Dapol New Releases 2016/17

[Richard @ N'Tastic Scale Models]

When announced it was intended to produced with in a good time, but in historical context it was a period when all manufacturers were land (prototype) grabbing. If memory serves my correctly this was in the Gorge Smith and Dave Jones period. George retired and Joel took over and there appears to have been a difficult period while Joel took over. Joel and Dave do not seem to have seen eye to eye IMHO, which ultimately lead to Dave leaving. Joel then had to take development work himself while find a replacement for Dave. Dapol appointed 2 part-time consultants to take on and review product development. Some issues have made it through and Dapol have certainly not covered themselves in glory over this period. Unfortunately during this period production cost in China have increased substantially, the pound has crashed, sales of N Gauge have fallen. The fall in sales may be lack of supply as all manufacturers seem to struggle getting goods out of China and rising prices.

Dapol have been clear the BoB will be the first of a new generation of steam locomotive from them. Design has been completely restarted from the rails up and they are taking a steady approach, not wanting to rush and get it wrong. It may be that Joel and his new team are also looking at other markets, as N Gauge becomes less profitable, hence the big move to O gauge.

Before you question my loyalties read my signature, I am an outed Dapol apologist on RMWEB but most of the above is factual.

[exmouthcraig]

I don't want to knock dapol for anything other then delays and my desperation to get them on my layout and like I said I like their attention to detail and know it will be fantastic when we get them.

Obviously more people have better knowledgeable insight to the Joel / Dave period of dapol is this the same dave who is now DJM??? Who as far as I can workout is also struggling with development and delivery of his own projects.

We know they'll come one day we just want that day yesterday!!

[PLD]

We know they'll come one day we just want that day yesterday!!

Nail hit squarely on the head... Just that a sizable minority seen not to understand and appreciate that yesterday is unrealistic and setting fixed short timescales is rarely achievable without compromising some other aspect along the way.

[Newportnobby]

Maybe it's no bad idea for GP surgeries to be open 7 days a week going by the way some folks blood pressure must be up!
I've long given up trying to get information out of Dapol (and, yes, I am signed up to their Digest site but find it tediously boring as nothing seems to happen there) so am resigned to the BoB arriving when it arrives and just hope I'm still breathing when it does. Wherever you look - Digest, Dapol website, RMWeb etc - the lack of communication is just appalling and does them no favours at all.
It's enough to make you 'Spitfire'

[exmouthcraig]

This is what drives me mad too Nobby all we want is to be remembered. I appreciate their waiting for good news to tell us but weve heard it all before. Now their just running away to o gauge and their special edition A4s and giving everyone except us SR modellers what we've wanted forever! All I'm going to do is put £100 in a pot everytime dapol give us excuses I mean reasons why it's still not here and when they do arrive, god willing, I will take my great haul of money will be at least £1000 if I backdate to Jan 2012 and blow it all on them getting them renumbered and renamed my shed will look like Nine Elms!!

[Jerry Howlett]

Maybe it's no bad idea for GP surgeries to be open 7 days a week going by the way some folks blood pressure must be up!
.
It's enough to make you 'Spitfire'

Sit down and take deep breaths Mick, or are you suffering from at touch of the 34058 s ?

Jerry

[acko22]

I think one thing that's been missed is those that don't know Dapol only has a small team, for those that have been to one of their open days (I was there in September) its only a small set up, not a huge team as some people seem to imagine.

If you look at samsung with that tablet they had to recall as it err had a habit of setting on fire! They have a design teams of hundred it took them 3 years for it to fail, so Dapol with only a fraction of that wanting to get it right there are going to be delays especially with the introduction of coreless motors.

I remember Andy at the open day saying Coreless motors biggest issue is that they work great if only ran one way but the moment you run them the opposite direction they degrade and fail quickly, which is the big thing they fail on, but once that issue is solved then the life expectancy and ability to use a smooth crawl function will improve drastically.

