Train Addiction Help Line: 1.866.840.7777
May 6, 2009 - HO Scale
Rapido Updates Progress of It's Projects
|
| Dear Rapido Customer,
I am writing this on the plane back from China, where I spent a week at our factory in Dongguan, which is not too far from Hong Kong. It was quite an adventure, if a real schlep. The flight alone is 15 hours each way from Toronto, not including a 3-hour, mad-cap drive through the busy streets of southern China.
China is an amazing country, and driving in China is an amazing experience that you won't soon forget. Most traffic intersections off the main roads have no signals - it's just a negotiation to determine who goes first. The braver (crazier?) you are, the quicker you will get to your destination. And along with your usual cars, trucks, buses and bikes, you'll see every possible contraption on the road. Many of the vehicles seems to be held together with bits of string and some good intentions. My proudest moment was when I took the wheel of the car from Colin, our Chinese manager. The next 20 minutes were the scariest of his life...
I finished the trip by seeing people in Hong Kong, where you would be hard-pressed to find a decent bookshop but if you want a Gucci store the size of Shea Stadium you have about 25 to choose from. If I see another flashy sports car in pastel colors or $10,000 handbag I'm gonna hurl (if you'll pardon the expression). My hotel room in Hong Kong was slightly smaller than the trunk of my car, and cost the same per night as the hotel room in China which was slightly larger than Delaware. Working at the factory It wasn't all fun and games. We spent the whole week in meetings to do our best to improve Rapido's products. See Research and Development at Rapido, below. Here are some photos from the trip.
Rapido has a great team in China, and I can rely on them 100%. However, visiting the factory is an important part of running a train business, even if it is exhausting and it means more than a week away from the family. Over a cup of tea one evening, Colin, Dennis (my chief engineer) and I went over plans for a new product line. In the space of a couple of hours of looking at photos and drawing sketches on napkins, we accomplished what would have taken two weeks of emails back and forth. Trips like this ensure that everyone is on the same page, and we can address issues as they arise.
In the middle of a brutal four-hour meeting, we all needed a break to unwind. Someone found a guitar sitting at the back of the design office. It hadn't been tuned since before the Civil War. I got it into a semblance of "in tune" and serenaded the design team with Blackbird and Stand By Me. Nobody had heard them before! Until I straightened things out I was very briefly hailed as a China's brilliant new songwriter. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.
 Research and Development at Rapido We're always looking to improve our products at Rapido. If you compare the passenger cars that leave the factory now with the ones that left the factory in 2006, it's like apples and oranges. With each run we tweak things to improve performance. The latest improvements have been more freely-moving diaphragms, the addition of Macdonald-Cartier metal couplers and a new coupler box that doesn't break when you try to open it. However, we can still make some improvements to our passenger cars, and one of the purposes of this trip was to show the workers how best to remove the injection channel (sprue) remnants from the parts when assembling them to ensure that our passenger cars fit together better. The TurboTrain was our first powered model, and the project taught us a lot. We've also been blessed by many dedicated model railroaders with far more experience than I who have taken the time to give us feedback and suggestions on how we can improve the guts of our models. Based on these discussions, we are completely redesigning how we make the gears and the universals used in our powered models. We are also changing the gear ratio to 14:1 which will vastly improve slow speed performance. Finally, we are working with a neighbouring motor factory to design a brand new motor. The new Rapido motor is being designed from the ground up with model train operation in mind, so that we can improve slow-speed performance, steadiness and noise suppression. All future powered models will have the new motor, starting with the FP9A later this year. More details to come in a future Telegraph.
As always, we welcome your feedback. If you have any suggestions for how we can improve our models, please give us a shout at the Rapido office. If I'm not around, you can talk to Dan - he knows his stuff. The toll-free number is 1-877-738-6445. Also, if you ever have a problem with a Rapido product, give us a shout. Even if the problem is that it took a trip to the layout room floor, we might be able to help with replacement parts or advice on how to fix it. We'll do anything we can to keep you a satisfied customer.
The World's Most Detailed F-Unit Model? Our True North Locomotives HO Scale FP9A tooling is being made right now. I'll admit, I was very nervous getting into the F-unit market. When you're making a Turbo or LRC, you essentially don't have competition as it's the only one out there. But F-units are abundant, and F-unit fans are very dedicated to their locomotives and very exacting in their expectations. If we didn't make sure that our FP9A looked perfect and ran like a dream, people wouldn't buy our model, even if it is the only real FP9A out there. I thought to myself, what is the only way we can compete with all of the great models out there? The answer came fairly quickly: include more detail than has ever been included in an F-unit model in any scale. It took three times longer to design this model than it usually does to design a passenger car. But I think it was well worth the extra effort. Have a look at some product drawings below:
Each FP9A will come with a bag of details, such as exhaust stack spark arrestors, steam connectors, and of course the ditch lights. Undecorated and unnumbered models will have many more details included (different horns, different grab irons, different hatches, etc.) so you can customize your FP9A. We have obtained the services of a Canadian railroad engineer who is recording brand new sounds of the original 567C prime mover... from the real engine that he drives every day! The sound decoder will have Back EMF, and along with our new motor and gear assembly this locomotive will crawl - our goal is a minimum sustained speed of less than 1 MPH in DC or DCC, sound or no sound. I'll upload movies to YouTube this summer before the August 1st order deadline so you can see the slow speed performance yourself before you place your order. We also plan to have a working sample for you to test at the National Train Show, July 10-12 in Hartford. Click here to see the FP9A model features, road numbers and product numbers.
