2016 deadline day results – class 320/321/456 and class 21/29 projects

As promised we have been totting up the results and initial results are as follows:

Class 320/321/456 project: the levels of interest in this project are very promising and we are 99% certain that the project can begin design.  The only area that we are still finalising is the cost for the units – until we have a confirmed price we will not open orders. As soon as we have a price we will open orders for the 320/321 with a deposit option and with incentives for people who back us early.

Ordering for the 320 and 321 will ask for livery choices.  There will definitely be 321/4s in NSE and London Midland livery (possibly two numbers for each livery).  After that livery choices become more complicated as there is no overwhelming favourites so we will narrow down some of the livery choices and ask people to specify a second choice if they pick one of the non-guaranteed liveries – we will include both an undecorated option and a white primed option. Where we have listed livery A or livery B we have to make a decision as to which livery to offer as none of the livery choices were clear winners so we will try to narrow things down slightly. We will almost certainly have to drop certain liveries (including the attractive One livery!) as there was insufficient interest.  The non-guaranteed liveries are not set in stone yet so please don’t send us lots of emails complaining that we haven’t included your personal favourite!

Guaranteed liveries: NSE and London Midland

Non-guaranteed liveries: Great Eastern; Silverlink County; WYPTE Metro or Northern; First; one of the 320 liveries: Strathclyde PTE orange, SPT Carmine/Cream or Scotrail

Liveries likely to be dropped (to be confirmed): One; Abellio, National Express

We haven’t forgotten the 456 – the news on this was more mixed. Whilst there was interest in a 456 there was insufficient interest (by a reasonably convincing margin) to justify tooling the differences between a 321 and 456 (most notably the window differences in the 456 driving car that had a toilet (later removed but no window put in)). Please leave that with us for the time being as we consider the options.  It may be that we come back to people who expressed interest in a 456 to ask their views on various options.

Class 21/29 project

Unfortunately the results of the 21/29 project were not so promising with neither the class 21 or class 29 getting sufficient support to justify production as things stand.  To be frank both locos were significantly below production minimums.  Even in the situation where we only produced one of the classes (and customers had agreed to swap their interest to that class (it would have been a class 29 as it was approximately 50% more popular than a 21) we would still have been significantly below the minimum production run.

We will continue discussions with Dapol to encourage them to produce this missing loco and we will let our supporters if there is any progress.