Rapido OO Gauge LMS Dia1666 5-plank open

[Oldddudders]

31 minutes ago, gwrrob said:

 

You're a bad influence Mr D.😉

The pleasure is entirely mine, Rob!

[57xx]

On 06/12/2023 at 17:41, Compound2632 said:

The trouble is, with all these Southern modellers out there, talking up sales of Rapido's LMS D1666 wagon can only be at the expense of Rapido's various SR wagons, so we're not realling doing them any favours, nor the retailers neither, if they're discounting the LMS wagons but still have the SR wagons at full price. What's really needed is some vigorous supply-side economics, cutting off the supply of SR wagons at source by encouraging Rapido to produce only LMS and LNER wagons... There are encouraging signs!

 

 

The SR 8planks were only £17 the other week, I wouldn't have bothered getting one otherwise.

[Dunsignalling]

On 06/12/2023 at 19:56, Oldddudders said:

And lo, in the spirit of equal opportunities, an email from Hattons tells me that the SR 8-plank wagons are now the same reduced price as the LMS items. 

 

All the ones I wanted (and had previously bought, anyway) were already long gone, though..... 

 

Edited December 9, 2023 by Dunsignalling

[Wickham Green too]

Meanwhile, back on LMS wagons topic ....

 

[Sweet pea]

Splendid job weathering the LMS wagons.👍

[The Johnster]

Hang on, am I really reading a complaint about the proliferation of modern models of good scale, finish, and detail?  From our point of view, there cannot be too many prototypes accurately modelled, and on my early BR-era BLT I make a point of having as large a variety of pool wagons as possible and like to mix it a bit with liveries as well.  Pool wagons got everywhere, and it was the natural order of things that the biggest single contributor to the pool was the LMS, and one should probably have at least four LMS 5-plankers to every SR 8-planker.  Rapido wouldn't make the SR 8-planker if they didn't think they were going to make a profit out of it, and one trusts that they are doing so despite it being indubitable that post-1936 modellers will have more LMS wagons including the D1666, or should do if they have done their homework.

 

The homework is about getting the proportions right, not necessarily exactly but close enough to be a reasonable representation of the period you are modelling.  My timeframe, 1948-58, saw a steady increase in the proportion of vans as opposed to opens, vacuum fitted general merchandise opens and vans, and steel-bodied minerals over 7-plankers.  I try to maintain about 505/0 vans:opens, about 60/40 fitted:unfitted, and about 70:30 wooden:steel minerals.  The decade I model was a time of massive change and it would be impossible to be completely accurate in this sense, but I try to aim for what I reckon the ratios were in 1953.  I probably have too many grey painted 7-plank minerals and not enough XPOs in original faded livery and BR numbers, and would like to see some input from 4mm RTR manufacturers in the matter of unfitted new unpainted wooden opens. 

[rapidoandy]

33 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

and one trusts that they are doing so despite it being indubitable that post-1936 modellers will have more LMS wagons including the D1666

 

Whilst I can't go into loads of details and numbers I will say, that like a lot things in relation to modelling, modellers following the prototype are fairly rare.... Our SR 8 planks sold far, far better than the D1666 - which has been one of the poorer sellers in our range of 4w wagons. Don't get me wrong it has been successful - but it has made me think quite hard about why it has not been as good as other comparable items.

[gwrrob]

Well I’ve bought two and a half times more D1666s than SR eight plankers.

[The Johnster]

Well, if anything is to be taken from this discussion, Andy, it is that you will be better off as a producer of models by relying on whatever research, marketing, or gut feeling information you have available within Rapido than listening to the likes of us when it comes to the successful marketing of a model.  I would have bet my next pension that sales of D1666s would be outnumbering those of Southern 8-plankers by at least three to one, though it is encouraging that you are able to count the LMS wagon a success; that bodes well for future biodiversity. 

I'm as guilty as anyone of telling companies that 'this will sell well' when I have no idea what I'm talking about and am only airing my opinion, but I do recognise that there may be a difference between turnover and profitability that can doom the best-selling model to failure from it's producer's pov.  I will try to make a point of not doing this any more; there is no harm in us telling you what we want you to produce, since you've asked, but clearly we are poor judges of what is going to be best suited to you and other companies and equally clearly you should not take any notice of our sales predictions or our casual assumption that sales = profits.  They might, but there is a reason that you are part of a successful model-producing company and I am one of your occasional and contented customers; what you do is hard, and beyond my capability.  I'm prolly best off letting you go do dat voodoo dat you do so well, while I try and make my layout more realistic and better-operating.  Happy to tell you what I want, though, now that I've relieved myself of the burden of telling you it'll make you all millionaires.

