Oxford Rail announces - OO gauge GWR Dean Goods

[The Johnster]

Eh?

 

I was possibly hanged in a previous existence (it would explain my aversion to wearing ties) but I am hung in this one...

 

It was funny when I first thought of it, not so sure now.

[Roy Langridge]

Properly pronounced "hangedd".

 

Whats your position on Union Jacks?

Fly it the right way up is my position. These patriotic people who fly it upside down do annoy me.

 

Anyhow, coming back to topic, any thoughts on the DG and P4? Some comments seem to indicate there may be room.

 

Roy

Edited June 29, 2017 by Roy Langridge

[Quarryscapes]

Fly it the right way up is my position. These patriotic people who fly it upside down do annoy me.

 

Anyhow, coming back to topic, any thoughts on the DG and P4? Some comments seem to indicate there may be room.

 

Roy

 

Wouldn't have thought anyone of a P4 mindset would give it a sideways glance. 

[Edwardian]

Wouldn't have thought anyone of a P4 mindset would give it a sideways glance. 

 

Agree.

 

With limited time and skills, I try to base projects on OO RTR wherever I can, but even I am despairing of this model and having to face the prospect of acquiring the far greater skills necessary for etched kit construction in order to acheive a decent representation of the DG.

 

If I was a finescale modeller of the P4 ilk, why would I ever consider trying to make a silk purse out of this?

[Roy Langridge]

Wouldn't have thought anyone of a P4 mindset would give it a sideways glance.

Mainly out of interest to see if Oxford have considered designs that allow conversion of whether they leave it impossible without a new chassis.

 

Roy

[Guest Midland Mole @ Footplate]

OR76DG001 Dean Goods 2301 Class 0-6-0 '2309' Great Western Lined Green is now in stock with us.

 

 

Alex @ Footplate

Edited June 29, 2017 by Midland Mole @ Footplate

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Wheel is 2'7" Radius over tread - splasher is 2'9" radius (give or take a bit, I only have a small undimensioned drawing to go off) There simply isn't the clearance for a plastic scale splasher. 

 Oh yes there is, as I and other posters have pointed out. To repeat, here's why.

 

The locomotive's mechanism parts - even those from Swindon  -  wear significantly in service. The tread can easily lose an inch in radius, and this combined with wear in bearing crowns and necessary adjustments for leaf springs going 'soft' is then compensated for by lowering the axle centre with respect to the frames. The external form of the splasher may be retained at correct radial dimension by putting the thicker than prototype moulded wall thickness 'inside', effectively in space won by modelling the wheels and other unseen 'notional' mechanism parts in a worn state and position combination.

 

This is perfectly legitimate, in that it really happened on the prototype, the in-service machine having a permitted range of deviation from the nominal dimensions of the new components caused by wear, with designed provision for adjustment to keep the loco within gauge and height critical components such as couplers and buffers within a working range for a safe match with all the other stock. If my recollection is correct, the permitted range of overall height change on Swindon locomotives was 2.5", almost a millimetre in 4mm/ft: and happily that's plenty for concealment of a moulded wall with curent injection mould tooling standards.

[Talltim]

 Oh yes there is, as I and other posters have pointed out. To repeat, here's why.

 

The locomotive's mechanism parts - even those from Swindon  -  wear significantly in service. The tread can easily lose an inch in radius, and this combined with wear in bearing crowns and necessary adjustments for leaf springs going 'soft' is then compensated for by lowering the axle centre with respect to the frames. The external form of the splasher may be retained at correct radial dimension by putting the thicker than prototype moulded wall thickness 'inside', effectively in space won by modelling the wheels and other unseen 'notional' mechanism parts in a worn state and position combination.

 

This is perfectly legitimate, in that it really happened on the prototype, the in-service machine having a permitted range of deviation from the nominal dimensions of the new components caused by wear, with designed provision for adjustment to keep the loco within gauge and height critical components such as couplers and buffers within a working range for a safe match with all the other stock. If my recollection is correct, the permitted range of overall height change on Swindon locomotives was 2.5", almost a millimetre in 4mm/ft: and happily that's plenty for concealment of a moulded wall with curent injection mould tooling standards.

