For weeks Dapol have been teasing us with their secret new N gauge product to be released at Warley next weekend. Rumours of ’58, 59 and 60 reasons’ made some people wrongly suspect it would be one of those three classes of loco. Then came two more rumours, one that the RRP would be £140, which suggested a multiple unit rather than a loco, and that it would be suitable for both modern and steam era modellers. In a conversation with Grahame Hedges at the Crewe show a few days ago, we considered the possibilities of a Southern Region 4-CEP, or a Blue Pullman.
Today, they decided to let the cat out of the bag, and only one of those two rumours turned out to have any truth in it. The new model will be a Class 220 Virgin Voyager.
I’ve posted many, many times about the shortcomings of the full sized Voyager from the perspective of a traveller on this blog, but when viewed from the outside it’s both an iconic and ubiquitous train. They literally travel the length and breadth of the country; from Scotland to Cornwall, from Wales to Brighton. Very few present day main line locations would be complete without one.
Also coming up are a couple of interesting wagons, most notable of which is an intermodal ‘Spine’ wagon with containers, to go with the 66. The combination of the Voyager and the 66 with two or three decent modern wagons to go with it means that the modeller of the contemporary scene has the start of the ‘model railway in a box’ that GWR BLT modellers had from the start.
That wet splattering noise you hear is the exploding heads of certain members of the kettle brigade. One or two of their number were still pontificating up to a few hours earlier that there was no way that Dapol would be doing any modern multiple units because there was clearly no demand for anything wasn’t a locomotive, preferably something that ran before 1968. And anyway the Voyager only runs in one livery, and Dapol will only do things in 57 livery variations. The mystery Dapol product was ‘obviously’ going to be a large tender loco. Let’s hope they accept the Q1, Dapol’s next model, as an acceptable consolation prize.
Some superb idea’s coming in N – if we are to believe their descriptions you’re getting an IKA Megafret flat (the wagon under the Tesco boxes), and FEA-B twin spine, and the KIA tiphook coil carrier (guessing the prototype as that one due to it sharing bogies with the cargowaggon)
You lucky lucky things you. You still can’t do a OO freightliner train as none of the current wagons are available RTR, and only one current type is available as a kit – with the FEA plus the pocket and KFA previously made (can’t think of the company, sorry) you have a feasible RTR Freightliner train.
It’s nearly enough to make you want to change scale…
Hmmm – thunking more.
A two unit container spine could also mean the FCA – which would give the ‘american’ bogie that goes under the ‘Nissen hut’ steel carriers…
An FCA would be much less useful than the FEA to my mind, being EWS only for a start.
As far as I know, the steel carrier will use the same bogies as the recently released Cargowaggon (yes, a proper British scale Cargowaggon, something else you don’t have in 4mm!), so I’m guessing it’s the older version. Bachmann have announced the Nissen Hut wagon.
The pocket wagon is done by ATM (Bernard Taylor and Ben Ando). The KFA hasn’t yet appeared, and is now indefinitely delayed.
I think N is increasingly going to be the principle scale for big-time main line modelling, leaving 00 for shunting planks and steam age branch lines.
You could well be right, this is exactly the sort of ‘splurge’ of releases that gets folk thinking and ends up with layouts being built.
Just seen a post that the Bachy HTA in N is out as well…
Expect to see lots of bankrupt N-scalers at Warley!