Dapol Mk3 Intercity DVT

[robert shrives]

Hi gang for my 50 pence worth. It was a very long time ago but from the first batch of Mk3s the ground swell oppinon was the grey was too washed out on the INTERCITY version and second batch was a true colour Falcon grey. Now it seems oppinion is that it is too dark. The subtle variation between exec grey and Falcon is a pain in paint shades and fun matching in tampo print ink and yes I am sure relating our almost OCD preoccupation to the chinese must raise a smile or eyebrow abroad....!
I recall an Oxely MK2 with so much patch painting it was an excellent patch quilt in appearance. Washed out grey, gloss and matt falcon and rust! The falcon was not colour fast. It might be an ideal for all coaches to be an exact match but really this did not last long, only time I saw it was on the publicity train for the exec livery on the Copy pit line.

Having now seen the INTERCITY livery in the flesh at the Glasgow show it looks far better than in the brown cast pic seen on the dapol facebook pages and as noted livery elements are right and with 82101 having unique orange strip location correctly done is a nice touch.  Was was intresting was that the yellow DVT sold out in the first hour in Glasgow so lack of bits not spotted or folk off with plasticard to make good. It would be good for an etch or perhaps 3D print in FUD for lighting and gear. I thought the printed grill worked well, will need to find a good roof pic for that mod.
Hopefully Dapol will run a second batch with differing number!
robert         

[Vonzack]

...It was a very long time ago but from the first batch of Mk3s the ground swell oppinon was the grey was too washed out on the INTERCITY version and second batch was a true colour Falcon grey. Now it seems oppinion is that it is too dark. The subtle variation between exec grey and Falcon is a pain in paint shades and fun matching in tampo print ink and yes I am sure relating our almost OCD preoccupation to the chinese must raise a smile or eyebrow abroad....!

I can't agree with you Robert, to be several years down the line and have a DVT released with the original livery error is unbelievable. Are we seriously to believe that nobody at Dapol was aware of this and had a chance to correct it. Do they not read any of the forums, do they not listen to any Customer feedback?

To be honest, I couldn't care that the paint shade was slightly off on the original livery design, and I'm willing to bet that 99% of the people who would eventually purchase the Mk3s wouldn't care. The issues arise when the manufacturer keeps changing the goal posts by changing the livery designs between production runs, leaving people like myself with a badly mismatch set of coaches.

If Dapol want to send me production samples in the future, I'll QA them against their existing models and let them know if the liveries match or not.

[Karhedron]

The issues arise when the manufacturer keeps changing the goal posts by changing the livery designs between production runs, leaving people like myself with a badly mismatch set of coaches.

I wonder whether this is due to changes at the factory(ies) Dapol use. The latest run of GWR coaches are much lighter than the original ones and the discrepancy is worse (if possible) than that between the DVT and current Mk3 coaches.

[Vonzack]

Still no excuse Karhedron, presumably somebody at Dapol chooses these colours and makes a note of the ones used last. Sorry to hear about the GWR coaches.

[scruff]

I was browsing youtube recently and found film of the west coast with buffet cars with a complete yellow stripe as well as red/yellow, so it looks like either could be correct.

I also found a couple of buffets with second class stripe over the kitchen area and first class stripe over the seated area, giving 3 variations so far!

Cheers
Mark

[Truffles]

100's of thousands of companies across the globe seem to be able to send a pantone colour ref number to another company and then get the precise pantone colour printed.....so why do Dapol have such problems in this area?

Some people seem to be saying that this is hard to do..... it really is not and if the end company fail to produce the referenced colour then the product would be sent back....so either Dapol have made a mistake or the Chinese factory have made a mistake...either way it should be a product recall instead of foisting yet another substandard product that will further undermine Dapol's, already fragile, reputation.

[bigP]

Another issue I spotted, was with the Buffet 2P-005-211. The first class yellow band is the full length of the coach, this should only be a half yellow band over the seating area. Easy job to rectify though also with the airbrush (Bloody hell, its a good job I'm pretty good with an airbrush and masking!) oh, and also add the 2 missing number 1's next the doors on the Buffet.

Oh dear Dapol  

Cheers, Anthony

Hold fire with that Airbrush!!!   As always there is a prototype for everything (*exception to the rule is a Swallow livered Mk3 DVT in a different shade of grey to the Swallow Mk3 coaches in the rake )

Here's an HST with a full yellow stripe 'buffet'...
https://flic.kr/p/62h1e9  http://www.hondawanderer.com/43034_Highworth_Junction_1994.htm


If you still want to get the airbrush out you've got many a variation posible...

* Yellow/Grey    https://flic.kr/p/9YPzSZ  http://www.hondawanderer.com/43146_Twerton_1994.htm
* Yellow/Red     http://www.hondawanderer.com/43066_Beeston_1990.htm
* Grey/Red        https://flic.kr/p/ivST4P  http://www.hondawanderer.com/43106_Worting_Junction_1991.htm
* All Grey!         https://flic.kr/p/9zjX9x  http://www.hondawanderer.com/43084_Cholsey_1994.htm  (looks like XC sets had the all grey band)


Oh for those kaleidoscopic days...

Paul

[Karhedron]

Here's an HST witha full yellow stripe buffet...
http://www.hondawanderer.com/43034_Highworth_Junction_1994.htm

Look at the poor tracklaying on that siding on the left. Hasn't he ever heards of a tracksetta? 

[bigP]

Here's an HST witha full yellow stripe buffet...
http://www.hondawanderer.com/43034_Highworth_Junction_1994.htm

Look at the poor tracklaying on that siding on the left. Hasn't he ever heards of a tracksetta? 

Yeah they're all gone now - home to a nice shiny NR electrification site.

[ahodgett]

Whilst I appreciate Dapol's entrance into N gauge and a lot of good things that they have doen, I too don't pre-order because their QA has and sadly still appears to be very poor. So I too won't be ordering the IC one and if all the Network Rail ones are missing the parts pack, that neither, but I will email Joel and tell him why.

I have found emails to Joel do get answered, not always immediately, and if he get lots of polite emails, I am sure he will listen. I had hoped that with the new team, there would be more attention to detail on the Mk3's but sadly maybe not. Let's hope the TGS has had a lot off attention to detail because I need them all.
Regards
Arthur

[ahodgett]

Many thanks for the clarification. My heart sank when I thought both DVT's had problems. Hope someone does the etch. It might be worth suggesting to Dapol rather than a retool for things like this, they could be in the bag of bits as an etch. They have put etched nameplates in quite a few products. Or is the etch required something complex?

[jivebunny]

Digging up an old thread here, but with the latest batch of DVTs having been produced I'm wondering if anyone at Dapol's thought of having a punt at a third run of the Intercity version, produced in the correct colours this time. The previous brown versions seem to have sold out everywhere, so presumably a lot of people either didn't care about the colour or were happy to get their airbrushes out to correct a item fresh out of the box. Either that they've all been returned by suppliers...

JB

[njee20]

They sell for loads of money, so I'd suggest people don't really care that most of them are wrong! Seemingly Dapol didn't fancy doing another run of them though.

[RailGooner]

I know there's another NR one imminent - I can't believe they're doing an entire production run in one livery.

[njee20]

They're doing a few aren't they? ATW springs to mind. Sure there's a handful.