Dapol new N-gauge M7

[Crepello]

Picked this up from the N-gauge Forum--at the CAD stage.

[woodenhead]

I had heard mention of this, fingers crossed it leads to a new 0-4-2T chassis as well then onto the 2-6-2s again.

 

Dapol have a chance to build an excellent range in all three scales, the fact they are looking at retooling old models of their own is good sign of intentions.

[Les1952]

Andy confirmed last year that the M7 was the first of the bunch to be revisited, and that the intention is to go through the lot.

 

caveat- as time and money permit.   At this stage of development Andy is a one-man band, becoming 2-man when it gets into CAD proper.

 

When shows begin again I'm sure he'll be only too willing to chat  with enthusiasm about how far they've got with it.

 

Les

 

[D9020 Nimbus]

Although the first, I've always thought the 14xx was the best runner of the early Dapol models. The worst runner in my experience is the Ivatt, and the small Prairie the next worst.

[woodenhead]

1 hour ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

Although the first, I've always thought the 14xx was the best runner of the early Dapol models. The worst runner in my experience is the Ivatt, and the small Prairie the next worst.

My 14xx was sweet then it became less so, but maybe I wasn't running it enough, my Prairies were dogs until I was able to run them in properly and then they were very sweet.  My Ivatt is ok and it was good back out of the box in March after a few years storage.

[Les1952]

I have three Ivatts currently, all excellent runners, but it took a few tries to get a 45xx that ran well.  One of the Ivatts is DCC fitted and fine.

 

My M7s have also all run well, with a lot of them sold on as the layouts they were used on were sold.  I remember on the late Trevor Webster's original Parnhams maltings layout that we used to use an M7 to shunt the goods yard as Trevor had sited the electromagnetic uncoupler in precisely the place where locos stopped on a dead frog.  The M7 was the one with a good enough length of reliable pickup not to stall.  Between us we had four different ones, all of which had good enough slow running for the job.  However one or two NGS members informed us that the loco creeping backwards and forwards along the layout in front of them couldn't possibly be a Dapol M7 because "they don't run slowly"...

 

I also have on Croft Spa (and formerly on Hawthorn Dene as well) a Dapol M7 converted to a G5 and DCC fitted which runs the push-pull train, though it has to be said this isn't one of the stronger ones.  It propels the two kitbuilt coaches as this helps the driving wheels to dig in to the track and improves adhesion. 

 

Les

[RichardT]

1 hour ago, Les1952 said:

I also have on Croft Spa (and formerly on Hawthorn Dene as well) a Dapol M7 converted to a G5 and DCC fitted

Les

 

Have you ever written up how you did this conversion, either in a forum or a publication?  I’d be very interested to know more.

 

TIA

Richard

[Les1952]

3 hours ago, RichardT said:

Les

 

Have you ever written up how you did this conversion, either in a forum or a publication?  I’d be very interested to know more.

 

TIA

Richard

 

The conversion was done by the late Graham Smith, who knew I liked it when he was disposing of his stock,  My son Mr Simon replaced the handrails and DCC supplies chipped it.  I do know that Graham felt that moving the dome was a step too far.

 

 

Hope the photo helps.  Most of the work has involved changing the shape of the bunker and cab cutouts.  I'm not sure what the origin of the chimney is.  Westinghouse pumps are BHE.

 

Les

Edited November 3, 2020 by Les1952

[RichardT]

13 minutes ago, Les1952 said:

 

The conversion was done by the late Graham Smith, who knew I liked it when he was disposing of his stock,  My son Mr Simon replaced the handrails and DCC supplies chipped it.  I do know that Graham felt that moving the dome was a step too far.

 

 

Hope the photo helps.  Most of the work has involved changing the shape of the bunker and cab cutouts.  I'm not sure what the origin of the chimney is.  Westinghouse pumps are BHE.

 

Les

Much appreciated Les. I will study with care before attacking the secondhand M7 I have acquired...

 

cheers,

Richard

[TomJ]

Will these upgrades be DCC ready? 

