Told you it was going to be good, didn’t we?

With Warley, the Winter Announcements and several deliveries arriving within a week or so, it's fair to say we've been busy.

We’ve been working solidly to get the initial renders and 3D prints across the line for quite a while now, and we were desperately trying to get them ready in time for the Winter Announcement date. It meant so much to us when we could finally make it public.

Your positive reaction to this announcement has made all the hard work and late nights worthwhile, so thanks to everyone who has been in touch with us, it means a lot. We would also like to thank our friends at Modelu who have pulled out all the stops and got us the Winter Announcement 3D prints in such an incredible turnaround time. It's fair to say we are in a tactile hobby, and their incredibly detailed prints make it much easier for our customers to visualise just how spectacular the final product will be.

Our friends at Modelu not only produced our 3D printed sample locos - but they also brought a display of bespoke figures to fit a range of our products.

The preparation for, and the actual event of Warley was an absolute riot, in more than one sense. We have also made progress on various other upcoming projects this month too, so fear not, we haven’t just concentrated on the shiny new things.

This month's newsletter is going to be very picture-heavy, and that’s for several reasons. Firstly, pictures show how much progress we are making much clearer than anything we can write, and secondly, Chris doesn’t fancy sitting in his hotel room after Warley thrashing out a lengthy newsletter when he could be having fun with the rest of the team, or sleeping.

If you are using a web-based email service such as Gmail, be sure to click on the link near the bottom of the email that says something like "[Message clipped] View entire message". That will ensure you don't miss any of this newsletter.

Let's dive in and take a look at these projects, and have a quick recap of

Warley while we are at it....

It's fair to say Great Western Railway modellers, preservation fans, and steam enthusiasts in general have a soft spot for the humble Prairie tank. Our upcoming Small Prairie, the 44XX, is no exception. With pre-orders coming in thick and fast, we were rather pleased to receive some lovely running engineering prototypes for it during our final preparations for Warley.

As this will be the most diverse ready-to-run Prairie ever built in OO gauge, it was nice to see how much the prototypes brought to life some of the subtle (and not so subtle) tooling differences we had been working on, and that will feature across the different versions. Although these samples don't cover every variant we are planning on releasing, it has given us, and in turn you, a great idea of what we can expect. As you can see, they are going to be immensely detailed! They will also run beautifully. We know these samples are not perfect and that there are some changes to be made - but they give a flavour of what is to come.

Quite nice aren’t they?

Don’t panic! The final versions won't be bright red. This was simply what colour plastic the factory had to hand when the samples were produced.

Well, if you like what you see and you fancy picking up the perfect loco to complement the B-set coaches and our ever-expanding range of GWR wagons, you can pre-order your 44XX directly from us or through any of our Official Retailers.

Though it appears we’ve simply gone to town on our OO range with a shrink gun to create these brilliant South Eastern and Chatham Railway freight sets in N Gauge, we can assure you that this isn’t the case. Our designers will tell you that it's not as simple as reducing the size of the drawing by a certain percentage and hitting go on the manufacturing. Looking at the detail of these titchy wagons we believe every word.

As you can see many hours have gone into re-scaling the four glorious freight vehicles for our first-ever steam-era N Gauge project, everything from rivets to axle boxes. To our knowledge, this is the first-ever 6-wheel ready-to-run N Gauge brake van too, so it's rewarding to know we are breaking new ground on a well-established scale. We were so proud of our OO SECR range and we are confident that their N Gauge counterparts will be up to the same high standard.

We have received some early engineering samples and were showing them off to the busy crowds at Warley last weekend. It was great to see your reactions to them, and the feedback we received has been fantastic. If these samples meet our expectations and pass our review process, we will move this project to the production phase as fast as possible. Fingers crossed this project is as successful as we are hoping. Should we make a success of it, we will continue to look at other N Gauge projects that can be converted from our existing OO range.

Do you have some other N Gauge product suggestions, or maybe you think one of our OO gauge projects would be awesome in N? Complete our product suggestion form here with as much detail, and you never know, we may just make what you are hoping for.

The SECR Freight Packs are still available to pre-order and you can either grab them from our website direct or from any of our Official Retailers.

The GNR Stirling Single No.1 project is moving faster than the Race to the North, and incredibly we already have a painted prototype of its lovely new small tender. Seeing it in all its colourful glory has brought back memories of its residency at the National Railway Museum for many of our team, as some (not all) of us are old enough to remember seeing it gleaming in York’s Great Hall.

We are currently reviewing this painted prototype, but we think pictures speak louder than words on this occasion. It looks awesome!

