Just received three new Rapido Osgoods’ and I must say they are beautifully done. Lots of detail and they look great. When installing the lighting, the batteries, it is a little difficult removing the roof, patience becomes a virtue.
Some of the detailing on the under side needs some adjusting. Some loose piping was noted and at each end of the respective coaches I had to adjust some of the piping in order for the trucks to turn smoothly. I noticed that the trucks catch on a few things and this caused derailments.
Had to supper glue some under body details, and knip off some of the plastic so the truck could turn better. I did have to adjust the truck screws to allow for better tracking. One truck chain was not attached, but super glue fix that problem.
Over all beautiful cars with lots of detail. The trucks themselves run very smoothly, once I was able to clear away some under body plastic detail they rotated fine. My curves are greater than 24 inches, still had to create some clearance underneath so the cars could negotiate the curves…
Bob thanks for sharing your info. IMHO, it was so commendable that Jason from Rapido encouraged input from modelers before the cars were tooled and produced. Do you have any photos that you can post? Also, are these the SAL schemed cars?
I received 7 of these cars in the Boston & Maine Maroon & Gold last week. These cars are truly beautiful in almost every respect…but they also have some issues. I too am having trouble keeping the cars on the track. I guess I will need to closely look at the underbody for anything that may be causeing the trucks to bind. On each of my cars, I had to loosen the screws that hold the trucks on, they were WAY to tight and the trucks simply could not freely move. I also had to CA the grab irons on each end / both sides of the cars where the steps are. In some cases, they had fallen out even before I could get the car out of the box. I found that more than half of the factory installed Macdonald-Cartier (Kadee look-a-like) couplers had loose trip pins. I ended up removing and replacing them all with Kadee couplers because the loose trip pins were causing problems with the cars coupling to each other. As the previous gentleman said, the roof is tricky to remove if you want to install the batteries for the interior car lighting, but with practice, it gets easier.
Please don’t misunderstand me here, I love the cars. The paint and design look fantastic. The level of detail is top notch. As the box that each of these cars clearly says " Museum Quality Passenger Cars from Rapido" and they are. My personal problem with this is that I really have no intention to put these cars in a museum. I plan on running them on my layout as I’m sure most people plan on doing. I’m not sure that I like having to “fix” or “tweek” 7 out of 7 cars just to get them to stay on the track.
Re: The roof. To remove it, is it basically similar to the Walther’s streamlined passenger car roofs in which one would gently “twist” the body until one end pops up?