221. This seems to be the original tooling, which frankly makes £200 a bit of a stretch for me - the motor was appalling and couldn’t pull the dummy set, plus there is no interior, just opaque window inserts.

 

On the other hand they are actually being released as 5 car sets so you won’t have to buy the extra coach separately as before. And the Dapol Voyager has magnetic couplings that are far better than those horrific abominations Farish experimented with.

 

Their release will beat the Farish 220 rerelease so it might even put them off releasing their Virgin and CC liveried ones.

 

David

Edited October 28, 2020 by bmthtrains - David

[Steven B]

Even at RRP of £225 it works out at half the price per car of a Farish class 170 (£180 RRP).

 

Dapol have made changes to some of their other models (e.g. HST to Next18) so perhaps the Super Voyager may also have has some work done to it. I'm guessing the re-run of the Farish class 220 is why they've chosen not to do their Voyager.

 

Steven B.

[MGR Hooper!]

2 hours ago, bmthtrains - David said:

This seems to be the original tooling, which frankly makes £200 a bit of a stretch for me - the motor was appalling and couldn’t pull the dummy set, plus there is no interior, just opaque window inserts.

 

David

 

It's £191.50 from most (if not all) retailers... So the £225.00 RRP is worth it. And as Steven has mentioned above, the Graham Farish 2-car Class 170 has an RRP or £179.99 (£152.96 after discount), pay £38.29 more and you'll get 3 more coaches. That's what most people call a bargain.

 

The full specs of the model haven't been released yet. So we don't know if the motor or DCC interface has been upgraded.

[Kaput]

Wasn't Dapol's normal Voyager (the 220) was considered a bit pants but the Super Voyager was fine?

[JR_P]

3 hours ago, Kaput said:

Wasn't Dapol's normal Voyager (the 220) was considered a bit pants but the Super Voyager was fine?

.... er, both my 220 and 221 were pretty rubbish and the opaque windows, lack of interior, horrendous running quality and pizza cutter wheels on the 221 (unable to run on code 55), meant mine have been in storage since I moved to code 55.... and whilst that was ten years ago, my move to DCC as a lock-down project earlier this year would definitely have finished them off!!!

 

Apparently this new batch will be DCC, but that is gonna require three decoders (add £60).... ouch....!

 

Hopefully they will add an interior and more realistically tinted glazing. I’d also like some nice low-profile flanges on the wheelsets.... that being the case, I will buy just one, likely to be original Virgin.

 

Whilst the overall shape and body shell was always quite nice, I can’t help but feel that this production run won’t have all of the improvements needed to bring up to modern standards.... would be more than happy to be proved wrong though!!!

[toolongtoremember]

My old super voyager is the loudest train I own, and even louder around tight corners. My layout is a 4 track mainline and has room for scale speeds... and it screams gear noises down the straight. If it is silent, and has low profile wheels, I'll get a set.