Rails/Rapido LNER Dyno Car to be made !!

[adrianbs]

Hi Folks I am quite happy for Bunkerbarge to act as "Devils advocate" for as long as he likes but until he can provide evidence to the contrary I am sticking with the Dynamometer Car being fully lined as above, since the various photos show that is by far the most likely scheme. Fortunately it did not run on the Lambourn branch nor on Southern prewar branches so luckily I cannot justify one but if I could I would be very disappointed, bearing in mind the hype and the price. The only other point I find rather poor is that the wheels do not appear to have a proper cross sectional profile but appear absolutely flat and not painted. I have a fairly strong memory that the LNER often painted it's wheel centres "Teak" coloured so I would have thought that such a special coach as this would not only have white tyre edges but also brown centres. Any takers ??

[Dave]

Thank you Dave S.
I don't know what dia the carriage is, but I suspect it's a GER carriage, I have very little knowledge of GER carriages as they are outside my area of interest. I was going to start a page showing the carriages in the hope that some knowledgeable person might know. The carriage is a non corridor all 3rd
and is with 3 others at Wells in Norfolk, there are traces of lining on another carriage.

[Dave S]

and is with 3 others at Wells in Norfolk, there are traces of lining on another carriage.

Thanks Dave, well I never knew there were any there. Probably 4-5 years since I've been, but not seen or heard of anything there before.

Very Interesting.

[Dave]

Dave, have a look on old carriages in Norfolk for the others.
I have found the identity for one of them.

[adrianbs]

Hi Folks Manxman1831's comments that he cannot see any lining on the Dyno car when behind the Leader loco is perfectly right. If the coach was indeed partially repainted just after the Locomotive exchanges and lost it's lining at that point that would be correct. The Leader trials did not commence until 1949 so the coach would have been unlined. I had some ideas of getting an unlined 7mm model had it been possible to justify the locomotive but it did not really venture into the neck of the woods I am modelling. This is something of a pity as the Leader class was intended for the sort of work that M7s were doing. A Leader with a two coach push-pull set seems highly unlikely even if the loco had been a roaring success but I might have been tempted had it got further West.

[Manxman1831]

I must have looked at nearly two dozen published photographs (black and white, as well as colour), before stumbling on the ones in Robertson's Leader book. I stand by my statements of the earlier posting regarding the visual evidence.

As much as I might wish to plug £125 for the Rails version, I already have the D&S one that I finished in as preserved condition, to the best of my meagre abilities.

[adrianbs]

Hi Folks, The announcement of the new A4+Dynamometer car set for NCIM is interesting so I messaged them to ask if the D.C. would be fully lined. I await a reply and will pass it on if or when I get it. Of course since it was the staff at the NRM that claim it was unlined I assume they will not be disagreeing with that opinion. Should they say it WILL be lined that would rather put the cat among the pigeons and those who have bought an unlined one may be rather miffed. They may of course claim the set is in the condition now exhibited at the museum, should anyone complain about the authenticity, just as they did with the Dean Goods but that is not what their current advert claims, Just as the original Dean goods advert claimed the loco would be in the condition matching the livery in the late 20's, they then had to change the description, although the model certainly does not come near to being accurate for any livery or period of 2516.

[adrianbs]

Hi Folks Mike Trice's photos today on that "Other Place" just shows that "Fake News" is more powerful than the truth. Unsurprisingly NOT A WORD from NCIM to the question I posed in my last contribution. Perhaps the "Experts" at the NRM will be more careful about their comments in the future. Having been caught napping on the Dean goods does not seem to have made them any the wiser. One of the pictures Mike has just shown was on Rapido's own Blurb shown on the "Dark side" so I would have thought all this sequence of photos must have been seen by Rapido and Rails when research started. If so they can hardly claim they were not aware the coach was lined so why is the model not lined. If Hornby could produce Maunsell coaches 10 years ago to at least as good a standard as the DC and a quarter of the trade price there is clearly no technical impediment to correct lining or the other errors on the model also shown in the photos. All too late for those who have stumped up their £125, they will have little recourse to a refund having paid for what they have seen and not received something that differs from the adverts.

