Gday, 

I have recently acquired a Dapol Class 156 ND-081A motorized set and dummy set (Barbie Livery).  I was wondering if prototypically do they run these as two, three or four units at a time? My layout has some some grades and the the one motorized dmu has difficulty pulling the other three units. With that in mind I was debating on purchasing another Northern Rail motorized set and running consists of three units. The ND-081A are hard to find so I was thinking if getting a different livery of Northern Rail car. Prototypically does Northern Rail run different liveries on the same consist?


Cheers

Spiff

The 156 is normally formed as a two car unit, though trains made up of two or three x2 car units are quite common as are mixed type trains of 2 car 156+2 car 158 (available from Farish) or 2 car 156+1 car 153 (available from Dapol).

mismatched liveries within the two-car set were rare but mixed livery formations with one complete unit in one livery marshalled with another unit in a different livery were common at the time of the franchise change from 'First North Western' and 'Ariva Northern Spirit' to 'Northern Rail'. As your 'Barbie' liveried unit is specifically from that transition period (simply being the former FNW livery with the name changed) running it with a Northern Spirit or Northern liveried unit would be entirely prototypical...

Thanks PLD for the quick reply. Being in the colonies (Canada) trying to figure out prototypical trains is difficult.

I am assuming the Northern Spirt this is livery in this link:

http://dapol.co.uk/index.php?route=product/category&path=177_59_67_98

I imagine the Settle & Carlisle special livery wouldn't match up with Barbie livery in the real world?

Cheers

Spiff

No, thats the current Northern Rail livery that replaced Northern Spirit and First North Western 'Barbie'.

The Northern Spirit livery is shown at:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DAPOL-ND098A-Class-156-DMU-Northern-Spirit-NEW-/260959740245

Thanks again for the reply. Not a fan of that livery :-(

I may have to non prototypical. Those of us in the colonies wouldn't know the difference any ways  lol

Cheers

Spiff

Everything you never wanted to know about class 156 and their liveries here:

http://members.madasafish.com/~dysgraphyk/156/class156_livery.htm

Thanks for the info Edwin_m