Rapdio have sent some pictures to give an idea of the work involved so far in manufacturing the Revolution/Rapido N-gauge Pendolino models.
Perhaps surprisingly, of the 9-car and 11-car complete trains on offer, the 11-car proved the most popular, meaning that the full production will comprise well over 10,000 separate vehicles.
Chassis units aside, each of these comprises a bodyshell, interior, glazing units, bogies, underframe detail, coupler assembly at each end, roof parts including etched fan covers and other small detail parts.
So the first job was simply to mould, etch or fabricate all these components.
Once moulding was completed, each bodyshell was inspected for flaws and those that passed then sorted into types.
Each standard Pendolino train set requires six different bodyshells: Driving car standard, Driving Car first, Trailer with disabled toilet, Trailer with standard toilet, Pantograph first and Pantograph Shop.
The Pantograph vehicles require additional work as all the insulator pots, mounting brackets and power conduits are separate parts too.
10,000 vehicles require 20,000 bogies, all of which again need to be inspected and then racked up ready for painting.
Here glazing parts are being removed from the sprues. The tinting on these parts can be seen clearly. Each sprue has two side glazing bars, four door window glazing units and six table lamp mouldings, though these are only needed in the first class cars. Even allowing just two seconds per part, and no breaks, it will have taken this worker ten solid eight-hour days to do all them all!
These are boxes and boxes of interior mouldings. There are different interiors for first and second class trailers with standard or disabled toilets, and for the shop car. Each of these bundles contains, according to the labels, 56 items, so what you can see in the images is probably enough interiors for around 1000 cars – so the full production run will comprise more than eight times this number (the driving cars do not feature interiors as they have the chassis) and, like the glazing and bogies, all will need to be removed from the sprues, checked for quality, trimmed of any slight flashing and then, where appropriate, racking up for painting.
It is amazing to think that all this has been achieved thanks to the support of everyone who decided to back this project and put their money in so, once again, we extend a huge thank-you to everyone who stepped up and made it happen.
Barring some unforseen problems, and based on the progress so far, we anticipate the finished models should be ready for shipping to the UK in another couple of months.
Then, having last year delivered the UK’s first ever successfully crowdfunded RTR model, we will be ready to deliver the UK’s first ever crowdfunded complete RTR model train!
(All photos courtesy of Rapido Trains)