ETA on reissued N gauge 33/0 and 73?

[Lacathedrale]

Does anyone know when these are likely to be released? I realise now that I pre-ordered Burma Star in 2022 - as far as I know it’s still hasn’t been released. I added a pre-order for a Gatwick express 73 recently too.

 

I’m not in a massive rush, but it will be great to have an idea of when these may become available? 

[Kaput]

No idea about the 73 (didn't even realise there was another run of them planned) but I recall a post about the 33's being held up till later in the year.

[Lacathedrale]

Thank you @Kaput - the 73's are up for preorder with Rails - should I take the fact you're not aware of them to be that this might be a speculative listing?

[Kaput]

While I'm not exactly an authority on Dapol's plans if a retailer such as Rails had something up for preorder I'd assume it was based on an announcement of some sort.

 

In an ideal world they've been held up for some slight retooling to give them a bit of weight but thats wishful thinking.

[bluedepot]

hopefully an upgraded 73 will appear! 

 

[Lacathedrale]

On 02/06/2024 at 20:49, Kaput said:

While I'm not exactly an authority on Dapol's plans if a retailer such as Rails had something up for preorder I'd assume it was based on an announcement of some sort.

 

In an ideal world they've been held up for some slight retooling to give them a bit of weight but thats wishful thinking.

Yes I have the older split chassis 73 which is a bit of a chunky lad and though the duties aren’t onerous it would be nice if the Dapol was good rather than just being “the only option” !

[Roy L S]

On 04/06/2024 at 09:00, bluedepot said:

hopefully an upgraded 73 will appear! 

 

Given Dapol's propensity to re-use existing chassis under recently announced new tool/upgraded loco bodies for diesel and electric models (obviously on cost grounds) it would make me doubt that there will be any upgrades to the 73 chassis, possibly a tweak or two to the body tooling but not the chassis. Of course I will very happily be proved wrong in this regard.

 

Roy

[Adam1701D]

I have updated the Dapol Digest with some of the latest release estimates for some of our N Gauge range.

[Lacathedrale]

Thank you @Adam1701D - where do I find that?

 

Gaugemaster said they had no ETA at all for the 73 though they hoped 'this year'

[JR_P]

On 06/06/2024 at 10:51, Roy L S said:

Given Dapol's propensity to re-use existing chassis under recently announced new tool/upgraded loco bodies for diesel and electric models (obviously on cost grounds) it would make me doubt that there will be any upgrades to the 73 chassis

Which if they don’t, I feel like the 73 might be ripe pickings for someone else, with a high quality chassis/mechanism (with N18 or E24 and sound provision) and a tooling suite to accommodate the modern variants…. whether there is an underlying demand, I don’t know - from what I gather, it can be difficult to convince us modellers to ‘trade up’ for enhanced/more modern examples of existing models….

 

The current Dapol 73 is terrible, especially the chassis…. dense plastic surrounding a motor - nice one Dapol - did no one think about how that motor would dissipate heat???! I had one from a previous batch - innards melted on run-in; the replacement the same; the replacement of that also the same…. when it wasn’t “third time lucky” for me, I called it quits and requested a refund…. I presume the 73 was a Dave Jones model and we all know he’s had some ‘novel ideas’….

[Roy L S]

21 minutes ago, JR_P said:

Which if they don’t, I feel like the 73 might be ripe pickings for someone else, with a high quality chassis/mechanism (with N18 or E24 and sound provision) and a tooling suite to accommodate the modern variants…. whether there is an underlying demand, I don’t know - from what I gather, it can be difficult to convince us modellers to ‘trade up’ for enhanced/more modern examples of existing models….

 

The current Dapol 73 is terrible, especially the chassis…. dense plastic surrounding a motor - nice one Dapol - did no one think about how that motor would dissipate heat???! I had one from a previous batch - innards melted on run-in; the replacement the same; the replacement of that also the same…. when it wasn’t “third time lucky” for me, I called it quits and requested a refund…. I presume the 73 was a Dave Jones model and we all know he’s had some ‘novel ideas’….

The original non-DCC 73 was Dapol's first N Gauge loco (2006 I think) it had a cast metal chassis block and ran quite nicely. As far as I am aware it pre-dated Dave Jones's involvement. The swap to the plastic chassis for the DCC ready 73 which was much later and may well have been during his tenure - I believe they did similar for the 66's - I have an original GBRF one with metal chassis but believe later DCC ready ones have a plastic based chassis. Using a plastic moulding makes isolating the motor terminals from the chassis simpler for DCC operation and is probably cheaper, but I have to agree it seems less than ideal if a motor gets hot and is far less effective as regards tractive weight.

 

Would a new from the "ground up" 73 sell well enough? Not sure personally given the sheer volume of 73s (original and later chassis) in different liveries that have hit the market over the years (including the Gaugemaster Collection ones) but they are long lived and there have been recently modified ones not previously covered. There are probably a number of other locos that I could see being more attractive from a sales perspective.

 

Were Dapol to do any kind of upgrade I could see it being limited to the body and possibly a Next 18 PCB.

 

Roy

Edited June 9 by Roy L S
word removed

[Steadfast]

3 hours ago, JR_P said:

The current Dapol 73 is terrible, especially the chassis…. dense plastic surrounding a motor - nice one Dapol - did no one think about how that motor would dissipate heat???! I had one from a previous batch - innards melted on run-in; the replacement the same; the replacement of that also the same…. when it wasn’t “third time lucky” for me, I called it quits and requested a refund…. I presume the 73 was a Dave Jones model and we all know he’s had some ‘novel ideas’….

The plastic chassis retool is an abomination, hopefully in the intervening years some weight has been shoehorned in. They did a twin pack in GB with a dummy, it would barely haul the dummy let alone a train too. When asked at a show about it, old DJ was adamant there's no fault with the model and protested far too much, before ignoring me and other customers with further questions. That was strike one on my radar, which thankfully meant I never got drawn in by his later antics.

 

Jo

Edited June 9 by Steadfast

[woodenhead]

4 hours ago, Roy L S said:

The original non-DCC 73 was Dapol's first N Gauge loco (2006 I think) it had a cast metal chassis block and ran quite nicely.

I thought the 14xx was the first Dapol N gauge loco followed by the 45xx.

[Roy L S]

4 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

I thought the 14xx was the first Dapol N gauge loco followed by the 45xx.

No, the first two models were definitely the 73 and 14xx, I am pretty sure it was in that order but it was many years ago now so am happy to be corrected. The 45xx came after that, then the sequence of releases becomes more of a blur in my memory, possibly M7 was next..

 

Regards

 

Roy

[woodenhead]

Looks like 14xx first (and Dapol site says this too), then 73 then 45xx.

 

The internet (Google) is so sales focussed these days that it's hard to find the information, thank goodness then that Rails bought the Hattons name/site and kept that database.

[D9020 Nimbus]

Agree with your comments on Google. With the sponsored links and "people also search for" and other sales related links which go nowhere, I'm finding it increasingly useless. You can make things a little better by clicking on the link "More…" to the right of the search box when the results are shown.

 

If only there was a good alternative — the only real one is Bing, which is used by Duck Duck Go as well.