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?

1 hour ago, Silly Moo said:

Perhaps you could return this example to Rails and try and find another retailer who is prepared to look for a better example amongst their stock? It would probably require a phone call to find out whether this is possible. Hopefully there are some retailers out there with good eyes and good customer service. You might want to hedge your bets by hanging on to this one until the other one arrives. 

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.

On 23/06/2023 at 14:56, AndyB said:

I was asked to post a photo of my new DCC-fitted M7 once it arrived. 

Hopefully both shots below are level and give a reasonably accurate account of the loco. 

 

There is a bit of residual slope on it. I don't know if at some point this was worse and its been corrected before shipping to my retailer. Or if it was OK (ish) to start with. 

 

 

The rear-view image has a bit of a lean. But I note there is some play I how it sits and that is sufficient to make it level. I don't suppose I'll be looking at it in extreme close up like this too often.

 

 

It ran smoothly on the test track in the shop.

 

 

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!

2 hours ago, AndyB said:

FWIW I've placed an order for a 2nd M7. It was always my intention to do this before the problems became known.

 

I'm trying to move away from having "one example of every (Southern) locomotive" on my layout. Rather to present a more realistic view of a railway where "the ordinary" was the norm and the exotic was the exception.

 

I was originally going for one of the early and late crest black liveried examples. But having seen the green "British Railways" one on display I've gone a little off piste and opted for a bit of colour. So my rural Hampshire layout will seemingly host a Waterloo pilot! Rule 1, as they say. 

 

So I guess the point I'm making is that inspite of the issues with the model I'm happy to ignore that to show that sometimes mundane way railways operate. 

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

13 minutes ago, fezza said:

Serious question then - does anyone have one that is properly decorated, doesn't slope and will crawl properly through points?

 

If not Dapol should do the decent thing and recall them.

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?

2 hours ago, AndyB said:

@Haddocksrock can I ask if your British Railways-letterd one was DCC fitted?

I bought a late crest one and thinking of getting the green "British Railways" one, too.

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 🤞

7 hours ago, ikcdab said:

You can run many LEDs from an output like that. There is a formula if your want to look it up.

Just glue your led inside the building ( buy individual white diffused on eBay for a few pence each), solder a 1k resistor to the short leg of each one then just connect them all up in parallel. I would run a 12v bus around and join each building into it.

They are diodes so you do need to get the polarity right, the long leg of the LED connects to positive.

Ian

 

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.

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

I hope you don’t mind me butting-in, but I think that criticising Dublo SD coaches on length misses the point somehow. However long/short/broad in the sole bar they are, they convey the essence of a real coach better than any modern plastic, perfectly-to-scale job.

I propose that the most realistic representation of a real railway in model form was a HD 3 rail 8F 2-8-0 thumping and thudding over a cross over followed by a train of tinplate coal wagons clinking and clanking behind complete with the odd wheel beat from the LWB brake van bringing up the rear!

I'll get my coat 

Like others I am late to this thread.

The first railway modelling magazines I brought as an impoverished schoolboy where Railway Modeller and MRC in, I think, September 1966. They changed my outlook completely. From a 6'x4' Hornby Dublo trainset I transformed it into a, I think it was, Maurice Dean style fiddle yard to terminus layout with a link into the fiddle yard to make a continuous run if needed. It was still run by incongruous A4, Castle, 8F etc LOL. Fortunately the Bluebell Railway had just opened so the premise of a preserved railway was available, thank goodness.

I always thought the MRC was a step up from the Modeller as a 'serious' journal rather like the MRJ today.

I remember that for about the first year I had it a number of pages were always printed on a sort of garish coloured card paper!

Thank you for that info. 

Looking at drawings for the J94 Austerity saddle tank that has the safety valves set on the boiler top in an oval recess in the saddle tank, which thinking about it, makes sense. If not the valves would have to have extension pipes thro the saddle tank water space? Makes me think the J52 would have a similar arrangement?

I have seen that photo before, the one with a train entering with a station that has timber planked platforms.

This is definitely NOT Bexhill or one of the stations in the surrounding area. 

It was the subject of a query before and it was identified as a SECR station with a LCDR 4-4-0 entering.

The problem is I cannot remember where it was identified as! Lol

Bexhill itself had 3 stations. One on the LBSCR route that was subsequently rebuilt into the form it is now on a slightly different site. Plus the SECR West Station, the terminus of the branch from Crowhurst.

Also can we correct the wrong and often repeated statement that the West Station building was roofed in slate! It wasn't it used the then fashionable red/orange machine made clay plain tiles. I add this as I see the contemporary tinted postcard is shown on that site with the incorrect grey coloured roof which has misled so many authors 

I am building a Beaver N gauge J52 kit and completing it in BR 1950's condition. 

My query is the positioning of the safety valves they appear from photos to be exposed (as in not in a cover) and placed on top of the tank plating but these are pictures taken from the side or track level.

The one picture I have taken from above is slightly indistinct but appears to show them in a circular hole (pit) recessed in the tank top?

The Hornby model has them on the tank top which is flush and flat.

Anybody have any idea on which is the correct positioning or is either correct depending on individual locos?

This may help from "Southern Nouveau"

I would imagine the station forecourt would slope up to the level of the cattle dock to allow cattle trucks to back up to load and unload or for the animals to be driven in/out of the dock. This would also allow the end of the siding to be used as an unloading dock if the level of the cattle dock was carried on towards the bufferstop and formed as a platform face.

2 hours ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

The decorated station pilots seem to have been either J69s, N7s or J72s. There might have been a J83 up in Scotland… The trend seems to have been confined to the ex-LNER, and to pre-grouping types.

There were some Malachite Green M7's after WW2 until the early 50's at Waterloo for empty stock working.

I always wonder why the LBSCR liveried Brighton Works Terrier wasn't claimed by Victoria or Brighton stations as a pilot when it was released into general traffic after the works closed. Lack of tractive effort or suitable duties perhaps? 

(Their loss was St Paul's (SR London terminus) gain! )

Not sure if I am imagining it but I am sure I once saw in one of the magazines or possibly in one of his books an extended plan of Minories in modules as you described above? Each further section had two main tracks in the same location so the modules could be 'mixed and matched'.

2 minutes ago, Western Aviator said:

Your layout must be MASSIVE if you can fit that many locos on it. 

Blimey the deposit on that order! £1379220.00 

Will Rails still be here when the models arrive or will they have retired on the deposit alone LOL