Revolution Trains had a busy weekend on stand 34 at The International N Gauge Show at Leamington.
TINGS, as it’s known, is arguably the most important show of the year for the N Gauge community, and it’s the place to meet our supporters and and update them on progress.
As well as announcing our two new models (see news items below) we had the latest sample of our upcoming Pendolino on show.
In full 11-car mode we were able to play with the DCC Sound functions and demonstrate the approved couplers with working electrical connections and the customer-fit light bars.
The coupler problem has taken three iterations, each taking several weeks of redesign, head scratching and testing.
We are now finalising some of the chassis performance issues around the interface between the DCC Sound chip and the motor performance, and then it’ll be time for final painted samples and production.
The most common question all weekend was “when will the model be here?”
The honest answer is we don’t know exactly how long it will take the factory to manufacture 10,000 separate vehicles. Our best guess is that customers will start receiving models in Q1 next year, meaning that from when we first laser scanned the train to delivery will be a fraction under two years.
Compared to others, and not withstanding some of the development issues, we feel Rapido have done a pretty amazing job to get this far so quickly, and we are very happy with the quality they have achieved.
The models are still available to order (that was the second most popular question asked all weekend!) but the order book will probably be closing in the next 6 weeks or so.
Production versions of all our TEA tankers – plucked from the production line and air-freighted in from China for the show – were also on display as the main batch was preparing to leave the factory for the journey to Britain – and then on to the layouts of our supporters.
Indeed, on Sunday Rapido emailed us an image showing the entire production leaving the factory ready for the journey west:
It feels like we didn’t stop talking all weekend (and by Sunday evening we all had sore throats) but it was great to meet so many existing customers – and hopefully draw in a few new ones.
Our next show will be the Warley National Model Railway Exhibition at the NEC on Saturday November 26th and Sunday November 27th.
Come and see us when we will be offering at least two new items including our next powered model.