Thursday 14 January 2016

Last of the hoppers ...

... well for now at any rate!

A belated Happy New Year to all as we start out on our modelling voyage for 2016.

Just before we launch into the last couple of 21T hopper packs for now I'd like to tell you about some changes to the way we communicate and showcase what we're doing that we're introducing for 2016.

Since taking Fastline Simulation full time the mixture of blog and website hasn't quite felt comfortable and a little forced at times. As a consequence we're no longer going to publish a monthly review on the website and will be moving away from individual item themed blog posts. Instead, the plan is to publish (at the moment) one blog post on Thursday with a review of all that has been done and that can be shown during the past week. Hopefully this will feel a little more coherent and will give a better pace to the posts.

That said, the post this week is all about 21T coal hoppers as we catch up the last two packs of these that are currently waiting to be released!

Diagram 1/143 unfitted 21T coal hoppers

We've been producing a number of wagon packs for Train Simulator featuring the British Railways builds of 21T coal hoppers based on the LNER design and this pack tells another small part of the story. Diagram 1/143 was issued in 1949 and covered a design of 21T coal hopper with a riveted body rather than the welded bodies constructed in previous lots. Some 2750 vehicles were constructed during the 1949 and 1950 building programs with all the wagons being unfitted and retaining a link to their LNER heritage through long handbrake levers.

Fastline Simulation: A virtually ex-works dia. 1/143 21T hopper painted in unfitted grey livery with the most simple 21T lettering on a black painted panel.

Fastline Simulation: A clean dia. 1/143 21T hopper in unfitted grey livery with HOP 21 code on a black painted panel.

Fastline Simulation: This battered dia 1/143 21T hopper is showing considerable signs of corrosion and carries the HTO TOPS code with the data panel on a black painted patch.

Fastline Simulation: This weathered dia 1/143 unfitted 21T coal hopper has the HTO TOPS code outside of a small boxed data panel.

Rebodied dia. 1/146 unfitted 21T Coal Hoppers

Right back at the start of our exploration of the 21T coal hoppers we released the rebodied vacuum braked examples built originally to diagram 1/146. Now to finish off we have the unfitted example to the same diagram. In the 1970's British Rail initiated a large scale rebodying of the 21T coal hopper fleet with a new design of body featuring only two ribs on the side rather than the five previously seen. Both fitted and unfitted hoppers were rebodied and naturally a large number of hoppers from the in excess of 17,000 built to diagram 1/146 received new bodies. Although all of the hoppers in this wagon pack are the unfitted version they are to be supplied in both unfitted grey and fitted brown liveries mirroring real life where a large number of unfitted hoppers received the fitted brown livery!

Fastline Simulation: A virtually ex-works rebodied dia. 1/146 21T hopper painted in unfitted grey livery with HOP 21 branding inside a full sized data panel.

Fastline Simulation: A work worn rebodied dia. 1/146 21T hopper in unfitted grey livery with HOP 21 code inside a fully boxed data panel.

Fastline Simulation: This rebodied dia 1/146 21T hopper is in ex-work freight brown livery (although it’s unfitted) complete will fully boxed data panel with HTO TOPS code.

Fastline Simulation: This weathered rebodied dia 1/146 unfitted 21T coal hopper also wears freight brown livery but has the HTO TOPS code outside of a small boxed data panel.

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