[Kris]

1 hour ago, TomJ said:

Will these upgrades be DCC ready? 

It would be nice if they were but I would rather have a better (more controllable) motor to start with. 

[Zunnan]

Glad to see they seem to be following through and actually starting work on retooling those early models. For me a more controllable motor and more sensible gearing is key. The detailing wasn't actually all that bad once you sort those solid wheels. The plastic chassis on some of the older models could do with a better solution as well.

 

On 03/11/2020 at 16:59, D9020 Nimbus said:

Although the first, I've always thought the 14xx was the best runner of the early Dapol models. The worst runner in my experience is the Ivatt, and the small Prairie the next worst.

 

I'd tend to agree but only on the basis that I've used more Ivatts than the others. I honestly couldn't pick between those early ones for one being much worse than the others, the rather vague design tolerances meant you could easily be lucky and get a good one, while the next would be questionable at best, and two bad ones could be bad in many different ways. The motor in all of them was poor to begin with and the gearing being on the rapid side just compounded things. The super creep motor (before those daft soft brushes carb up and kill it) sort of helped in being more responsive lower down but the gearing issue remained meaning very VERY gentle controller inputs required. The excess plastic construction also didn't help, light of foot and fleet of heart...nothing a cram full with lead wherever possible didn't fix, which was easier to do with the Ivatt. As they work through these retools, hopefully this time around they'll use more strategically placed metal castings for both chassis and body.

[Les1952]

On 04/11/2020 at 16:44, Kris said:

It would be nice if they were but I would rather have a better (more controllable) motor to start with. 

 

The motor was perfectly controllable.

 

The late Trevor Webster and I demonstrated this at the N gauge Society AGM in Grimsby by shunting his layout "Parnhams Maltings" with four different ones.  ALL of these would creep at walking pace to lift a Peco coupling fitted with a magnetic dropper to uncouple wagons.

 

Was there any "four from"?.  No- we had four between us and ALL were capable of the job.  What was the controller?  Gaugemaster's smallest and cheapest hand held.

 

Strong is another matter.  My best one could haul six bogie coaches, the worst struggled with two.  

 

Les

 

It still didn't stop people telling us they were uncontrollable- denying what was going on in front of their own eyes.

 

 

Edited November 5, 2020 by Les1952
addendum

[Mr chapman]

Definitely be up for one of these. I'm hoping the good people at Dapol might do a book set with a some maunsell coaches. 

[Zunnan]

10 hours ago, Les1952 said:

 

The motor was perfectly controllable.

 

The late Trevor Webster and I demonstrated this at the N gauge Society AGM in Grimsby by shunting his layout "Parnhams Maltings" with four different ones.  ALL of these would creep at walking pace to lift a Peco coupling fitted with a magnetic dropper to uncouple wagons.

 

 

 

I'm not denying that they could turn in a good performance, I'd just like them to be usable through the whole range of what a DC controller dishes out. The model W is my preferred, but I run in with a combi and also use a model D. My experience of the Ivatt in particular is that you can crawl it perfectly well at walking pace, but by the time you're up to 40% power its running at over 70mph, and by the time you're at 60% its in danger of time travel with more to come. Done it many times when they've needed a push to get going when I've left the controller too high and its shot off like a scolded cat; user error most definitely, but other models in the Dapol range behave far more predictably and it'd be nice for these to follow suit.

 

I still have the better two Ivatts I found, one of which will throw itself off the track on a 18" radius curve from the original batch if you wind it up enough. The other is from a later batch, much better with a more sensible motor in it but its still reaching supersonic speeds and needs a nudge much more often to get going. I have also had some pretty poor runners over the years, from interference with the worm on the chassis material to flashing on the gears making them sound and run like they have a split gear. All fixable, but it would have been nice not to have needed to through slightly better assembly. By and large my issues were mostly with the 45xx and Ivatt, the M7 was a much better model to begin with mechanically, but it still exhibited the same tendencies of too tall a gear.

