Rapido Trains UK Special Announcement No.4

©2024 Rapido Trains Ltd

Rapido Trains UK is evolving pre-grouping passenger stock in an exciting new way and is proud to announce that we will be adding a diverse collection of pre-grouping coaches to our range, with the new OO Gauge 48' Evolution bogie coaches.

With numerous locos and a boatload of era-appropriate wagons under our belt, the pre-grouping era has become a quintessentially ‘Rapido’ thing, so we thought it was about time we produced some suitable coaches.

There is such a variety of coaching prototypes in the pre-grouping era that it has been impossible for our industry to make 100% accurate models for all of them. We are filling this gap with a selection of generic 48’ bogie coaches, each detailed with an array of key features that modellers associate with their railway of choice. We have dubbed this exciting new coach project ‘Evolution’.

So what tooling does this entail?

The coaches’ distinctive roofs were one of the most notable features of the era, so we have included elliptical, arc and clerestory designs in the tooling, and made the roofs easily removable so that you can fit figures into your coaches should you wish. Each roof style will also include fittings for either gas or electric lighting.

We have added some rather nice interior detailing too, including luggage racks, picture frames on compartment dividers, and a fully-detailed Guard's Van/Luggage Compartment. There is also a multitude of separately-fitted parts to bring the coaches to life, including door and grab handles and passenger emergency alarm “butterflies” on one end. 

As you can see, we have designed the interiors so that we can print period-appropriate moquette on the seats!

All Evolution coaches will include fitted internal working lighting controlled by our magnetic magic wand, making it much easier to see these lovely details.

To complete the appearance of different gas and electric lighting fittings, the relevant models will feature separately-fitted parts for battery and regulator boxes, a dynamo, roof-mounted gas lamps, plumbing, and gas tanks on the underframes.

Battery boxes and gas tanks aren’t the only external details below the frame. Each Evolution coach will feature Fox-pattern bogies fitted with electrical pickups. Some versions will feature extra footboards on the bogies and there are also additional central lower footboards on some designs.

Finally, each coach is fitted with NEM pockets mounted on kinematic mechanisms and has optional close coupling bars (that look like vacuum pipes!) included. 

These coaches will be available in 3-car multipacks (RRP £199.95), featuring one of each body version. Alongside the multipacks, single coaches (RRP £69.95) will also be offered to modellers who wish to extend their rakes. These single vehicles will each have an alternative running number to their multipack counterparts.

Batch 1 of project Evolution features the following liveries:

South Eastern & Chatham Railway

Midland Railway

London & North Western Railway

Great Western Railway

Great Central Railway

Great Northern Railway

Longmoor Military Railway

London, Brighton & South Coast

Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway

Further batches are planned and will include other pre-grouping, grouping and nationalisation era liveries, with the potential of future additional tooling for further vehicles. With a growing number of pre-grouping locomotives available from Rapido we are sure that these will find a home on many of your layouts!

Our Evolution coaches are currently in tooling and we hope to have engineering prototypes available for inspection at the National Festival of Railway Modelling at the NEC in November.

The order book is open, and you can order yours directly or from any of our Official Retailers.