Farish Class 319

[TomE]

12 hours ago, grahame said:

I'm hoping Tom won't mind me using one of his photos as a comparison (if there's a problem I'll remove it). But looking at the face of the class 319 I get the impression that the curved squarish face outline groove is not accurate and effects the character and look of the model.

 

 

The top curved corners should more closely follow the roof and side - compare the red circles. And those curved corners look like they should be more rounded.

The vertical edges of the face should be closer to the side edge with the width between the cab window and groove being larger than the groove to the side edge - compare blue circles.

And the vertical grooves of the face should gently curve inward from about the bottom of the windows - the small panels between the handrail panels and the groove are not rectangular but a rhomboid with a sloping outer edge so are not vertical.

 

Plus, of course, the other issues mentioned earlier.

 

 

I’m wondering if it’s suffering from the same issue as the Dapol 50, namely insufficient taper in toward the front of the cab sides? That would account for the overly wide vertical edges of the face.

 

Tom. 

[grahame]

7 hours ago, Mike Harvey said:

 The sequence and process of adding colour will change perception of the relationships between the various sections, as well as changing their actual size and shape on the model.

 

Decoration and painting can change ones perception of the look, but won't actually change items actual physical size and shape. There are issues on the Dapol class 50 which are still there and obvious even now the models are available fully decorated.

[John M Upton]

The later 319/1's, later 319/3 had the GRP front air dam whilst the earlier 319/0, later 319/4 (mostly) had the earlier plate version.

 

As far as I am aware no interchange of front ends occurred between the sub classes.

[grahame]

1 minute ago, TomE said:

 

I’m wondering if it’s suffering from the same issue as the Dapol 50, namely insufficient taper in toward the front of the cab sides? That would account for the overly wide vertical edges of the face.

 

Maybe, but for me the face looks a little narrow giving a slightly surprised look with the cab windows too narrow. I think if the vertical face grooves were pushed out a little closer to the edge of the sides and the windows increased a little in width it would look better and get rid of the overly wide gap between the face and edge.

[eatus-maximus]

Oh Jeez that's disappointing. I was looking at the possibility of getting some of these (having driven many and seeing them on a nearly daily basis for most of my life), but the paint job would have to be spectacular to get me to part with the money they are asking if that is how it ends up looking.

 

That front end is so wrong and the windows down the side look wrong too. The latter might be excusable if they hadn't already done a 150 with the same windows and body shell!

 

To my eye the sides between the cab door and the cab front do not angle in enough, leading the thicker than real area noted by Grahame, or possibly the 'face' isn't wide enough, and the roof corner needs adjusting, though that might be cured by adjusting that cab side angle. The headlights are wrong and the grab handles on the cab front too, as mentioned. There is a groove missing across the cab front and the manual uncoupling bar (cab front, bottom right) is far too pronounced, it should be much more recessed than that. The rib around the emergency access door looks wrong. Reasonably sure they have got the 'skirt' wrong too, something isn't right with it.

 

I wonder if Bachmann have tried to hide the motor by making the side windows too small? They certainly don't look wide enough, but I think they are probably too shallow as well, maybe that's why the corners look wrong.

 

I would hope they get the right pantographs for the right units too. Stone Faiveley only ever went on  /0, /4 and early /2 units, Brecknell Willis for the rest, noting that some /2 units ran without a pantograph for a while.

 

And as for the coupling, okay I know they have to have a working one for those who want to run in multiple, but that look hideous!

Edited September 17, 2019 by eatus-maximus

[JR_P]

56 minutes ago, grahame said:

 

The class 319s have two types depending on build date/sub-class.

Ah, good knowledge  ! Ironically the air dam difference was a detail I would not have noticed if the front end had been more favourably portrayed and I wasn’t scrutinising it to begin with!

 

I guess we will just have to wait and see how the ‘cookie crumbles’ as to what Farish finally end up producing.... 

[TomE]

2 hours ago, grahame said:

 

Maybe, but for me the face looks a little narrow giving a slightly surprised look with the cab windows too narrow. I think if the vertical face grooves were pushed out a little closer to the edge of the sides and the windows increased a little in width it would look better and get rid of the overly wide gap between the face and edge.

