stonetown

@Edwardian Thank you for the additional pictures! Has anything been said about the coal railings for the A1X Terriers? They are still significantly out of proportion and in my eyes the biggest distraction.

They do look quite impressive in that photo! The corrected window spacing has certainly helped a lot and I love the revised coupling rods! Nonetheless they are still far from flawless, but the people involved seem to be aware of that. Therefore let´s hope the best for the production models!

@Hattons Dave, looking at many different pre-grouping designs the paneling lines above and directly below the windows look to narrow to me; wider panels would match a lot more designs and therefore look more generic.

Not saying over 300 variations available to order are not enough, but is there any reason for not planning LB&SCR coaches?

Wasn´t the NRM model supposed to sport a gloss finish?

The attention to detail is great! But if it´s supposed to be a pedigree Terrier, then there is still some way to go. I struggle with the proportions and lines of certain elements. As I was afraid of, the design appears to be based on Dapols O gauge model, meaning a lot of errors are carried over: - the roof shape seems to be wrong - the cab windows are too far apart - the smokeboxes (especially on the A1s) feel too short - The A1X smokebox protrudes too little in front of its base, therefore the frontmost side strip of rivets ends at the base, although the rivets go on some prototypes all the way round (32661 was one of them). - the smokebox doors feel also too flat - the balance weight on the middle wheels has the wrong shape - The coupling rods are completely straight, despite the prototype having a subtle bow. Compare it with the Hornby model, Hornby on the other hand has overdone said bow. - the bottom line of the wooden brake shoes is misaligned - the tank vents are way too long - the balance weights on Boxhills wheels are not picked out in green, as already described by Edwardian - Yes, the tank top recess is there. But the recessed area should be black, already mentioned by Edwardian as well. Then there are also a few shortcomings the O gauge model did not have: - the black beams (?) on top of the dome protrude too far out vertically - the inner part of the buffers is far too thin - the scary coal rails for 32661 have already been mentioned by Edwardian Sorry for the long list. Even though there are a lot of good things about the first samples to be said - I think Edwardian did a very good job in pointing them out - there is still a lot to be done. Obviously some of the mentioned errors are rather minor, but others are not. Let´s hope Dapol and Rails take their time for the necessary amendments.

Do I see prototypical coal railings for Rolvenden? Nice!

Did you join the club via Dapols website? If I try to "order" a new membership either with or without the loco, I have to select my "country of delivery". But available to select are only the countries within the UK. The offer with the loco even specifically states "available to the UK only".

I would, if I could. But since the Dapol Club is only available to the UK there is no way I can get my hands on this pretty loco.

Here is the latest update from Dapol themselves, including some pretty pictures: https://www.Dapol.co.uk/UK-production-of-9-Chassis-Wagons-Under-Way

Thank you Oliver for clearing that up! Well, there is still the question why the wheels don´t have their white rims.

Talking about lining. What happened to the white wheel rims shown on the graphics of post #1?

It looks awesome! I just hope the misaligned printing of the speed recording wheel is not a general quality issue...

Anytime I prefer a close coupling mechanism over these strange oblongs. But was it ever mentioned or somewhere advertised the B4s having a close coupling mechanism? Somehow that must have passed me. But that´s really great to hear, makes it even harder to wait until my pair arrives.

Good news: They seem to have arrived at Hattons. My order got progressed and they replaced the product photos from Dapol with their own ones.

The NRM describes their model of Boxhill to feature a gloss finish: http://www.locomotionmodels.com/ncim-coming-soon/dapolnrm-exclusive-lbscr-a1-class-terrier-0-6-0t.htm So apparently their Boxhills are going to be different from the ones available trough Rails or Dapol.

Silly question: Did they ever carried Lined BR Black, like Donald and Douglas did in the Railway Series? I´d personally hope for a lined early one in clean finish then. But for now the pre-grouping version is more then welcome. Really nice to see a proper as bulit condition besides the preserved one!

Talking about QC issues, the broken bit of the smokebox door was flying around in the box. For anybody who has already tried to disassemble it: The smokebox door appears to be a separate fitted part, but is it also easy to exchange for a new one in case my retailer or Hornby could get my a spare part (which in itself is unlikely, but you never know)? Also the handrail on the left side tank is bend and slightly broken. Running so far seems to be fine, apart from a loud scraping noise, but haven´t run it in properly yet... Here the broken linkage of the smokebox door:

Agreed! Nonetheless that doesn´t mean Hornby couldn´t hold back a few examples for cases of faulty models. Because no matter how good the quality control is, there will always be some models with faults and some damaged during transport, that is a completely normal thing with mass production. Every manufacturer is aware of that and should therefore take precautions. It´s a not a good thing at all if even a preorder doesn´t guarantees you to get a flawless model!

Thanks for clarification, Dave! I forgot about the option with square windows. But on the other hand that means, there is just one option for round front windows, which results into the windows being much to high on the locos with low tanks.

What happened to the "two different cab front windows"? As far as I can see, all twelve have the same front windows, even so the low tank versions definitely need their windows to be quite a bit lower. And also, will the wheel middles be painted on the finished models (that also applies to the P-Class)? Otherwise quite tempting looking models! Manuel

Exactly, these and the ones along the light blue/light green lines of the boiler is what I´ve spotted to be missing.

Some of the red lines are there, but not all of them. The ones on the boiler and the outer ones framing the cab and side tanks are missing.

Great job! Can´t wait to see more. But they do not show the complete printing right now, do they? Cause they are currently missing all the outer red lines, which were present on the livery schematics. Also imho the paintwork and printing looks in some places quite sloppy, hopefully that will be better with the production models. Manuel

But then the lighting is gone for good and I don´t fancy putting it in and out every time I may or may not have use for it. As I said I am not opposed to interior lighting, but there are just circumstances where the option to switch it off would be a simple and quite useful solution. Bachmann for example uses that method in some of their DMUs.