GWR Iron Mink

[Craigw]

On 19/11/2022 at 04:06, Dungrange said:

 

Thanks.  I note that the GW versions (11346) state 'return to GWR not common user' on the right and since you've previously highlighted that the concept of common user didn't exist at the outbreak of WW I, it's unlikely to have been marked that way for it's spell as a GPV between Sept 1914 to June 1919.   I assume that there aren't any good photographs of these as converted to a GPV during WW I, which is the reason why Rapido don't seem to have made one for this period.

 

Common user came in during WW1. It is possible that by 1919 it was marked as NCU.

 

Regards,

 

Craig W

[Skinnylinny]

So, I know I'm part of the design team for these models, but I have to say, I'm impressed!

We like to see just how much detail we can cram onto our models, and one of the UK design team decided to give the mouldmakers and injection moulders in China a bit of a challenge. He added the ' 4" OK ' lettering to the axlebox covers, expecting that we might get a raised area in roughly the right shape, which would give the right impression. 

My own models arrived today, and not only have the team in China managed to get the relief detail on the axleboxes, they've managed to legibly emboss the lettering on each one!



Apologies for the quality of the photo, getting my camera to focus on something that small was rather a challenge. It's a privilege to work with a manufacturing team who can turn our designs into such lovely models, and push the limits of what we thought was mouldable!

For comparison, a photograph from the Bluebell Railway Carriage and Wagon Works: 
https://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/cw_news/gwr87782_restoration.html

[BVMR21]

Didn’t realise that was on there, more you look more you find.

[The Johnster]

Wow.  Hard to believe that this is a volume produced RTR wagon, we live in amazing times!

[gwrrob]

8 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

Wow.  Hard to believe that this is a volume produced RTR wagon, we live in amazing times!

 

Modellers requested it and are prepared to pay the extra for quality items.

[NHY 581]

59 minutes ago, gwrrob said:

 

Modellers requested it and are prepared to pay the extra for quality items.

 

People need to adjust to paying the extra.  I personally don't think Rapido's pricing is excessive. Far from it. Premium goods should be  priced accordingly. 

It's when premium prices are being asked of old, inaccurate tooling that questions need to be asked. 

 

Rob. 

[Schooner]

Can we not call Hornby out by name for taking the proverbial? 

 

I do question how much value is added by such exquisite underside detail, for example, on Rapido wagons. I doubt it adds much to the cost, but it adds no value at all to how I use them. Others (more enthusiastic railway enthusiasts, or collectors perhaps?) might appreciate the more holistic model accuracy, so might not agree with me. I would pay more for sprung buffers; many might not.

 

As ever, it's not cost but value that matters. These Minks are well priced by this metric, and more power to Rapido's elbow in their future endeavours.

 

 

[NHY 581]

Just now, Schooner said:

Can we not call Hornby out by name for taking the proverbial? 

 

I do question how much value is added by such exquisite underside detail, for example, on Rapido wagons. I doubt it adds much to the cost, but it adds no value at all to how I use them. Others (more enthusiastic railway enthusiasts, or collectors perhaps?) might appreciate the more holistic model accuracy, so might not agree with me. I would pay more for sprung buffers; many might not.

 

As ever, it's not cost but value that matters. These Minks are well priced by this metric, and more power to Rapido's elbow in their future endeavours.

 

 

 

 

Hi Louis, 

 

Yes, that's the word I missed, Value. 

 

I honestly believe that Rapido's wagons offer excellent value when compared to other offerings and yes, I include certain of Hornby’s wagons in this. 

I look forward to more wagons from Rapido, in particular pre-grouping jobs.......So, aside from those already announced, what's next I wonder ? 

 

Rob. 

 

 

[Schooner]

With Rapido's supply of excellent GWR pre-Grouping wagons, is there demand for an excellent GWR pre-Grouping* loco?

 

 

...strolls away whistling...

 

*In service 1874-1958, so also suitable for the Black'n'Rusty brigade (that's what BR stands for, right? Never have understood). Well over three times as many built as, say, Terriers.

Edited February 12, 2023 by Schooner
Sp!

[Dunsignalling]

42 minutes ago, Schooner said:

 

Can we not call Hornby out by name for taking the proverbial? 

 

Partly because Hornby is by no means the only guilty party. TBF, when they do a wagon well, they tend to do it very well indeed.  Their SR cattle wagons, and a decent range of brake vans spring soonest to mind.