 

This is where better controllability comes in for me, its not that it can't be done because I know they can and do run well enough. It'd just be nice for them to be toned down and away from the Hornby 0-4-0 mode so that you can use the full range of the controller than just a small portion of it. I'd rather see them set up like the class 56/58 where the gearing limits them to a sensible top speed.

[Spoz]

If this model is actually to be reissued, could somebody please post a link?

 

[Gareth Collier]

It was announced a few years back but Joel (of Dapol) confirmed it is now in tooling over on the Dapol Digest a few days ago: https://digest.Dapol.co.uk/forum/n-gauge-models/steam/m7-0-4-4t/5180-olive-green-m7

[woodenhead]

But no push pull version unless it sells like hot cakes in normal form.

 

 

[Kris]

19 hours ago, Les1952 said:

 

The motor was perfectly controllable.

 

The late Trevor Webster and I demonstrated this at the N gauge Society AGM in Grimsby by shunting his layout "Parnhams Maltings" with four different ones.  ALL of these would creep at walking pace to lift a Peco coupling fitted with a magnetic dropper to uncouple wagons.

 

Was there any "four from"?.  No- we had four between us and ALL were capable of the job.  What was the controller?  Gaugemaster's smallest and cheapest hand held.

 

Strong is another matter.  My best one could haul six bogie coaches, the worst struggled with two.  

 

Les

 

It still didn't stop people telling us they were uncontrollable- denying what was going on in front of their own eyes.

 

 

I am glad that you have good runners, however my experience of them is different. Neither of mine have great motors. They are weak pullers. I agree they can creep along and they will also run at speed, however there is in my experience very little between these 2 stages. Using the same controller one of my 14xx's (one of the very first) and all of my 45xx's are far more controllable. 

[Jon Harbour]

When it comes to DCC ready, perhaps they might take a leaf out of the N Gauge Society's approach to the Hunslet industrial and rather than build a socket for a chip build the PCB with DCC on board from the get-go.

[Mr chapman]

I'm hoping the driving wheels are a larger diameter this time around. Don't know if the body will alow this. 

[Hilux5972]

2 hours ago, Mr chapman said:

I'm hoping the driving wheels are a larger diameter this time around. Don't know if the body will alow this. 

Were they under size originally? I don’t think any retooling has been mentioned so I would say they’ll be the same size. 

[Spoz]

I’m certainly up for at least one; but I don’t need, and certainly don’t want to pay for, DCC or sound so let’s hope that they do “with” and “without”.

[Les1952]

4 hours ago, Hilux5972 said:

Were they under size originally? I don’t think any retooling has been mentioned so I would say they’ll be the same size. 

 

They were undersize.  However I can quote directly from Andy that he was looking to get correct sized wheels in as far as possible, and also that he was definitely going for a full retool.

 

While the wheel size might well be less than prototypical when the model appears- plastic or metal splashers will still be a long way thicker than scale- the new model will be completely retooled.  That was the reason for spending so much time on design and CAD......

 

I don't think those parameters will have changed since my chat with him at Chirk in October 2019.  

 

Les

 

As an afterthought I did float the idea of a G5 with him at the time, and Fiona has seen the one I have on Croft Spa.

Edited November 10, 2020 by Les1952
afterthought added

[Gareth Collier]

28 minutes ago, Les1952 said:

 

They were undersize.  However I can quote directly from Andy that he was looking to get correct sized wheels in as far as possible, and also that he was definitely going for a full retool.

 

While the wheel size might well be less than prototypical when the model appears- plastic or metal splashers will still be a long way thicker than scale- the new model will be completely retooled.  That was the reason for spending so much time on design and CAD......

 

I don't think those parameters will have changed since my chat with him at Chirk in October 2019.  

 

Can I refer you back to Joel's comments a few days ago on the Dapol Digest: https://digest.Dapol.co.uk/forum/n-gauge-models/steam/m7-0-4-4t/5180-olive-green-m7

It's not a complete retool, just a new chassis with a few tweaks to the body.