This month has been a funny one for us if we are honest!

Andy has been gallivanting around the globe and has had an awesome holiday in the States, which was coupled with a visit to our lovely Canadian counterparts at Rapido Trains Inc. This included Andy representing Rapido Trains UK at our first North American Model railway show. As Andy has only just returned to the office as this issue goes to press, we will leave it until next month to fill you in with all the details.

A few of the lads managed to escape the office and head West, meeting our Western Region contingent of Rapido staff at the Bristol Model Railway Exhibition, where they were showing off lots of what we have to come. Chris M. and Mark met up with Corwin and Dan T. and the four of them had a smashing time.

Those of us that haven’t been holidaying or heading West have been knuckling down and getting on with our eclectic mix of projects and adding some key updates to our website, we will go into these in a bit more detail throughout the newsletter.

Finally, we have had numerous samples arrive for examination of both announced and unannounced upcoming projects, so despite the dispersed nature of everyone at Rapido this month, it's fair to say we have been rather busy.

We are pleased to say that Batch 2 of the Leyland Fleetline buses has been completed, and was recently loaded onto a shipping container bound for the UK. As it stands, we cannot give you an exact date for dispatch until we have the models in hand and are able to carefully check them over. Based on these absolutely gorgeous painted prototypes that we were sent recently, we are confident they are going to go down very well. 

You can still pre-order Batch 2 of the Leyland Fleetline buses and find out more about them by clicking on the link below.

Andy goes on holiday and the staff start misbehaving... This West Midlands Driver Under Instruction version has been produced as an exclusive for TTC Diecast.

Tailgating right up behind the Leyland Fleetlines are the sleek Bedford OB coaches. 

Another exclusive for TTC Diecast - a rather splendid Southdown livery Bedford OB.

As well as our Fleetline prototypes, we received a selection of completed painted prototypes alongside other painted bodyshells for the Bedford OB Coach, including the infamous Pearce and Crump livery.

Wrapping up our Titfield Thunderbolt 70th Anniversary Range is the Bedford OB Coach that is owned and run by the wily Pearce and Crump. These charlatans will go to any length to ensure a bus service is the primary mode of public transport for the quaint village of Titfield. However, they hadn’t prepared for the extent to which a group of good-willed steam enthusiasts and a local businessman with a penchant for a 9:00 am gin and tonic will go just to ensure a railway line remains open and the buffet car is suitably stocked.

Over the last few months, we have been teasing you with a rather nifty 3D printed prototype. Although highly detailed, a print can only demonstrate the overall look of a model. So, we were over the moon when these awesome fully-tooled and working engineering prototypes of the upcoming Andrew Barclay ‘Caledonia’ 0-4-0 Fireless locomotive arrived.

Order books are still open for the fireless, so if you fancy treating yourself to this delightfully colourful industrial locomotive, you can pre-order yours directly through our website or from any of our Official Retailers. 

Following the recently-released first batch of RCH 1907 PO wagons, we were pleased to receive an engineering prototype for their upcoming counterparts, the 7-plank versions without end doors.

You can find out more about and pre-order the RCH 1907 PO Wagon 2024 range below:

The order book will be closing for all of the RCH 1907 PO Wagon 2024 range on Monday 24th June, so make sure to get your pre-orders in before they are gone!

Alongside the aforementioned RCH 1907 PO Wagon 7 Plank, we will also be closing the order books for the OO Gauge Caledonian Railway Dia.67 10 Ton Van.

The Caledonian Dia.67 vans look at home with a variety of locos - none more so than a Rails of Sheffield CR 812 Class.

Whether you are a fan of Scottish-based freight, or looking for a colourful wagon as a pre-order for someone for Father's Day, there is something in here for everyone.

Don’t miss out! We will be closing the order books for both models on Monday 24^th June.

You can still pre-order them direct from us or from any Official Retailer.

Intel has confirmed there are known differences between S160 examples. We have established a positive ID on 2 locomotives. Experimental liveries featuring camouflage patterns were considered but subsequently rejected by HQ.

Review the corresponding film with the utmost urgency for further information, and standby to receive instruction on numbers and liveries.

With all these whispers about upcoming large locos, you could assume we had forgotten about some of our other projects, but you couldn’t be further from the truth. Wardling its way up the queue is the magnificent Manning Wardle ‘L’ Class.

We announced that we were working on the ‘L’ at the same time as the S160 last year, but haven’t had a huge amount to show since. Well, your patience is about to be rewarded.