Transcona Yard Series HO Scale Wide Vision Caboose Order Deadline This Friday The extended order deadline for the first run of wide-vision caboose paint schemes is this Friday, May 8th. You can order your cabooses from any good train dealer in North America. Since our first freight offering has introduced many new people to Rapido, we get numerous emails asking how to order our products.
Click here to see the super-detailed caboose model's features.
It's the LRC in HO Scale!
We finally have our first samples of the LRC! The LRC (Light, Rapid, Comfortable) was built by Bombardier between 1978 and 1984. It was operated by Amtrak between 1980 and 1982, but it really thrived for VIA Rail Canada. Since 1981 the LRC has become the backbone of VIA's busy operations in Ontario and Quebec. Today, the LRC coaches account for 50% of all of VIA's revenue, and they are currently being refurbished for 20 more years of service. The LRC locomotives, sadly, did not have the same success. The last one was retired in 2001.
The photos show the first test shots only. There are many corrections to be made (those nose doors are too thick!), as well as details to be added. We expect most of these corrections to be completed in the next couple of months. Click here to read more about the LRC. Recording the Original Sounds The missing link in the LRC project was the sounds. How could we get perfect recordings of the original LRC locomotive, seeing as the last one was retired in 2001? The LRC's growling 251F prime mover was unique in that it was always turning at full speed. The LRC sounds different than any other locomotive ever built. Thankfully, Exporail has come to our aid. Exporail is Canada's largest railway museum. Located south of Montreal, Exporail has an extensive collection of railway artifacts, including 6921: the only LRC locomotive in preservation.
The problem is that 6921 has a broken pump and can't be started. Exporail has graciously offered to fix the pump (with the financial assistance of Rapido Trains Inc.) and hold an exclusive recording session for us. We'll actually get the real engine fired up on a quiet day and record EVERYTHING. There is no better way to create an accurate sound-equipped model than to record the real train in an isolated environment. This is an amazing gesture from Exporail and shows a real commitment to preserving our railway heritage. If you haven't been to Exporail, it is definitely worth the trip. Full information can be found on their web site: Exporail.org. You can tie it in with a visit to Montreal, which hosts some of Canada's best train-watching locations, such as Dorval and Pointe-St-Charles.
I will have more updates on the LRC as the project progresses. At this point, we're looking at late 2009 for the coaches and club cars and 2010 for the locomotives.
Progress and Delivery Dates The following HO Scale products will be arriving in our warehouse next week. They will be in stores shortly afterward.
The first shipment of Lightweight Coaches and Duplex Sleepers is leaving the factory next week. I inspected them myself and made some last-minute refinements when I was at the factory. We can expect them to arrive in the next month or so. We're almost ready to announce some more paint schemes. Many of the first run paint schemes are already sold out. Click here for more info. HO Scale Steam Generator Car We're now waiting for the circuit board factory to provide the circuit boards, and then the first shipment can leave the factory. The circuit board factory is running a bit late, so the first shipment won't leave the factory until the end of the month. Our plan was to release the Steam Gennies in time for the cold weather. Instead we seem to be releasing them in time for the beach. Oh bother. Click here for more info. The Canadian We're well past the 50% mark for pre-orders, which is quite amazing given the state of the economy. We're still plugging away at the tooling, and it will be a few months yet before I have some samples to show you. Next time I want to do a project as big as this, I think I should go jump in a lake. Click here for more info. The Osgood Bradley Project We're almost finished the tooling corrections on our 10-Window Coach. As I mentioned last time, we'll have fully decorated production samples at the National Train Show in Hartford. More information about this, including the new order deadline, will be coming soon. Click here to visit our Osgood Bradley Project web pages.
Monthly Product News Now that Bill Schneider is officially on board, we are updating how we communicate. The Telegraph will still be the place where you get sneak previews of the latest items and progress reports on current projects. Starting in the next few weeks, Telegraph subscribers will also receive Product News emails from Bill about once a month. These will contain bare-bones info on paint schemes, product numbers and order deadlines. For those of you who are short on time, you will get "just the facts" about our products in a well-organized, easy-to-read format. I hope you've enjoyed this brief look into how we operate. I believe that the more transparent a business is, the better for its customers. That's why I tell you what's going on behind the scenes, both good and bad. Talk to you soon, Jason Jason Shron President Rapido Trains Inc. |
© 2026 Pacific Western Rail Systems
Train Addiction Help Line: 1 866 840 7777