Especially using OO, where the flanges don't have to be in the splashers at all

[Derails Models]

Indeed they are now hitting the shelves...it's a lovely runner especially at slow speed, nice and weighty too, had one out to test this morning Apparently under 30 left at Oxford when I enquired so selling fast too

[Edwardian]

Agree.

 

With limited time and skills, I try to base projects on OO RTR wherever I can, but even I am despairing of this model and having to face the prospect of acquiring the far greater skills necessary for etched kit construction in order to achieve a decent representation of the DG.

 

If I was a finescale modeller of the P4 ilk, why would I ever consider trying to make a silk purse out of this?

 

I am forced to make a public apology and retraction.

 

In response to my post above I have received the following, rather angry, message:

 

I totally disagree about this making a very nice P4 Model !!  All you need is a new loco body, a new chassis and probably a new 3000gall tender or at least an upgrade to the 2500gall version. I believe Brassmasters (ex Finney) make an excellent conversion kit ..... .   

 

 

 Oh yes there is, as I and other posters have pointed out. To repeat, here's why.

 

The locomotive's mechanism parts - even those from Swindon  -  wear significantly in service. The tread can easily lose an inch in radius, and this combined with wear in bearing crowns and necessary adjustments for leaf springs going 'soft' is then compensated for by lowering the axle centre with respect to the frames. The external form of the splasher may be retained at correct radial dimension by putting the thicker than prototype moulded wall thickness 'inside', effectively in space won by modelling the wheels and other unseen 'notional' mechanism parts in a worn state and position combination.

 

This is perfectly legitimate, in that it really happened on the prototype, the in-service machine having a permitted range of deviation from the nominal dimensions of the new components caused by wear, with designed provision for adjustment to keep the loco within gauge and height critical components such as couplers and buffers within a working range for a safe match with all the other stock. If my recollection is correct, the permitted range of overall height change on Swindon locomotives was 2.5", almost a millimetre in 4mm/ft: and happily that's plenty for concealment of a moulded wall with curent injection mould tooling standards.

 

Especially using OO, where the flanges don't have to be in the splashers at all

 

Though to some extent there is a legitimate trade-off between wheel size and splasher size, the choice Oxford faced (and had they more experience, they might have realised this) seems essentially to have been this:

 

(1) Represent a newly tyred wheel (which will be right some of the time) and an over-sized splasher (which will be wrong all of the time); or,

 

(2) Represent an in-service wheel with worn tyres (which will be right some of the time) and a correctly-sized splasher (which will be right all of the time).

 

One might be tempted here to form the thought "no-brainer"

 

Even if this were felt to be unattainable for some reason, Mainline, for all its cruder standards, managed significantly smaller splashers.

 

I am struggling with the idea that, if compromise was necessary at all in this case, this was the best compromise available to Oxford. 

 

So far, though, I am looking at a complete replacement body, probably a replacement tender (though not so much because of accuracy concerns) and now re-wheeling the thing to make a reason representation for my purposes.  Bit of a depressing conclusion.  

[Hroth]

Well, my pre-ordered Dean Goods arrived from Rails of Sheffield this morning, a tad under £90 inc delivery.

 

Yes, it has all the faults that have been identified over the past 18 months since it was announced as being of this world BUT its pretty, smaller than I'd realised (not having had either the Mainline or Hornby incarnations) and it runs well. At normal viewing distances, most of the errors are relatively unnoticable. It'll do.

 

Thing is, if Hornby had re-issued their Dean Goods, it would probably have amounted to a re-engineered loco chassis for loco drive and the existing tooling for the body and tender, ending up with a huge heap of coal to disguise the non-existent tender drive, a level of detail thats 20 years out of date and a price-point close to the similarly treated 4F and 2P reissues, which were rather too expensive for what they were, and are now available at a Liverpool retailer at bargain prices. Of course, a new Hornby Dean Goods might have ended up in a similar situation!

 

As it is, currently s/h prices for Mainline/Dapol?Hornby Dean Goods a the aforementioned retailer range from £38 (for what appears to be a dying mechanism) to £77. 

