rapidobill

Yes, it will go around second radius. The tender coupling does pivot as well. Bill

Greetings from the NRM. They're steel....

Brain Greenwood and I spent a fair amount of time going over the livery sample today. We noted several items that need to be "tweaked", the most notable being the steel colour. We'll get that better for production. Also, you are absolutely correct about the motion supports thank you! The wheels should have black tires and heavy black lining near the hubs. The factory is aware of this but ran out of time to do it on the samples if they were to get her in time - which they very nearly didn't anyway! Now, about those guard irons. No, they should be silver (steel). Unless of course you're looking from the side. Then they look black. Ahem... It APPEARS from the photos that the fronts were silver, but the sides black. We can't do that. So, silver or black - either way we're "wrong" ;>) I am in York tonight and tomorrow morning so will run over to the NRM for one final check. This will be on my list. Bill

Ummmm... guess that would be me...:>) It... could... We're still finalizing the packaging details, but our intent is to ship the loco and tender uncoupled to prevent any possible damage to the connector and/or pins. However, the current box design does have the loco and tender in line. A little trimming of the foam might be needed, but it should be possible to make the two fit coupled. As for the buffers - this being a livery sample the factory left off a few things to see if we noticed. Item one was painting the buffers! ;>) BIll

Actually, being the nutcases that we are, we designed and tooled two pilots. One with the ruddy great hole and one without. The one without will be in the box for you to fit. Bill

Z4 and 260. Discuss amongst yourselfs. :>) Disclaimer - the 3D prints contain elements of both - and more - and may not have been assembled in the correct order. This was done just to confuse you. ;>) Enjoy.

Samples? What samples?? Some of you (I hope…) may have read about the… fun… that we have been having getting samples here. Again. It seems that his happens every year! Over the past few days I have been practicing new and exciting ways to scream at a shipping company. Now, I don’t want to name names, but they have three initials that begin and end with the same letter… Anyway, we had two boxes of samples leave China independently. On box had the Locomotionmodels Stirling Singles and the other had some new Revolution products and some surprises of our own. Just two little boxes. Shipped seperately for safety. We gave them 10 days to make a 5 day trip. Good planning. NO pwabwem! Ahem. Both boxes ended up sunning themselves in Dubai as they both sat on… apparently… the only aircraft in this company’s fleet, which had broken down on the way. It took seven days to fix. Really. During which time, or so I was told, the shipping company (starts with a “T”) had no access to the aircraft and no way to offload the shipments onto another aircraft… were it to have one.... or to another carrier. If there was a bright spot in all of this, it was that I had hand-carried some samples with me. So had Gareth. Good plan!! At least we would have something to show, as a THIRD box with the Rail of Sheffield Dynamometer Car samples were coming by a… more reliable… shipping company. NO pwabwem! Fast forward to noon or so today. After several late/early (3:00 AM+) e-mail exchanges between China, the UK and USA (ah, the wonders of a worldwide economy and global time zones) the one plane in the service of that company (ends with a “T”) somehow managed get its rubber band wound up enough to get airborne. The Stirling Single samples, the Revolution samples and the Surprise samples had all safely arrived at either my hotel or were waiting for Gareth to pick them up. FANTASTIC! Meanwhile, I was sitting in the Rails showroom, enjoying the guys’ banter and a cuppa, and wondering why our “by noon” delivery hadn’t shown up yet. BIG pwabwem!! Well, the good news as of now (9:45 PM Thursday) is that those samples are now due TOMORROW morning. All the rest are here and in good shape, and we’re all looking forward to having what we and our partners wanted to display at Warley. What is the saying? “It’ll be alright on the night!” So, off now to chat with the family at home who should be about full of turkey by now. Happy Thanksgiving to all my countrymen (and women)! Hope to see many of the rest of you on the weekend! I’ll be the bald one quivering and drooling in the corner...

Very small. :>)

Hmmm... Have some time tomorrow I think... Thanks!

I'm sure, I think, that it was a Panavia Tornado... It was VERY loud! :>)

Hey...it was very good, and you could have eaten it. Well... Most of it...

No, but a Tornado buzzed the pub as I got back today! Dambusters live!