 

I want, in this order over the next decade so I can afford them, a diagram A10 auto- trailer, specifically W 26 W in crimson/cream, and then I want a set of gangwayed paired ex-TVR auto-trailers, W 6423/W 2507 in 1956 maroon.  Then I want A43 and A44 'cyclops' auto-trailers in crimson, and finally, may I trouble you for 3100, class leader of the Collett 1938 31xx rebuild of Churchward's 3150 with a higher boiler pressure, which I insist you model accurately, and smaller driving wheels.  I very much doubt if any of this esoterica will ever materialise in RTR form, but I've been left-fielded by you guys before, and you never know...

 

Oh, and any early BR wooden-bodied unfitted unpainted plain wood finish open wagon!

[SRyan]

Even as a BR(S) modeller, I’m in the same camp as Robin and have 4 of the D1666’s as opposed to 3 of the 8 plankers and would take one or two more if the opportunity arose. I’ll definitely be getting some of the O11 and O15 5 plankers too as well as an LNWR D.88 van.

 

The diversity of wagons that we are seeing at the moment is brilliant and exciting and, thinking of the idea of complimentary (perceived or otherwise) goods (pun intended), I wonder if its possible that the earlier release of the SECR 5 plankers and 7 plankers encouraged the sales of the 8 plankers in a way that the D1666’s will hopefully do for other wagons of LMS and constituent pre-grouping companies?  

[Compound2632]

Education, education, education...

[Dunsignalling]

10 hours ago, rapidoandy said:

 

Whilst I can't go into loads of details and numbers I will say, that like a lot things in relation to modelling, modellers following the prototype are fairly rare.... Our SR 8 planks sold far, far better than the D1666 - which has been one of the poorer sellers in our range of 4w wagons. Don't get me wrong it has been successful - but it has made me think quite hard about why it has not been as good as other comparable items.

5-plank opens from the various railway companies have always struck me as being rather similar to one another and not easy to tell apart from "normal viewing distance".

 

I must confess that I only bought two of the (superb) D1666 models; half what I initially intended. On reflection, a thought that "I've already got loads of 5-planks, and there's still the GWR ones to come" may have been niggling away in the back of my mind. 

 

By contrast, the SR 8-plank (and the SECR 7-plank), are quite distinctive which, ironically, should be an argument for having fewer of them but maybe "it doesn't work that way".....

 

I got four of the Rapido 8-planks, largely because of the variations, but also to replace some elderly and well-worn Cambrian kit-builds. I'm presently adapting the newer Cambrian kit for the D.1400 to represent one fitted with vacuum brakes by BR and, in a rummage earlier this week, found two ABS whitemetal kits for D.1379s that I'd forgotten I had. I may make those up to run empty and add loads to the lighter r-t-r ones. 

 

John 

Edited December 10, 2023 by Dunsignalling

[Compound2632]

5 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

5-plank opens from the various railway companies have always struck me as being rather similar to one another and not easy to tell apart from "normal viewing distance".

 

I would say, "look closer" but that's to encourage a dangerous obsession!

 

More seriously, I think your observation-at-a-distance is truer of later designs - post 1930 say - once steel frames and the door "barrow plank" were adopted by the LMS and LNER. By then, fewer new wagons were being built, so D1666 remained ubiquitous and, i would say, distinctive - readily distinguishable from later designs.

[GreenGiraffe22]

I started out with the best intentions to do a realistic early-mid 1940s Sussex Southern scene but accidentally became an unapologetic Southern Railway / Wartime stock collector 😅 other company wagons are a case of 'if I have disposable income and nothing Southern to buy' 😜I will probably get a couple of these if any are still lurking around in stock in the new year

[Jub45565]

I did a cost comparison of the D1666s which have crossed my workbench recently (the Cambrian one hasn't quite left, the 4 Rapido ones were much quicker wins):

 

Rapido:                                                 £27.95

No inner rivets. Nice door catches and chains

+ Brassmasters coupling links     diff 0

+ Rumney coupling hook (B95)   diff 0

+ wheels.                                         Diff 0

No transfers required. Internal rivets ignored for now, use as loaded wagons. Door barrow plank chamfer filed out.

Cambrian:

Kit                                                                           £9.90

Craig Welsh underframe                                £7.00(? I think, currently out of stock from the Scalefour stores)

Rumney Axleboxes                                           £3.50

Lanarkshire buffers                                          £5.20 pre drilled

Wizard buffer heads                                        £2.10 (£6.30 for 12)

CCT transfers                                                      £0.25 (£10/40)

                £27.95

+ Brassmasters coupling links (as Rapido)

+ Rumney coupling hooks (as Rapido)

+ wheels. (as Rapido)

+ 0.1mm tinned copper for door pin chains (as John Hayes 4mm coal wagon book, and Rumney Models gunpowder van instructions). Minimal cost for the length used.