 

Could I ask @AY Mod if its possible to direct the relevant persons at Bachmann by this thread whilst we're still in the early stages of development? 

 

Tom. 

 

 

[AY Mod]

7 minutes ago, TomE said:

 

Could I ask @AY Mod if its possible to direct the relevant persons at Bachmann by this thread whilst we're still in the early stages of development? 

 

 

Their radar will be tuned in anyway!

[TomE]

I spent a little time looking at photos of the prototype and model last night and I think the main issue with the model is that the 'face' of the model is too square. I'm still not convinced there is enough taper on the cab sides either. 

 

Using Grahame's photo as a comparison, the edges of the yellow area should have a very gentle curve outward from the bottom toward the top, with the result that there is less gap between the cab edge there than at the bottom. The model has the edge of the yellow area parallel with the edge of the cab the whole length. An effect of this is that the cab windows now become rectangle and appear squashed, as they should also have a similar outward curve on the outer edges. It also throws out the top corners of the cab as Grahame highlighted earlier and circled in orange below. Apologies for the rubbish pic below trying to highlight this, i'm away from any decent graphics software at the moment, but hopefully it shows where the issue may lie!

 

 

Obviously this is all said baring in mind this is the first sample. Hopefully Bachmann see this and can do something about it as getting the face of the model right is pretty important!!

 

Tom.  

 

[grahame]

16 minutes ago, TomE said:

I spent a little time looking at photos of the prototype and model last night and I think the main issue with the model is that the 'face' of the model is too square. 

 

 

Yes, as I mentioned earlier the sides of the face outline are not vertical and straight (and at right angles to the horizontal panel lines) but gently curve inwards from towards the bottom. This 'face' pic gives a good indication of that and the closeness of the face outline groove to the side edge. The red ringed panel (next to the rectangular handrail panel) shows the outer edge forms a rhomboid shape indicating the groove is at an angle and not vertical. The pic also shows that the headlight panels are within the horizontal grooves and do not overlap them.

 

 

 

[TomE]

Given the discussion about the shape of the nose, I made a point of asking about this on the Bachman stand at Warley and was told the CAD has been redrawn to correct the errors. The next EP should be much improved in this area.

 

Since the EP was the same one displayed at TINGs I didn’t take any further pics, except this one which I though nicely highlighted how Bachman have tackled the low profile drive. 

 

Tom.

[JR_P]

Glad to hear Bachmann are willing to take onboard constructive criticism and react to it - encouraging news.

[grahame]

I'm hoping/assuming that Tom won't mind me having re-used his photo of EP2 from the 'predictions' thread. I though it more appropriate on this thread for further discussions about the class 319. I've put EP1, EP2 and the real front end together (below) for ease of comparison and comment :

 

 

The groove detail lines are rather typical of the Farish trencherman style, and I hope that when painted they will be less excessive and obvious. As JR_P mentioned on the other thread, I too would like to see the handrail representations (somewhat crude solid bars) replaced with wire ones. Also I note that they have replaced the GRP sculptured air dam with the simple flat metal plate version as shown the centre pic above.

 

There are a few other issues, probably of a more nit-picking nature, where improvements could be made, but this second EP is a welcome development and shows that they appear to have listened. It's encouraging.

[TomE]

Having studied the photos of the 2nd EP vs the real thing, there is one area I think might still need looking at. 

 

The cab appears to have some taper inward on the prototype, whereas the model appears to run straight on, and that is giving the upper corners of the cab a slightly bulky look and is making the cab edge look a little on the flat side. Hopefully the pic below illustrates:

 

 

If you look at the centre photo Grahame posted above the taper is evident. If this can be corrected I think it will be pretty much spot on. 

 

Tom. 

[Revolution Ben]

 

Hello all,

 

Thanks for posting these photos.  Fair play to Bachmann for taking the comments on board and sorting this out - I am sure there will have been a significant financial implication to that.