[Atlantic 3279]

Just by way of personal opinion;

I find it outstandingly easy, over on that other big forum, to spot two or three individuals in particular, maybe more, who through various contributions to various threads have demonstrated their clear belief that no wrong whatsoever can be done by either the staff of the NRM (who, I gather, now have to know about working in museums but who may or may not have any specialist knowledge of railway history and the railway relics in their care) or by the varied selection of manufacturers they use for the production of the NCIM models (who also may not have any strong foundation of previous study of the items they are asked to produce and the historical "context" of the real thing).

The regular intervention of those blindly faithful to defend wrong features of the models in question, and even to claim that those wrong features are right, does little to promote the spread of accurate knowledge....

[mick b]

I think one of them must be actually paid by the manufactures for each post he does.

[adrianbs]

Hi Folks I am sorry to say that I totally AGREE with what Atlantic has just said and that I also agree with the suspicions voiced by Mick B. I had a lengthy phone call from Steve Banks this morning following a couple of emails and the upshot was that he cannot recall ever being asked by Rapido to comment about the lining on the photos they were using of the 1938 run. Rapido quoted that Steve's article was inconclusive about lining so they decided to leave it off on the balance of probability, in other words they GUESSED. Had they asked Steve, as I did, what his opinion was they would have got an immediate "Yes it was lined" and they would also have discovered that Steve has a 1950 photo clearly showing the new livery post the 1948 exchanges which has NO LINING. That was, as Mike Trice has said, because the car was repainted at the end of 1948 into BR style lettering but now with UNLINED teak finish.
….The fact that Rapido relied on the museum saying that it had been unlined before they restored the LNER livery was the fatal mistake because in had only been unlined since the 1948 repaint. Unless you wish to run the coach after 1948, it was lined, but then you have to alter the lettering considerably to represent the BR style. Perhaps someone will show us what that was like ( How about it Mike ??) and maybe an enterprising transfer manufacturer will produce suitable replacement lettering and numbering. All we now need is a model of Leader to go with it !! As the saying goes "The one eyed man is king in the land of the blind " although I don't think this directly results from comments by one of the those at NCIM about the curators. Perhaps they should have sent him to Specsavers for a check first.

[greenglade]

Some interesting comments on manufacturers who fail to do their research properly...I recall first seeing Dapol's 3D modeling for their O gauge A3's and commenting in their thread about some mistakes....It's sad to see that the same mistakes are still present on the now released models..;(

Pete

[adrianbs]

Hi Greenglade Do you mean the Hattons/Heljan O GAUGE A3 ??

[greenglade]

Hi Greenglade Do you mean the Hattons/Heljan O GAUGE A3 ??

Ah...yes it looks like it, I thought they were Dapol but having googled 'Hatton's I can see that they have the same glaring mistakes...I recall at the time pointing out a few issues but can't recall them all now. I'd have to look much closer to list the errors....the biggest is the row of rivets around the rear of the smokebox. No A1/3 had these in service, this is an addition to 4472 back in the 80's when a new smokebox was made which looks little like the original Gresley SM's. The added rivets for one, the door ring for another. I suspect the modelers involved have relied too heavily on 4472/60103 as she is today and applied the same details to the others in the range, another issue is the cover plate around the snifting valve which is wrong.

Pete

[adrianbs]

Hi Folks Greenglade's comments about snaphead smokebox rivets are so true, very many models requires attention in this area as many locos were originally flush rivetted and gradually replacement units tended to be snaphead as it was easier. Some locos had many variants so perhaps one has to accept the "Full house" rule as it is easier to remove and repaint a black area than it is to add dozens of rivets. It would be nice if every combination could be catered for on the A3s but at that price there is only going to be one tool version. At least their A4 does not suffer the same problem !!
…..The classic is the Dean goods as the original smokebox is very different to the later one which is why Oxford's is so inaccurate.