 

General overview of the body – Cambrian is better in the internal rivet detail and including the door top plank chamfer. Rapido is better with the door pin chains.

 

I'm building mine to P4, but thought the overall cost comparison (being identical, aside from recent sales) might be of wider interest.

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, Jub45565 said:

thought the overall cost comparison (being identical, aside from recent sales) might be of wider interest.

 

Ah, but you've not costed in the entertainment value provided by what sounds to have been a jolly evening or two upgrading the kit.

[MarkSG]

5 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

5-plank opens from the various railway companies have always struck me as being rather similar to one another and not easy to tell apart from "normal viewing distance".

 

To me, though, that's actually one of the things that I like about them. It means that a rake of open wagons will look similar, but not quite identical. One of the things that I dislike seeing is a train comprising a rake of wagons that are clearly identical. In real life, they simply won't be. Particularly in the steam era, when BR had a veritable hodgepodge of different wagon types both inherited from the Big 4 and also their own designs, a goods train would have had an assortment of different wagons even if they were the same basic design. And there's something extremely aesthetically pleasing about that, even if the differences are small enough that you can't quite put your finger on precisely what they are. 

[Compound2632]

11 minutes ago, MarkSG said:

One of the things that I dislike seeing is a train comprising a rake of wagons that are clearly identical. 

 

Not going to get you interested in pre-Great War pre-grouping, then!

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue thumbnail of Midland railway Study Centre item 61655.]

[Dunsignalling]

All true but on the Southern Region during "my" era of 1957-62, unfitted 5-plank merchandise wagons were starting to disappear quite rapidly in favour of newly retrofitted AVB ones and vans. 

 

I don't think our area had been exactly swarming with them since a couple of years earlier, when BR had conducted one of its periodic culls of older wagons.

 

Many that remained seem to have been demoted to departmental purposes such as ballast spoil or loco ash disposal. 

 

John

 

 

 

Edited December 10, 2023 by Dunsignalling

[SteamingWales]

7 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

Many that remained seem to have been demoted to departmental purposes such as ballast spoil or loco ash disposal. 

 

At least one of my 3 will be for ash disposal on my shed layout. I'll have to study the photos of Aberystwyth yard to see if I can spot any otherwise it's another to ash disposal and the other for merchandise 

[The Johnster]

No doubt whatsoever that the visual difference was instrumental in my choice of a Southern 8-planker, which I've left in post-1936 small lettering Southern livery, weathered, for use on my 1948-58 BLT.  I like to include as many designs and variations, including liveries, as I can, and this ticks two boxes; my only Southern open (the paucity of that company's stock cf  LMS/LNER in the post-pool era means that it will probably remain so) and my only example of that livery.  I can much more easily justify another D1666! 

 

But some GW opens and the LNW D88 first!

 

 

 

 

[gwrrob]

I think the GWR wagons are due in March .

[rapidoandy]

I have to say I have loved reading some of the responses in this thread 

Never underestimate the amount of variables that should be considered when asking the question ‘what wagon should we make next’.

 

Here are some simple thoughts:

 

Prototype volume does not always equate to sales volume.

 

People do have a regional bias and some regions sell better than others.

 

Everyone should have more opens than vans but modellers prefer vans to opens. They cost the same to make but people think they get more value with a van.

 

Visual differences do help - it needs to be different, but not too different.

 

Colourful liveries or interesting lettering are popular.

 

With all of that in mind  what would you make? I’m genuinely interested to here and am always happy for a PM to be sent my way so we can exchange ideas and details…

 

Andy

[Bucoops]

GER opens of some kind - don't mind which as long as it was something built in good numbers :)

[Compound2632]

10 hours ago, rapidoandy said:

Prototype volume does not always equate to sales volume.

 

People do have a regional bias and some regions sell better than others.

 

Everyone should have more opens than vans but modellers prefer vans to opens. They cost the same to make but people think they get more value with a van.

 

OK, so you need to find a one-off van with a very restricted area of operation - it'll sell in the tens of thousands. I suggest this:

 

 

[Embedded link to catalogue thumbnail of MRSC 64634.]

 

I doubt it ever ventured outside of the carriage sidings at Plaistow. But there is a choice of liveries - LTSR, MR, LMS... I believe it survived at least to the 1950s.