peteskitchen

I imagine they intended to reduce production costs with a new easier/cheaper to build chassis, having costed it to be worth the development costs.  In fact the new chassis has proved a problem and they have lost out on the deal, not being able to recoup any of their development costs and possibly having to stump up the price of developing a brand new chassis from scratch if producing older designs is prohibitively expensive; this is why I reckon the model will be eventually re-introduced at a higher price (or abandoned altogether).

 

This is entirely guesswork on my part and I doubt H will own up if they have made such an error; the shareholders will not be amused!  One of the drawbacks of having model parts commissioned by Chinese 3rd parties is that quality control during the development process is out of your hands, and all you can do is wait for the finished part to arrive and hope it works.  Generally, to be fair, it does, but it is not a guaranteed situation!

 The new chassis looks exactly the same as the old one and is interchangeable, but with square cutouts instead of curved ones for the axles. I can't imagine that that would be any cheaper to produce than the original, plus there must have been some costs involved modifying the existing tooling to make them. Another strange anomaly is they have changed the vac pipes to more accurate ones and are painted red where they are in line with the buffer beams making them look on par with super detail range. 

For some reason Hornby has made a new chassis and keeper plate for this model to a much lower quality than when it was non railroad. The axle slots are now square and the rear  non driven axle is rigidly mounted with no play. Mine could only just pull itself along. The old keeper plate had its pickups pointing upwards, but this one they point downwards and the rear ones foul the track. Snipping the ends off, slotting out the rear wheel slots and fitting a gentle rear spring transforms the model. Mine will now pull 10 coaches on the flat with ease. However I really don't like the square axle slots as these will soon wear and get sloppy, a problem I've had with an early produced 72xx. I suspect somebody said to Hornby you cant put a round pin in a square slot....

Not sure that is right considering other models and scales. a lower mech is very doable in 00.

 I would have thought it was just a case of different numbers of teeth on a gearset. 20:1 and 40:1 for example can easily be done with the same number of gears, and wouldn't cost any difference at all.

Going OT, but soon to be joined by Modelrail/Rapido's OO gauge steam tram engine. (and OO works new LSWR loco)

Wasn't that Jouef centre can motor fitted in Playcraft Bo Bo diesels coreless? IIRC it had the most wonderful minute ball bearing races at each end.

Mine has a bent handrail where it goes over the firebox on the right hand side. Otherwise its all ok

It's a bit scary the footplate warp, if it s common.  I recall the Bachmann Std 4MT 2-6-4T was or possibly still is produced and sold with an alarming alignment issue with the front footplate and cylinders on what was otherwise a very nice model, but I don't recall people complaining. Mind you back then we didn't all have RMweb.

 

edit; this is not to excuse such faults, just that at the time,a few years ago, I was surprised that the model railway press made no comment.

Not to mention the dodgy weak motors in the first batch either.

 

If that is the case Bernard then the tricky bit has already been done. Ie the "face" of the loco. I recall the group who were thinking of building a 1:1 scale version, were planning to use a pair of class 309 "Clacton" bogie frames as the basis of the running gear. Perhaps Dapol might already be in contact with this group ?

 

Whatever, i think Dapol have got the Scottish transition modelling fraternity very close to the holy grail.

The chap who was behind the project was Ken Joy. I think he even found an original ex class 21 engine. The project folded due to lack of interest and money which is a shame.

Heljan ones do seem to be holding up their price on ebay. We'll have to see if that alters when the blue and maroon ones hit the shelves.