Description
Rapido Trains UK's 'Evolution' range is a family of generic 48ft non-corridor bogie coaches for the pre-Grouping era. Instead of copying one exact diagram, each livery is tooled with the features modellers link to that company, such as its roof profile, gas or electric lighting and footboard arrangement, so a believable period train can be formed for railways that have never had ready-to-run coaches. Batch 2 adds ten more liveries from across Britain, each offered as Brake Third, Third, Composite, First and Full Brake singles plus a three-coach pack.
This coach wears Metropolitan Railway teak. The Metropolitan opened the world's first underground railway in 1863 and later pushed far beyond London into Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, where steam-hauled trains of varnished teak stock carried passengers between the city and the growing 'Metro-land' suburbs. The singles carry different running numbers from the 978119 three-coach pack, so they can be added to it to lengthen a rake.
The OO gauge model has an easily removed roof so figures can be added to the interior, which is detailed with luggage racks, picture frames on the compartment dividers and passenger alarm 'butterflies' at one end. Working interior lighting is switched on and off with Rapido's magnetic wand, and a potentiometer on the lighting board lets you set the brightness, from bright enough to show off the interior to a dimmer, more period-correct glow. Being an electrically lit coach, it carries separately fitted battery boxes, regulator box and dynamo on the underframe. Fox pattern bogies are fitted with electrical pickups.
This version: First No.642 in Metropolitan Railway teak livery.
Features include:
• Arc roofs
• Electric lighting
• Fox pattern bogies
• Full internal and external detail
• Working lighting, switched with Rapido's magnetic wand and dimmable via an on-board potentiometer
• NEM coupling pockets with kinematic coupling mechanism
• Optional 'vacuum pipe' close coupling bar
DCC: Not applicable. This is unpowered coaching stock; the interior lighting draws power from the track through the bogie pickups.
Pre-order now. Release date to be confirmed. Images are pre-production renders and the finished model may differ. Engineering samples have been received by Rapido.
