Dapol N gauge Maunsell coaches

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What's missing?

With the 4 compartment brake 3rds and some sets from the 39x series coming through, it still leaves the restaurant car and open 3rds, plus for BR period the driving brake compo. It would apper that Dapol are unlikely to do them as "they are not economically viable" i.e they wouldn't sell in sufficient numbers as they (particularly the restaurant car) would normally only appear as one vehicle per train and not even in every train.

This leaves many of us without  the ability to make up convincing rakes for some of our trains.

I have tried a bit of hacking but the recessed doors are a bit of a stumbling block, so my thoughts now turn to 3D printing, to this end I have started a "conversation" on Shapeways asking if there is any likeliihood of them appearing in 3D print, maybe a few supporting posts to said conversation might improve the chances.

https://www.shapeways.com/forum/conversations/n-gauge-maunsell-open-3rd-coach-and-restaurant-car.495879/

Cheers MIKE
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This sort of thing is always going to be a problem Mike.  In the past, I'd guess this is where those "cottage industry" boys would step in.  Unfortunately, most of those seem to have gone now.

3D printing may well be the way forward but you need someone who can do the drawings and even then, the prints don't come cheap.

As far as I know, Shapeways only print to order - i.e. they don't produce prints themselves so "supporting posts" won't lead to any results from them directly.  What it may do, is find someone who can do the drawings and fund the initial prints.

Maybe a possibility would be to print off just the problematic door section to use in your butchery on donor coaches, rather like the assorted DMU ends (for example) you often see at shows.  That would surely be cheaper than printing the whole coach.

It might pay you to have a word with Peter (Wizmacnz) of this parish, who already sells models through Shapeway.  He knows all the ropes.

Good luck with it anyway.   :thumbs

'Petermac
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