 

But the EP2 looks so much better!
 

cheers

 

Ben A.

Edited February 7, 2020 by Ben A

[TomE]

Here are the rest of the photos of the 319 2nd EP from the club event:

 

 

 

 

 

These focus on the areas that have seen improvements from the first EP, namely the cab front and pantograph. 

 

The inter-car electrical connectors will allow the model to require only 1 DCC chip, and the speaker, motor and chip are spread over two of the 4 coaches. This model is the first to use this design in N Gauge and if successful it will form the basis of future multiple units, namely the already announced Class 158. 

 

Tom. 

[grahame]

One thing that does still grate a little is that the roof dome should curve down more continuously to the face outline groove at the top without the added flat ledge as here:

 

 

And the bottom of the obstacle plate doesn't look correct (although it's difficult to tell from the pic). The round horn cut out ought to be more prominent and the bottom edge should be more continuous and flat rather than stepped back with those what appear to be angled sections that have been added.

 

 

 

 

[TomE]

31 minutes ago, grahame said:

One thing that does still grate a little is that the roof dome should curve down more continuously to the face outline groove at the top without the added flat ledge as here:

 

And the bottom of the obstacle plate doesn't look correct (although it's difficult to tell from the pic). The round horn cut out ought to be more prominent and the bottom edge should be more continuous and flat rather than stepped back with those what appear to be angled sections that have been added.

 

Agreed on the cab dome, although I think that might be partly a result of, or linked to the extra width added in the top corners by the lack of taper inward on the cab sides. 

 

The obstacle plate looked ok to me in the flesh, I think the shadows in the photos are maybe creating a false impression of the bottom edge on that one, although also agreed the horn cutout is far too small. 

 

Tom. 

 

 

[Revolution Mike]

EP2 certainly looks better to me, though I think that Tom has identified the main issue of the cabs looking too bulky.

 

If you look at the picture Grahame posted of the real thing and compare the yellow area with the amount of purple around the yellow then it looks quite a bit thinner than the amount of material around that same area on the EP2.

 

Still looks a lot better to me.

 

Cheers Mike

Edited February 7, 2020 by red death

[Karhedron]

Whilst possibly not perfect, this 2nd EP certainly looks a lot better than the first. I really want a 319 and I was actually a bit put off by the first EP. But now I am sufficiently happy that I will be ordering one in NSE livery. 

[grahame]

AFAIA there were two main builds/batches of class 319; phase 1 (sept 87 - Oct 88) and phase 2 (Oct 90 - Mar 91) which are divided in to four sub-classes (according to Marsden); 

 

319/0 (319001 - 13) 13 sets, original phase 1 units,

319/2 (319214 - 220 were 319014 - 020) 7 sets, Brighton express units,

319/3 (319361 - 386 were 319161 - 186) 26 sets, Metro units, and

319/4 (319421 - 31946 were 319021 - 060) 40 sets, City flier units.

 

The phase 1 ones had the flat plate obstacle deflector while the phase 2 had the more sculptured GRP air dam. As far as I can determine the white NSE liveries ones (red upswing with curved bottom corner finishes above first passenger window) all had the GRP air dam while the grey NSE ones (red upswing finished above drivers door) had flat plate deflectors, as here: https://bluerail.co.uk/product/class-319-network-southeast-pack/ and here: 

 

 

Unless Farish are going to produce both front ends this might affect the liveries they can do (at least NSE variants).

 

 

[bigP]

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Edited February 1, 2021 by bigP
Deleted

[grahame]

29 minutes ago, bigP said:

 

The original 319/0 build had way more than 13 units.  I think there were about 50 or 60 units all told.

 

 

The phase 1 BREL York units (total 60) above 319013 (the first 13) were re-built by Wolverton in the late 90s as 319/2 (014-020 became 214-220) and 319/4 (021-060 became 421-460). I don't think there are any 319/1 (first of phase 2 ones) left now - all converted to other sub-classes or stored.

 

 

[bigP]

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Edited February 1, 2021 by bigP
Deleted

[TomE]

Surely this has to be prime club model territory!

 

 

Tom.