 

Better buys than the Oxford Rail model?

[Guest Midland Mole]

As soon as I held this loco this morning and had a chance to look it over, I decided to break my rule and buy a GW loco (second time I've done that ). It is such a pretty little thing, and not knowing anything about the real locos any faults it might have just sail straight over my head.

Alex

Edited June 29, 2017 by Midland Mole

[Edwardian]

As soon as I held this loco this morning and had a chance to look it over, I decided to break my rule and buy a GW loco (second time I've done that ).

 

 

Do not underestimate the power of the Dark Side

[Guest 7007GreatWestern]

As soon as I held this loco this morning and had a chance to look it over, I decided to break my rule and buy a GW loco (second time I've done that ). It is such a pretty little thing...

Alex

 

Resistance is futile......

[The Johnster]

 Oh yes there is, as I and other posters have pointed out. To repeat, here's why.

 

The locomotive's mechanism parts - even those from Swindon  -  wear significantly in service. The tread can easily lose an inch in radius, and this combined with wear in bearing crowns and necessary adjustments for leaf springs going 'soft' is then compensated for by lowering the axle centre with respect to the frames. The external form of the splasher may be retained at correct radial dimension by putting the thicker than prototype moulded wall thickness 'inside', effectively in space won by modelling the wheels and other unseen 'notional' mechanism parts in a worn state and position combination.

 

This is perfectly legitimate, in that it really happened on the prototype, the in-service machine having a permitted range of deviation from the nominal dimensions of the new components caused by wear, with designed provision for adjustment to keep the loco within gauge and height critical components such as couplers and buffers within a working range for a safe match with all the other stock. If my recollection is correct, the permitted range of overall height change on Swindon locomotives was 2.5", almost a millimetre in 4mm/ft: and happily that's plenty for concealment of a moulded wall with curent injection mould tooling standards.

 

At Canton, the practice was to use engines newly released from works for the fast up expresses to Paddington, keeping them smart in the 50s, and to use ones that had done a bit of mileage and were coming up to overhaul for downline trains to Swansea or points west.  The obvious advantage was that the shiniest engines ran to 'that London', but a major advantage of running engines that had lost up to 2.5" off their driving wheel diameter (taking it below 6' in the case of the Britannias) downline was that they were significantly better on the banks, especially Stormy and Skewen.

[The Johnster]

As soon as I held this loco this morning and had a chance to look it over, I decided to break my rule and buy a GW loco (second time I've done that ). It is such a pretty little thing, and not knowing anything about the real locos any faults it might have just sail straight over my head.

Alex

Be one of us. One of us, one of us...

[bgman]

 

Found this tonight which may help anyone interested in purchasing the latest last loco.

Don't think I will be purchasing it.

[Edwardian]

 

Found this tonight which may help anyone interested in purchasing the latest last loco.

Don't think I will be purchasing it.

 

Well that's 7 minutes of my life I'll never get back again.

 

His ignorance of the prototype even exceeds Oxford's!  Presumably Oxford's ideal customer. 

 

I was struck afresh by many of the hideous features of this model, and felt that the black underside of the boiler was particularly noticeable from a number of angles, as our host waggled his latest purchase in front of the camera.

 

Not entirely sure what that added to the store of human knowledge, but I'm glad he liked it!

[amdaley]

Well that's 7 minutes of my life I'll never get back again.

 

His ignorance of the prototype even exceeds Oxford's!  Presumably Oxford's ideal customer. 

 

I was struck afresh by many of the hideous features of this model, and felt that the black underside of the boiler was particularly noticeable from a number of angles, as our host waggled his latest purchase in front of the camera.

 

Not entirely sure what that added to the store of human knowledge, but I'm glad he liked it!

 

Well it confirmed what I thought I was going to do about one of these.

Stay well clear I will.

[GWR8700]

Confirms my suspicions of an open goal missed by Oxford.  A shame for us but more of a blow for them ultimately.  I hope that they learn from this and their next model is reasonably accurate and a success.