We hope you’ll agree that this pretty piece of railway history brought to life in model form is a must-have for pre-grouping and preservation fans alike. So, if you fancy adding this spectacular Stirling to your layout, or perhaps you were just unlucky enough to have missed out on the original Rapido Inc. release a few years ago, you will be pleased to hear that we are taking pre-orders now, and with order books closing on Monday 14th March you haven’t got long to get on board.

As usual, you can order your models direct from us or from any Official Retailer.

Being able to sit down and reflect on another successful Warley National Model Railway Exhibition is rather nice. It was tiring, at times chaotic, but it was incredible.

The months of preparation have all been worthwhile to ensure that we had the Winter Announcement in the public domain, and all the samples and 3D printed prototypes ready for you lot to drool over when the doors of the NEC were flung open. We each have our favourites in the Winter Announcement, but it was great to hear such positive things about all of them. Your happy smiling faces when you finally got to see them at the show have certainly made us feel like we've made the most exciting choices.

So many of you came up to us and thanked us for the models that we released over the last 12 months too. Suffice to say, it sounds like the Titfield Thunderbolt Deluxe pack and Buffet Car have gone down better than one of Mr Valentine's large Gin and Tonics.

From all of the Rapido Trains UK team, thank you so much to everyone who came to see us at the stall. Your feedback, thanks, and product suggestions were brilliant, and we look forward to seeing you all at the next exhibition!

We have begun taking pre-orders for all of the releases that we have teased, so if you saw something that caught your eye, head to our website to find out more.

Oh, and we took the pee a bit with the loo ads too - did you spot them?

In the week running up to the Winter Announcement we had a bit of fun teasing you on social media with what was to come, did you get any of them right?

A limbo tune for some vertically-challenged locos, or a single day to go for a Stirling surprise.

Anyway, in case you have been living in a cave for the last few weeks, or missed our amusing ads in the lavatory of the NEC for Warley last weekend, here are the Winter Announcements for 2023.

You can pre-order any of our Winter Announcement products on our website or from any Official Retailer.

As usual we have a number of photos showing the progress made in the factories this month.

The GWR Mink A (V14 & V16) vans have had their lettering applied and will shortly be entering the assembly stages

Alongside the vans the GWR O11 & O15 5-plank opens are also making great progress.

Don't forget that the Y4 Banana Vans are also in production and will arrive at the same time as the standard vans.

The Leyland Fleetlines are also progressing with all the body shells now sprayed ready for the next step.

Our 1907 RCH private owner wagons are all now in the paintshop and receiving their base colours. Next stop other painted details and lettering...

Lastly we have an example of the tooling for our forthcoming Port of Par Bagnall locomotives. Progress has been really swift with these diminutive shunters and we hope to have fully working samples in the New Year.

Every month we get asked - 'what's happening with the LB&SCR E1?'

Well the answer is - it's finally gone into tooling!

This has been a mammoth project and frankly a rather difficult one. This class of loco had so many variations that we have had to carefully work our way through the design to get as close as possible to the prototype. To give you the run down we will be tooling:

As soon as the samples arrive we will look to close the orderbook and move the project into the production phase as soon as possible.

Typically just as we were packing for Warley our OO gauge OAA wagons arrived in the warehouse. Sadly the EWS maroon versions (SKU 915017) have been delayed but all the other versions have been received and these are now being prepared ready for delivery.

Just as we were finishing this issue we received news that our W&U Train Packs and remaining Titfield Thunderbolt sets are due to arrive next week. We will carry out our checks and get these items shipped out to our retailers and customers as soon as we can!

As fellow hobbyists, we have our own reasons for purchasing models. This could be because it's prototypical for the railway company we are modelling, it’s a damn good deal, or it's just a gorgeous model and we can't say no to it.

Whatever it may be, often the timing of that purchase means very little to you at the time, other than the flash of excitement as you pre-order your next model train, or the strike of fear as you realise you are going to need to sneak it past your spouse.

Each of our projects must have a pre-order cut-off, at which point we move to the production phase of the project and begin making it. At this point we decide how many we are going to make, and your pre-orders have a bearing on how many are produced. We ensure that everyone who pre-orders one gets one, but unfortunately, some people miss the boat (or train), and we would like to avoid this where possible.

It's very easy for us to anecdotally say at what stage our customers take the plunge and pre-order our products, but that seems silly, so we thought why not ask you lot instead!

So, this month's thought of the month is a little different. It’s a very simple question, at what stage do you decide to pre-order one of our models?

By completing the survey above you will help shape the way we deliver and run our orderbook system. It only takes a minute and we would be grateful if you could find the time to spare.

Right, that covers everything we have to update you on at the moment, now time to get the old Christmas tree out of the loft and order Ernie (The Warehouse Westie) a funny little festive outfit.

Thanks for reading!