Ah, Warley. There are two trade shows that we attend each year that I view with an equal measure of hope and dread: The Amherst Society Show in the US (“Springfield”) and the Warley Model Railway Club’s National Model Railway Exhibition (“Warley”). Both shows are similarly very well attended and both provide an important venue for us to show off our most recent products. More on that in a moment. The biggest difference is geographical. For Springfield, I hop in my car, drive 45 miles each way – often at least one way in a blizzard – and sleep at home. For Warley I drive about the same distance – normally NOT in a blizzard - hop into a little metal tube, and try in vain to sleep for six hours as I wing across the Atlantic. The upside is that I get to come back to the UK, a place that I love dearly. So, here I am again, currently staying at the very lovely Plough Inn in Hathersage in the Peak District, doing my best to prepare for the show between Ploughman's Lunches (what else?!) and meetings with clients. This year my job of preparing for the show has been made much easier by the inclusion of Gareth Bayer on our team. Gareth will be joining me to staff the show (alongside Rapido’s long-time Honorary Staff Member, Terry Wynne) after he spends a few days with his parents and meets with some of his customers. He is even bringing our North American samples and designed most of the posters. All that I had to do print the posters, meet with a few of my customers, and arrange to have a few samples flown in from China. In the immortal words of one of our factory partners, “NO pwabwem!” Or, as he also likes to say, “BIG pwabwem!” Somewhere between China and the UK are, in two separate boxes, via two different courier companies, three delayed samples. One box contains two fully decorated OO Stirling Singles for Locomotionmodels and the other one nearly completely decorated OO Dynamometer car for Rails of Sheffield. From the photos that the factories sent both look amazing. Both were also supposed to arrive yesterday. As of last night one was sunning itself in Dubai, the other was… somewhere. In an amazing example of temporal distortion through Google Translate I was told that “it should be arrived yesterday afternoon.” I did manage to spend the first part of today in a very productive meeting with the guys at Rails of Sheffield – once I found it. When Jason and I travel together he always gives me a hard time about using Sat Nav to find my way. He prefers printed maps. He also uses a rotary phone and wears bell bottoms. What can I say? Now, I’ve been to Rails before so, as Huang says, should be “NO….” never mind. My rental this time is a little Peugeot 308 diesel hatch. Not a bad little car with some unique quirks, as most French cars seem to have. Still, it has a built-in Sat Nav. Fantastic! I plugged in the Rails postal code and off I went. After weaving through the maze of streets that is Sheffield I arrived at a point not far from Rail. All (there’s that word again) I had to do was make two turns and…. “Road Closed. No Access to Chesterfield Road.” What an annoying little sign! I suspect my little Peugeot was saying something like “You STOOpid American! Now I shall leave you right here and laugh in your general direction! HAH!!” I put the nav on map mode and found my way out. Eventually. Jason might have been proud…. On the way back from the meeting a strange thing happened – the sun came out! Encouraged, I decided to take a little time and explore the Peak District. I stopped back quickly at the Plough to drop off my computer, grab a jacket and… yes… sunglasses, then went back out the door - into the rain. The weather sure does change quickly here in the hills. Still, managed to enjoy an amazing drive through this lovely area. Can’t show too many photos, but take my word for it! Anyway, make sure to come see us at theNEC this weekend, booth B28. I'll be the one with even less hair than last year. Now, wonder where those boxes currently are…..?

Model Rail has done a lot of research to determine what parts were carried on which locos at various times. The chains, front and side, came and went over the years. The samples in the photos are the first full EPs that we've been able to see and have been hand-assembled. Those overly large side chains will be replaced with something finer on those models where they are appropriate. Bill

Champagne and oysters? Clearly I'll be staffing the wrong booth!

The newest Rapido North American newsletter has been posted! It includes news and updates on: - HO Mid-train domes - Some HO bus model - RailCrew switch machines - N New Haven coaches - N GMD-1 locomotives - A really big RDC and videos of Jason abusing the staff! You can read it all (and more) here: conta.cc/2gP9MHC Bill Schneider Rapido Trains

Interestingly, the only item on this train that we don't already have (or have announced) is the working doors. Our upcoming New Haven EP-5 electric will have operating DCC pantographs (slower than those I hope), our existing cars - and the Dynomometer car - have full interiors and lighting, and all of our HO, OO and N locos offer DC/DCC sound options. We have looked at opening doors on various projects, but my personal feeling is that the design requirements to make them work end up creating unsightly gaps around the doors. Jason doesn't agree with me on this (!) and is looking into this for a future project.... Bill

We forgot the toilet paper roll!!!! This will delay the project while we fix the tooling.....

... you forgot the working paper recording roll. ;>) Bill

In a word.. no. Won't work. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then here's two thousand: This is taken from my drawing of the chassis. The upper view is on straight track - no problem. The lower view is superimposed on R2 track. You can see that the 9th wheel (yellow) is WELL inside the gauge, and also just how far it (and everything attached to it) would have to move laterally (out or in!) to make it work. Also, any abrupt vertical transition could have the effect of high-centering the car, leaving it tottering on the wheel. The instrumented wheel was only lowered during recording runs, so our story is that the car is modelled as it would be en route to its next gig. ;>) Bill

The differences are primarily in the livery. The physical car did not change much after the 1920s when the later bogies and gangway connections were fitted. Bill

The beading is shown on the original blueprints in the NRM collection, so it was there from the beginning as far as I can tell. Bill

These are first test parts. The window mould has not yet received its final polish. The production parts will be clear. Well, except for the lav window.... which is a shame really as there is full toilet detail inside.... :>) Bill

There area number of etched details that have not been fitted to this sample. Again, this is a first tooling sample to review the plastic parts an, as such, does not have etched parts or electronics fitted. That will come with the next sample. These screen captures of the CAD may give an idea of what is missing though... Bill

Wow, that's quite a list... ;>) - The instrumented wheel is a separate, but fixed, part. it does not rotate. We looked at having it rotate but in order to keep it on the rails on a second radius curve it would have had to be made well over-scale. It would have looked more like a steamroller than wheel! Not to mention that it would be out of gauge anyway for EM, P4 etc. - Production models will have full interior lighting. As this is a first tooling review sample many parts, including the electronics, are not yet fitted. The model also has a very full interior that will be painted and decorated appropriately, including all of the gauges and pipework. - The buffers are separate and sprung. - Not sure what DCC has to do with a passenger car model. There is no sound or decoder fitted... though we did discuss the possibility! Hope that this answered some of your questions. Bill