With numerous locos and a boatload of era-appropriate wagons under their belt, the pre-grouping era has become a quintessentially Rapido thing, so they thought it was about time they produced some more suitable coaches.
Although some have already been seen in ready-to-run versions, it seemed unlikely that all of the well-known pre-1923 companies would receive a wide selection of accurate bogie coaching prototypes in OO gauge.
Rapido thought we would fill this void with a selection of generic 48ft bogie coaches, each detailed with an array of key features that modellers associate with their railway of choice. Rapido have dubbed this exciting new coach project 'Evolution'.
The coach roofs were one of the most notable features of the era, so Rapido have included elliptical, arc and clerestory designs in the tooling and made the roofs easily removable so that you can fit figures into your coaches. Each roof style will also include fittings for either gas or electric lighting.
They have added some rather nice interior detailing too, including luggage racks, picture frames on compartment dividers and a fully-detailed Guard's Van/Luggage Compartment. There are also a multitude of separately-fitted parts to bring the coaches to life, including door and grab handles and passenger emergency alarm 'butterflies' on one end.
All Evolution coaches will include fitted internal working lighting controlled by magnetic magic wand, making it much easier to see these lovely details.
Battery boxes and gas tanks aren#t the only external details below the frame. Each Evolution coach will feature Fox-pattern bogies fitted with electrical pickups. Some versions will feature extra footboards on the bogies and there are also additional central lower footboards on some designs too.
Finally, each vehicle is fitted with NEM pockets mounted on kinematic mechanisms and has optional close-coupling bars (modelled to resemble vacuum pipes) included.