RapidoCorbs

A good example of how filthy they got!

During the nineteenth century, the expanding railway network helped create a boom in the fishing industry. With fast, reliable services fresh fish was able to be transported by rail across the length and breadth of the UK. As early as the mid-1840s special fish trains were operated by several railway companies using specially built rolling stock. As technology developed faster services were offered with trains operating on the East Coast mainline all the way from Scotland to London. Fish vans on the LNER originally featured a short wheelbase but later developments settled on a larger 15ft wheelbase on the Diagram 214 12t Insul-Fish vans designed by the LNER but built under BR from 1949. These vehicles were designed to operate in passenger trains and featured LNER 8-shoe brake gear and steam heat pipes. British Railways continued to build a variation of these vans – Diagram 800. These were built with standard oil axleboxes but some were later upgraded to roller bearings in later life. The final diagram of fish van built by British Railways was the 1/801 diagram. Like the 1/800 this featured a 15ft wheelbase and 21’8” body. Roller bearings were used from new and allowed the wagons to travel at speeds of 60mph. As they were roller-bearing fitted, they gained the ‘Blue Spot’ designation on the bodysides. This design however featured several differences on the body, most notably the diagonal end bracing and around the side doors along with the adoption of the BR clasp brake system. Three batches of vans were built between 1960 and 1961 with a total of 558 vans being produced. With the decline in fish traffic services ceased in 1968. Many vans were transferred to Parcels Traffic (coded NRV and later SPV) and sported BR rail blue livery with ‘double arrow’ logo. Other vans found use in Engineers use, barrier vehicle use and even as support vehicles for breakdown cranes carrying a number of different liveries. This resulted in vans being seen all across the network. A small number of Diagram 1/801 vans have survived into preservation at locations such as the Swanage, Great Central and Bluebell railways. This model will be the first Diagram 1/801 van ever produced in OO gauge ready-to-run. The model features the usual wealth of detail alongside many separately fitted parts including steps on the engineers versions, and two different types of buffers as seen on the prototypes. Separate label boards will also be provided for modellers to fit as required. Metal bearings will aid super smooth running enabling prototypically long trains to run with ease. Browse the full range on our website

Working on the design of the internals at the moment and making sure we can cram it all in - there's not a great deal of space in one of these! At least the Bagnalls were a fairly squat shape....

I think we have all that info somewhere, team time is the issue (not time team, which doesn't come under our remit).

Likely Q4. We have requested some revisions to the decoration/design.

I am told the parts have been injected and are heading into the spray shop.

Ouch :( We thought we had put a lot of time and effort into trying to get a selection of regions, owners and colours balanced against an as-close-as-possible tooling suite (29 different part combinations in the range). We've tried to be up front that there are some compromises (e.g. body length within limits, strapping details, small differences between builders) and we did not want it to seem as though we just slapped any old livery on any generic wagon.

(repost from socials) Pallet after pallet was wheeled into our warehouse this week, which can only mean one thing: The RCH 1907 PO Wagons have arrived! Payment links are being sent out so please keep an eye on your inboxes.

We have some good goods news! The EWS livery variants of the OO Gauge OAAs have arrived and are ready to be shipped. If you have pre-ordered through our website, keep an eye on your emails.

Sorry - that was our mistake. We could not make the door bangs but the instructions had already been printed and the error was not spotted until too late.

To explain - Not all of the couplings on our products are mounted in the same place. Some vehicles (not these GWR ones) have the 'long' coupling but mounted further back, so we want to make sure that replacing our standard coupling with a shorter one won't cause problems if we have to do a repair such as replacing a coupling.

Compatible in that if we end up with a stock of spares of the shorter ones, they will still work on wagons that use the longer coupling without causing issues e.g. if we have to do a replacement coupling as part of a repair.

Unsure, the article in GWJ did not mention buffer packing (nor is it mentioned in ABT's book) and the drawing N°55537 (V17 van) does not show buffer packing.

V17s being V16s fitted with screw couplings for working in France/Belgium. Although the couplings are not modelled, the van is painted as a V17 - converted back to V16 or X6 (later Y4) post-war.

We had an update from the factory - currently in assembly/painting stage.