As already stated they have had to be redesigned from the ground up, but while the delays are annoying (I am waiting for the 142 myself) if you think about it when they come out you will most likely have one of the best running and detailed models on the market! While the time of land (prototype) grabbing has led to delays like this on various models it has also led to some innovation, which inevitably leads to delays as they are smoothed out!

[Newportnobby]

I think one thing that's been missed is those that don't know Dapol only has a small team, for those that have been to one of their open days (I was there in September) its only a small set up, not a huge team as some people seem to imagine.

I believe most of us know Dapol is a small concern, Gareth, but by far the biggest complaint levelled at them is the lack of communication. Now, small set up or not, why can't they communicate with their customer base? Why set up the 'Digest' website and then not use it to keep folks in touch?
Sorry, but it just smacks of a 'don't care' attitude.

[exmouthcraig]

Indeed, IF we had had to cough up 30% to reserve each one like their A4s would we be waiting 5 years on? Their small team are very desperate to get in touch with everyone who needs to confirm their order to allow them to sell their £350 black editions but never to communicate with the ones they've ignored the most

[acko22]

OK fair one @newportnobby and @exmouthcraig I can say from my knowledge that the cads for the Body and New gearing are done the big thing is the coreless motor which they are working on.

As for working on models that they are selling been published more it is a difficult balancing act I can understand your stand point totally I feel the same on models I am waiting for, but as a business I know they need to push the sales as its cold hard cash which means they can work on other models.

With such a small team what do they concentrate on? As I say its a horrible balancing act, I know the management team are working on improving things and communication to us is one of them and I have seen some of their efforts first hand, but it all takes time.

I know the moment they have concrete progress they will let us all know, but as everything these things take time from  speaking with them bear with it and they are working as best they can to get everything out as fast as they can but they want to make sure its right.

[Ben A]

Hello Exmouthcraig,

I understand your frustration but there may not be much to say.

The problem with R&D is that you don't actually know how long it is going to take, or when you might get a breakthrough.

I cant speak for Dapol but I can tell you about the Revolution Pendolino and the kind of unexpected thing that can trip you up.  We started work in Feb 2015 with a laser scan and had received first body mouldings by Warley in November.

So far so good.

When we received the first working sample in time for Model Rail Scotland in February last year it looked like we might have models to customers by the summer.

But the couplers were not reliable enough.   They were too fine, and prone to distorting under heavy or clumsy use.

So we had to ask for a redesign.  In fact there have now been three redesigns of the couplers to get them to our satisfaction.

We could not have predicted these issues, or how long it would take to fix them, because no one had designed a coupler like this before.

I am glad to say the Pendolino is now on schedule to go into production once Chinese New Year is out of the way at the end of this month.

But it seems from posts above that the Dapol steam chassis is similarly new.

So it is virtually impossible to give an accurate timescale for development.  Manufacturers just do their best; and sometimes they get it a little bit wrong.  And if there has been no significant news then what is there to say?

I am sure they are not trying to mislead you - but they may have misjudged how much work was needed.

Cheers

Ben A.

[Sprintex]

Two very informative explanatory posts - 


Paul

[exmouthcraig]

Evening Ben, I don't believe they are trying to mislead us they just don't tell us anything there's plenty of people telling us what a great job their doing but it's NEVER dapol themselves.

[PLD]

there's plenty of people telling us what a great job their doing but it's NEVER dapol themselves.

I'd rather that, than A.N. Other manufacturer who is always telling us what a great job he's doing but has yet to produce any tangible product in N gauge on which others can fairly judge for themselves...   

[exmouthcraig]

there's plenty of people telling us what a great job their doing but it's NEVER dapol themselves.

I'd rather that, than A.N. Other manufacturer who is always telling us what a great job he's doing but has yet to produce any tangible product in N gauge on which others can fairly judge for themselves...   

As it states this is a DISCUSSION questions raised and comments /moans about dapols lack of communication with us their customers desperate to purchase the models that have been delayed. I've never suggested that i could do better so don't see why you would try to phrase things as a personal attack on me for asking what the members of this very INFORMED forum knew to update us as we were getting nowhere with dapol.