Haddocksrock

Just to round this sorry saga off from my point of view I have returned the Mk 2 M7 to Rails for a refund. And done what I thought I would do when the revised M7 was originally announced and take advantage of people upgrading (!) to the newer version. So I have purchased a Mk1 M7 in SR malachite off of eBay saving half the price and hopefully a lot less trouble!. The BR black Mk 1 that I already have performs quite satisfactorily for my needs. Before I packed up the Mk 2 version I had a close look at it and I am sure that any lack of haulage power is due to the rear driving wheels being lifted off the rails very very slightly by the height of the bogie lifting the rear of the chassis effectively making it a single wheeler powered only by the front driving wheels. I could be wrong but it might be worth looking at?

Thanks for the suggestion. I have rung 3 other retailers none of whom are confident that they have a flat footplate example. I might bite the bullet and experiment myself with smaller bogie wheels. The existing ones might be to scale but there seems to be a discrepancy between them and the driving wheels. Other manufacturers who have made errors in the past have offered FOC replacement parts to customers to rectify situations, I won't hold my breath for a similar outcome here 😔

Received the replacement M7 back from Dapol yesterday and, ironically, it is probably slightly worse than the example I returned to them! I have posted pics of it below. After some email exchanges the end result is this email:- Thank you for your email and sorry you feel the model still isn’t up to your satisfaction. However we did check this model over thoroughly and, to be honest, I don’t think we will get any better. It is worth noting that we have not had this ongoing problem with other customers’ locomotives. Sorry but if you can’t accept it then you will need to return the model to Rails for a refund. Your comments have been passed on to our Product Development Team and I am sure due consideration Will taken of your points during production of the next batch. I am not sure that the statement about other customers rings true; on the other hand perhaps others have either accepted the apperance or just got a refund? So i am really undecided. I like the loco and it fits in with my layout ethos but does its appearance make it unacceptable to me? I may try the solution suggested elsewhere of raising the front by inserting thin card between the chassis and body and seeing how that looks or return it and hope that a redesigned further batch includes this livery.

Just to update this I received an email from Dapol yesterday asking me to return the loco again to them and "we will fix the problem". I will update when I receive the loco back from them.

Thanks for posting those. It looks about the same as mine after receiving it back from Dapol the second time. I'm still awaiting a reply to my email to Dapol from a week ago. Not holding my breath as I think they hope all this will just go away!

Let us know how it looks when it arrives 🤞👍 Mine (if I keep it) has apparently been transferred over to the Central section for carriage pilot duties at St Paul's along with the ex Brighton Works Stroudley liveried Terrier as station pilot! If it was good enough for Liverpool Street it's good enough excuse for me LOL

Interesting question!

When I spoke to Rails and they offered a full refund I did ask about the possibility of a replacement without the sloping body problem. They rather poured cold water on that idea!!!! Which leads me to believe that the whole of this first manufactured batch have the same problem.

Well the M7 has arrived back form Dapol! It has been looked at and some adjustment/modification has been carried out which has resulted in a, perhaps, 50% improvement. It still has the slope from the back bufferbeam down to the front. It is still more pronounced on the RH side than the LH. I have taken some pics of it which i will attach. The problem now is:- Do I accept it as it is? As AndyB said it could be years before Dapol rerun this particular edition of the M7 and it does add a touch of colour to the layout as a carriage pilot a la Waterloo. On the other hand any new edition will surely have a modified chassis to correct the fault. Any resale value would obviously be vastly reduced as it is now a known fault on this first batch of models. Do I accept that I have paid full price for an item that is not of full price quality? Rails of Sheffield have offered a full refund if I do decide not to accept it, so they have played fair on this. Even though Dapol have told me only a few models are affected by this problem I suspect that this is not the case and that it is a fundamental design flaw on this first batch of models. I think either the bogie is too high or the clearance for the bogie wheel diameter has been misjudged when allowing for the ride height and one of these is jacking up the rear of the chassis. I would look to Dapol to investigate and find a real cure for this as obviously the current modification is not working; although i will not hold my breath. I would accept a replacement bogie at some stage even with slightly smaller wheels if necessary. However with my dealings with Dapol over this i feel that they hope it will just fade away and we will just accept it as part of railway modelling as manufacturers in this field are not held to the same standards of customer satisfaction as, say, car makers or domestic appliance manufacturers! I doubt if any of the magazines would want to get involved and it will be interesting to see if any samples from this run of models are submitted to them for review.

My example has returned to Dapol again for examination and hopefully rectification. I will post an update when it is returned.

Thanks for the reply I assume the modification managed to lower the rear buffers down to somewhere near the correct height? Or is it like my example shown in the pictures?

Hi, No just a plain one. Did your late crest have the ski slope problem?

Had my BR lettered green example arrive from Rails and on looking at it it sloped down from back to front buffer beam and also across the body from side to side. So having seen Dapols post saying they would do the bogie modification if you returned it I posted it off to them with a copy of the receipt and a note saying what was wrong. A couple of days later I received a slightly huffy phone call asking why I had returned it to them and not Rails? I pointed out that they had said on their web site that they offered to carry out the alteration and that I assumed all models were affected so Rails would not have a acceptable example. They said that only very few models had been affected and they would look at or replace it. It arrived back today and either they never bothered to look at or just sent a replacement without inspecting it but the loco has the exact same faults! A couple of pics of the loco as it arrived today are attached. Anybody else had the same problem? I'll give Rails a ring Monday and hopefully they will sort it out 🤞

Thanks for that think I have my head around it now!

Hi, Can anybody give me a simple guide (for a simple modeller 🙂) on what I should be using to light N gauge buildings? I would be looking to use the 12v DC 1amp accessory output from the controller. As I am not worried about individual lights being controllable can they be wired from a common circuit? I am struggling to understand the different types available and their requirements. Any guidance would be much appreciated.