 

With Bachmann, like Hornby, their best is very good, but run a ruler over quite a lot of others and you find dimensions deliberately stretched in one or more directions to fit a standard underframe.

 

The "tubby" bodywork of the GWR and SR vans perhaps reflects "general practice" of the era in which they originated.  However, I was quite surprised to find that the relatively recent and (at first sight) impressive anchor-mount tank wagons, appear to represent a mid-point between the dimensions of Class A and Class B prototypes. Talk about the proverbial ha'porth of tar....

 

By contrast, and excepting the LNER cattle wagon (a complete dog's breakfast), Oxford Rail have managed to produce some wagons to a much better standard than the prices lead one to expect.  

 

Rapido wagons have so far been a breath of fresh air and there's a mouth-watering further selection to come. Whilst the Dia.107 mineral is the only Accurascale offering that so far fits my interests, I am also expecting great things of their forthcoming SR Banana vans.

 

John

Edited February 12, 2023 by Dunsignalling

[Dunsignalling]

15 minutes ago, Schooner said:

With Rapido's supply of excellent GWR pre-Grouping wagons, is there demand for an excellent GWR pre-Grouping* loco?

 

 

...strolls away whistling...

 

*In service 1874-1958, so also suitable for the Black'n'Rusty brigade (that's what BR stands for, right? Never have understood). Well over three times as many built as, say, Terriers.

 

Well, two of them, one for nearly a year and the other for two and a half, during which time they might have covered a couple of hundred miles whereas the Terriers remained useful long enough for active preservation to be invented. 😉

 

Then there's the Aberdare, best observed from the far side of dense woodland on a moonless night even when brand spanking new...🤢

 

John

[Schooner]

 

So more suitable than many RTR prototypes then? Brill, thanks for the supporting info!

 

😇

 

 

Edited February 12, 2023 by Schooner
Declaring my bias :)

[Annie]

44 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

Well, two of them, one for nearly a year and the other for two and a half, during which time they might have covered a couple of hundred miles whereas the Terriers remained useful long enough for active preservation to be invented.

Except that Terriers aren't pre-grouping era Great Western engines that were built in the last quarter of the 19th century.  That fact alone makes them useful engines to the serious historical modeller.

[Ian Hargrave]

1 hour ago, Schooner said:

With Rapido's supply of excellent GWR pre-Grouping wagons, is there demand for an excellent GWR pre-Grouping* loco?

 

 

...strolls away whistling...

 

*In service 1874-1958, so also suitable for the Black'n'Rusty brigade (that's what BR stands for, right? Never have understood). Well over three times as many built as, say, Terriers.

Of course there is. To name a few….Bulldog,Saint,Metro Tank,County ( not Hawksworth but I’ll be happy if one such comes along)  Aberdare ..yes I did see them before their eventual demise and the multitude of pre grouping types inherited and ( maybe ) subsequently modified/ improved by the GWR …e.g. TVR ,Rhymney Railway 0-6-2 ‘s  .Lord ere I divest this mortal coil.bring me an A  class ..they all had 3 digit numbers…there’s a thing now…and actually in the case of Rhymney Railway locos only  2 .I well remember 39 as a fixture at Radyr Yard in her final years. Yes we could do with a few I think 

[The Johnster]

Rapido, Accurascale, &c are producing very high quality stuff at very sensible prices, and have presumably done their marketing sums and are presumably planning on making a decent living out of doing so.  I accept that to many folk the inclusion of cast lettering on an axlebox is not of any great importance, and it's omission would not be a deal breaker for me, but if this is the way the trade is going, then more power to their elbow; I approve, strongly.  I have to agree with the comment about Oxford wagons as well; I am very happy with my 7-plankers even if they are a bit generic RCH; they are well detailed, to scale, include items that Hornby and Bachmann don't such as (albeit moulded) buffer springs as part of the floor tooling, internal planking detail,  decent buffers, the finish is good, and they run perfectly.  Happy with my GW toads as well, despite the end windows from a chalet cottage.

 

It seems that, at prices the current market is happy to bear even if we won't admit it, it is possible to produce highly detailed models that are accurate to scale (Accurascale trade on these words).  As I am of the view that Hornby (who as we have said can make a pretty good wagon but have to put their minds to it first, their default is the old generic carp) are going to pull back from the 4mm business (in favour of TT120 where they can concentrate on their core market) over the next decade or so, and Dapol have pulled their socks up considerably with the Prairie, Mogul, and Manor triumvarate to join the AS/Rapido club, after initial gearing issues, Bachmann need to do some sorting out of their catalogue or they'll be hit hard by the new competition.

