Rapido Canadian opinions...

[CP_guy_in_TX]

OK,

Looking for some feedback from others here…

I finally got serious and opened up the Canadian and checked it out…

First thoughts are:

Finish on the cars is dead on perfect. There were several wheel sets loose from the sideframes in the box itself, though.

Locos: probably the best F unit, fidelity wise, at least in plastic, however, my locos were pretty smashed. All 6 underbody ladders on both a units were peeled off in several little pieces, unusable.the wind deflectors one 1 unit were broke off, my units have no Burke lines to the brake chambers, but one was loose in the box. Maybe someone forgot to put them on? That’s a glaring omission, but really the only one.

CPR details are flawless, Tuscan and gray are about perfect, and the nose is perfecto.

The sound is amazing, sounds like its running under load instead of Soundtraxx normal running light prime mover ounds… And the Canadian horn,perfect…

Curious to hear what others think of theirs… I’m happy with mine, but my loco shells took a beating.

[don7]

My engines arrived in about the same condition as yours.

I send my engines in to Rapido for them to fix. I phoned first and was pretty upset when I had sent them a message that I was upset to have received my engines in such poor condition.

It appears that most of the damaged sets were in the USA, while I live in Canada the set was from an American distributor.

Rapido, is also very upset with the damage, they halted shipping the next set until they had a chance to study the breakage and to retro fit the three clam shell holders holding the engines.

I have another set coming, this time from a Canadian distributor so I will see if the changes in the shipping containers did the trick. I feel sorry for them as they too are upset that customers have received damaged goods from them. They sure take the Rapido name brand seriously.

If you go to the Rapido site, they have a section on how they are handling the damage and also are apologizing for any damage that may have occurred.

The passenger cars I received had no broken steps but I was missing a window. Also note the two steel handles on either side of the passenger doors come off very easy, I noticed a few in the train case as I was unpacking all of the items.

Yes, the sound is fantastic. I have been running my Rapido passenger cars with a AB set from Intermountain until I receive my engines back.

The amount of detail finish is just amazing. It makes the Intermountain F units look like early Athearn blue boxes, well not quite but you get the idea.

The coaches, same thing, check Walthers new coaches or even the new Con-Cor coaches for detail and there is no comparison. The Con-Cors are more detailed that the Wallthers, but a second place compared to the Rapidos.

With all that detail you need to be very careful handling both the coaches and also the engines.

No wonder that all of the sets have been sold out. Still a few extra sets were ordered by distributors, but even those

[richhotrain]

I don’t have the Canadian, but over the past year, I have purchased a number of Rapido passenger cars in different road names.

They are beautiful cars and really well detailed.

But, I have had a few quality issues with the small detail parts and the printed lettering. Not many issues though and overall I have been quite satisfied.

As far as loose parts go, I think this is a risk involved in packaging such finely detailed cars.

I do notice that the cars are very tightly fitted into the styrofoam insert, and the box itself is too small with the end flaps not closely tighly.

So, I think that it is the packaging design at fault rather than the production process.

Rich

[don7]

I don’t have the Canadian, but over the past year, I have purchased a number of Rapido passenger cars in different road names.

They are beautiful cars and really well detailed.

But, I have had a few quality issues with the small detail parts and the printed lettering. Not many issues though and overall I have been quite satisfied.

As far as loose parts go, I think this is a risk involved in packaging such finely detailed cars.

I do notice that the cars are very tightly fitted into the styrofoam insert, and the box itself is too small with the end flaps not closely tighly.

So, I think that it is the packaging design at fault rather than the production process.

Rich

My three engines all had a number of the molded on stirrups broken off, also a couple of the metal painted hand rails were missing. They had come off prior to packing as they were not in the clam shell container.

I do agree with you though with the amount of detail on these cars, some of it will likely come off during shipping.