The appeal of a Manning Wardle to the purchasers of their locomotives were the number of “standard” classes and the bespoke changes that were available. However, from a model-making and production perspective this creates something of a headache. We have the "fun" of narrowing down which versions we can feasibly make without the cost becoming unattractive to our customers. After lots of work we think we have narrowed down our selection, so we thought we would show you things currently stand.

As you can see, you can look forward to multiple cab types, multiple frame variations, and of course, loads of lovely pipework detail.

We are still finalising some final details but with the significant progress we have made over the last few months we are hoping to have these on sale and available to pre-order very soon. Please keep an eye on future newsletters and our social media pages for more info. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy these shots of our current progress!

We are one month closer to our very first public exhibition, Rapido Railex 2024, and we have had even more exciting layout bookings that we thought we would share with you. The show will be held on 27-28 September in Maidstone, Kent. Mark it in your calendar!

Built to 7 mm scale with track gauges of 32 mm and 16.5 mm, The Yard is an entirely freelance industrial type railway, featuring standard and narrow gauge trains fitted with sound, radio controlled gantry crane and radio controlled lorries. Stock is either kit built, scratch built or modified RTR. 

Newton Grove 19F is an O gauge layout based in the North-West of England between 1966-68 toward the end of steam. Heavily based on Rose Grove 10F MPD, it is a great example of how you can have a highly detailed O gauge model railway in a relatively small space.

The N Gauge SECR Wagon Packs have received their decoration and will shortly be heading into the assembly stage.

A more modern N Gauge wagon - the OAA - is also working its way through the factory.

Our NER H Class / LNER Y7 continues through the paintshop.

With the ever-increasing catalogue of Rapido Trains UK models we thought it was high time we updated the website to make it easier to navigate and make sure there were nice, clear pictures of everything to come as well as previously-launched products.

For those of you who have visited our website recently you will notice the following changes:

We are constantly looking at ways to improve our communication and accessibility with our customers and Official Retailers, so these changes are going to be the beginning of more improvements to come. Keep an eye on our website for more, and please be mindful that our site may be briefly taken offline now and again as these continued improvements are implemented over the coming months.

As mentioned in the intro, several of our staff represented Rapido Trains UK at the Bristol Model Railway Exhibition. It was a busy three days but Chris M., Mark, Corwin and Dan T. had an incredible time and thoroughly enjoyed talking to all of you about our upcoming projects. It's fair to say that the B-Set and 44xx went down rather well with a local audience.

Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to visit our stall and chat with our guys about your hobby projects and layouts: it was all very inspiring. Oh, and thanks to BRM for inviting us! We had an awesome time.

A little while ago we raised the subject of loco size and cost in Thought of the Month, so we decided it was sensible to follow it up by highlighting something that is occurring more commonly within the model railway hobby. Micro layouts.

Now, off the bat, we don’t want to limit this discussion to prohibitively diminutive layouts. Rather we wish to cover those that are on the smaller side, and bring light to just how much fun they can be and how many people have enjoyed them.

Since Christmas, we have attended numerous shows, and it is fair to say that all of them have booked a healthy mix of layouts, covering size, gauge, era, and region. Looking back to Model Rail Scotland, they were graced by one of the most spectacular O Gauge layouts on the exhibition circuit. The thing was so big it arrived in a lorry, and it proved a massive draw for the crowds.

However, while the masses headed to watch an epic collection of BR blue boxes, each of our staff slid off one by one to report back on layouts that had caught our eye, both as examples we could hopefully utilise to photograph our latest samples, and layouts that could hopefully attend our upcoming Rapido Railex exhibition. Other than our obvious personal biases of region and era, one style of layout seemed to inspire us all. Small layouts.

A layout with a scenic area to play with of no more than 6 feet wide and 2 feet deep doesn’t sound like a huge amount of space, but let us assure you that lots of fun can be had. Layouts such as the gorgeous Weedram Distillery, Tellindalloch, and Tulloch Bridge, all prove how much detail you can squeeze into a small space by creating mini dioramas using figures, scattered scenic details and vehicles, then setting the mood with wonderful backdrops, and framing the layout nicely to create a complete scene.

Tellindalloch is a great example of how you can use trees to create the illusion of depth, and the 70 trees that are squeezed into this tiny space make it feel so much bigger than it really is. Tellindalloch will be proudly on show at Rapido Railex this September along with several other small and micro layouts. Pop along to the show and get inspired.

We think that covers everything we have been up to so far in May. We are now looking forward to June and getting ready as D-Day approaches.

The Rapido Trains UK Team