Our friends at Rapido Trains have sent us a short video showing a production Pendolino being put through its paces having arrived in Canada this week.
Rapido put the model to work on their gradient test layout – a ruthless rollercoaster of Kato Unitrack with a sharp 4% (1 in 25) slope on the far side of the loop.
The V-transition between the two gradients is the equivalent of hitting an 8% (1 in 12.5) gradient from the flat, as this image shows.
The model under test is not quite the correct configuration, for some reason it has two standard trailers deputising for the pantograph cars at the #3 and #9 positions; we put this down to over-excitement when getting the models out of the box…
You can see the complete video here: IMG_6068
It’s also not quite a fully finished model – the cars were plucked from the assembly line before some of the final tampo printed numbers and lettering were added so it could be rushed to Rapido HQ for testing.
Customer models are now having those details added and should be ready for shipping toward the end of August.
Allowing for a 6-week voyage we are hoping to have them with our customers by mid October.