 

Their locos are entirely fit for purpose, to scale, well detailed, run well and so on, but some of the wagons are rooted in the Mainline era and need replacing.  The LMS sliding door van and cattle wagon come to mind, out of scale dimensions to fit a generic chassis, and there are probably others.  Their 16ton minerals, absolutely essential for the very popular steam/transition/banger blue diesel periods, are the only RTR examples with scale bodies on the correct wheebase chassis, Hornby and Dapol take note, and while I am happy enough with mine, and that Baccy took the trouble to produce several variants, liveries, and running numbers before it became fashionable, I can't see why they cost twice as much as Oxford's 7-plankers, which are pretty much in the same ball-park for production cost, surely?  And as for charging almost the same for their toad as Hornby's can be had discounted, come on, chaps!  Failure to keep a lid on costs is what saw Meccano off...

 

Hornby have IMHO spent too long milking old Airfix and Lima stuff dry, as well as some of their own, like 21ton minerals with footboards (?) and those awful long wheelbase tank wagons from the age of the hideous coupling mounting that mounted the hideous coupling.  To be fair, they did over time improve the Airfix 61xx considerably before introducing the current hi-fi tooling, which has clotted it's botty book in my case by falling to bits(!), but to take the A30 auto trailer as an example, it is still the old Airfix model from 5 decades ago, and thing have moved on.  All they have done to it is to fit better buffers, and are asking £39 for it.  Bachmann's A38 is much more expensive, but much better value IMHO.

 

I suspect I am a fairly typical out of the box modeller (though an inveterate weatherer, alterer, detailer, and destroyer of valuable collectibles in general; nothing on my layout is exactly as it was when it came out of the box) in that I rely on RTR and easy kits to provide myself with rolling stock.  I also think I am probably fairly typical in that I will do my best to acquire models that are to scale and as well detailed as can be managed, at least to the extent that I can afford them after I've paid the rent  (impoverished pensioner that I am).  I have occasionally bought models that I know are not correct because I like them and have a place on the layout for them, such as a Dapol Fruit D, which eventually irritated me by being over scale width to the extent that I replaced it with a Parkside, and more recently a Dapol cattle wagon converted to fruit van on a wrong generic chassis, which will no doubt irritate me until I retire it; some of us never learn.  I've avoided the notorious LMS 6-wheel milk van, though, and the Dapol Stove R (and I'd really like a Stove R).

 

Models that are not to scale cannot be worked up to make them be to scale; they are dogs and there's nothing you can do about them.  Models that are poorly detailed but to scale in size and wheelbase can be worked up by adding details or removing incorrect details yourself, and are not dogs at all, just not competed until you sort them out.  I have a Lima Siphon G and LMS bogie GUV, which I can live with but I replaced the bogies on them with (respectively) Hornby Pressed Steels, spares intended for the Hawkworths, and LMS bogies from a Dapol LMS suburban ckd kit.  New buffers and a bit of weathering and Robert is one of your parents' male siblings.  Improving models is fun, but you can't do much with a dog, and any time or money you expend on doing so is wasted.

 

We rely on RTR manufacturers in these post-Triang/Hornby Dublo days to get it right, and for many years they have not been completely reliable in this respect.  I am hopeful that the advent of models like this Iron Mink presage a time when they will be completely reliable in this respect, even if I will have long been a'moulderin' in my grave when it happens!  In the meantime, excuse me if I guffaw a bit when I listen to Simon Kohler describing himself as a purveyor of scale models.  It is all the more irritating that he isn't, when he has proved that he can be; nowt wrong with my Southern bogie GLV, current tooling, or my rather nice new BR 4-vent meat van.  But to try to pass off a standard vanfit as a shocvan by painting white stripes on it smacks of mendacity!

 

Edited February 13, 2023 by The Johnster

[Mikkel]

6 hours ago, Schooner said:

 

So more suitable than many RTR prototypes then? Brill, thanks for the supporting info!

 

😇

 

 

 

Fixed it for you 😜

 

[Gilbert]

I seem to have returned from yesterday's Monmouth show with 3 of the little blighters....2 kindly dropped off by Dan from Derails and a third that caught my eye on the Hereford Model Centre stand.....