Edited June 30, 2017 by GWR8700

[lofty1966]

Confirms my suspicions of an open goal missed by Oxford.  A shame for us but more of a blow for them ultimately.  I hope that they learn from this and their next model is reasonably accurate and a success.

Didn't we say this about the last one ?

[mikeharvey22]

Oh yes there is, as I and other posters have pointed out. To repeat, here's why.

 

The locomotive's mechanism parts - even those from Swindon  -  wear significantly in service. The tread can easily lose an inch in radius, and this combined with wear in bearing crowns and necessary adjustments for leaf springs going 'soft' is then compensated for by lowering the axle centre with respect to the frames. The external form of the splasher may be retained at correct radial dimension by putting the thicker than prototype moulded wall thickness 'inside', effectively in space won by modelling the wheels and other unseen 'notional' mechanism parts in a worn state and position combination.

 

This is perfectly legitimate, in that it really happened on the prototype, the in-service machine having a permitted range of deviation from the nominal dimensions of the new components caused by wear, with designed provision for adjustment to keep the loco within gauge and height critical components such as couplers and buffers within a working range for a safe match with all the other stock. If my recollection is correct, the permitted range of overall height change on Swindon locomotives was 2.5", almost a millimetre in 4mm/ft: and happily that's plenty for concealment of a moulded wall with curent injection mould tooling standards.

Be careful what you say about losing the odd millimetre or two off wheel diameter. Over on the Carflat thread it is another big Oxford issue. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/111578-oxford-announce-carflat-additional-liveries-and-sound-options/?p=2768893

[Legend]

Well I thought it was a reasonable review. The reviewer clearly is not as well versed in all things Dean compared to some on here, but in that respect he is probably more typical of the rest of us. I thought it looked ok if not a game changing loco . One point that this review highlighted to me , but not mentioned in review , was the black underside to the boiler , which to me is pretty obvious and jars when you look at it . Mentioned were the green handrails , which also slightly spoil the look of it. So not convinced. I don't want a Gw lined version, will wait for the unlined one and see if that's better, but suspect it will be same spec.

[No Decorum]

I’m another of “the rest of us” and I am grateful to the experts here. If a loco runs well, I will forgive it a lot and this one looks as if it runs extremely well. However, the elaborate livery makes, or should make, this model a bit of a show stopper. I think, like Legend, I shall wait for the plain unlined green one which at least will draw less attention to itself. It is a pity because I’m a sucker for pre-grouping.

 

Oxford, it has been observed, has been prompted by the NRM to make corrections. I cannot see that Oxford would use one tooling for its own models and another for the NRM special. Livery details apart, this is what we shall get.

 

According to Derails Models, the models are selling quickly, so I doubt that Oxford is going to bother to make changes. It would be nice to think that everything would be ironed out if Oxford were to produce a round-topped version but even here, I should think that the slides have been made or provided for if it is going to be done. We’re stuck with it.

[Quarryscapes]

I’m another of “the rest of us” and I am grateful to the experts here. If a loco runs well, I will forgive it a lot and this one looks as if it runs extremely well. However, the elaborate livery makes, or should make, this model a bit of a show stopper. I think, like Legend, I shall wait for the plain unlined green one which at least will draw less attention to itself. It is a pity because I’m a sucker for pre-grouping.

 

Oxford, it has been observed, has been prompted by the NRM to make corrections. I cannot see that Oxford would use one tooling for its own models and another for the NRM special. Livery details apart, this is what we shall get.

 

According to Derails Models, the models are selling quickly, so I doubt that Oxford is going to bother to make changes. It would be nice to think that everything would be ironed out if Oxford were to produce a round-topped version but even here, I should think that the slides have been made or provided for if it is going to be done. We’re stuck with it.

 

The NRM version HAS BEEN CHANGED.  Anyone who bothers to take a look at it can see that, and we still don't know the full extent as it was just a pre production sample showing one new part on an otherwise unchanged model.

 

Whether Oxford will use up supplies of existing parts on their own range then switch to the revised NRM pattern for their own brand models who knows. I personally suspect that they will, they have after all modified the 7 plank tooling.