Chris

Edited February 13, 2023 by Gilbert

[RapidoCorbs]

1 hour ago, Gilbert said:

I seem to have returned from yesterday's Monmouth show with 3 of the little blighters....2 kindly dropped off by Dan from Derails and a third that caught my eye on the Hereford Model Centre stand.....

Chris

Which ones did you go for?

[Dunsignalling]

9 hours ago, Annie said:

Except that Terriers aren't pre-grouping era Great Western engines that were built in the last quarter of the 19th century.  That fact alone makes them useful engines to the serious historical modeller.

Agreed, but the point I was trying to make (perhaps slightly too tongue-in-cheek) was that the commercial reasoning behind producing Terriers in r-t-r form is much more clear-cut.

 

John

[Compound2632]

27 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

Agreed, but the point I was trying to make (perhaps slightly too tongue-in-cheek) was that the commercial reasoning behind producing Terriers in r-t-r form is much more clear-cut.

 

Would, in your mind, the balance change if some enterprising manufacturer were to produce both saddle and pannier versions?

[David Stannard]

25 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Would, in your mind, the balance change if some enterprising manufacturer were to produce both saddle and pannier versions?

 

 I for one would love a Pannier version in post 1928 livery.

[Gilbert]

1 hour ago, RapidoCorbs said:

Which ones did you go for?

Red and Yellow for my emerging pre-1948 project and BR grey for Lockdown Fen

Chris H

[Dunsignalling]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Would, in your mind, the balance change if some enterprising manufacturer were to produce both saddle and pannier versions?

 

I can see it would for those with interests that so align, but not from a personal viewpoint. Both are out of area and period for me.

 

However, there's a long-standing tendency for r-t-r makers to pick locos that lasted into BR ownership, and ideally received both emblems, in order to maximise possible variation. The number of surviving GWR saddle tanks not rebuilt into pannier form by 1948 is so tiny as to escape the notice of anyone who isn't looking pretty hard for them. Nobody seems (yet?) to have taken on-board that almost all pre-group locomotives carried two or more different liveries prior to 1923. On the down-side, modifications also often went hand-in-hand with livery changes.

 

From a commercial viewpoint, though, whether a (desirable) increase in choice might create a parallel (undesirable) fragmentation of potential demand could be open to debate. Quite simply, would there be enough potential demand for a loco produced in (say) three pre-1923 forms to allow viable batch sizes?   That would probably be very dependent on buyers accepting that two or even three liveries could normally be seen alongside each other for considerable periods and buying multiple versions. One of the (many) snags of the era system applied by manufacturers is the encouragement of unauthentic "pigeon holing"     

 

John

Edited February 13, 2023 by Dunsignalling

[bill_schmidt1]

On 11/02/2023 at 16:40, Skinnylinny said:

So, I know I'm part of the design team for these models, but I have to say, I'm impressed!

We like to see just how much detail we can cram onto our models, and one of the UK design team decided to give the mouldmakers and injection moulders in China a bit of a challenge. He added the ' 4" OK ' lettering to the axlebox covers, expecting that we might get a raised area in roughly the right shape, which would give the right impression. 

My own models arrived today, and not only have the team in China managed to get the relief detail on the axleboxes, they've managed to legibly emboss the lettering on each one!



Apologies for the quality of the photo, getting my camera to focus on something that small was rather a challenge. It's a privilege to work with a manufacturing team who can turn our designs into such lovely models, and push the limits of what we thought was mouldable!

For comparison, a photograph from the Bluebell Railway Carriage and Wagon Works: 
https://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/cw_news/gwr87782_restoration.html

Having taken the time to put the tiny lettering on the axle boxes I would have thought putting the row of rivets either side of the axle box on the W iron would have been simple enough to do.. 

[Skinnylinny]

41 minutes ago, bill_schmidt1 said:

Having taken the time to put the tiny lettering on the axle boxes I would have thought putting the row of rivets either side of the axle box on the W iron would have been simple enough to do.. 

Hi Bill,

While researching for these models, we found that many of these wagons didn't have those rivets on the axlebox guides when they were built. This is borne out by the GA drawing from which we worked, too. Unfortunately, it would have been prohibitively expensive to tool two different underframes, so we made the decision that it would be easier for a modeller to add the rivets should they want them (Archer's rivet transfers, for example - other brands are available!) than to make a neat job of removing them.

Thanks,

Linny