Gosh, where are our Manors? Decorated Samples and Update

[Warbonnet]

Where are our Manors? It is a question that has been coming up in recent weeks. We would like to apologise for the delay in bringing this long overdue update to you. It certainly has been too long coming.

As you can imagine, things in manufacturing have not been plain sailing the past 12 months, and these supply chain issues have hit our Manor timeline more than we wanted. However, after two months of teaser shots of new engineering prototypes from the factory, our first decorated samples have arrived. They have been worth the wait!

We received the first two of our decorated samples last week, which consisted of 7812 'Earlestroke Manor' in BR lined green livery with late BR crest, and 7808 'Cookham Manor', one of the locomotives we surveyed extensively and scanned, in GWR Shirtbutton livery.

Decorated samples are a significant milestone ahead of full production, where we assess the liveries as well as iron out the remaining kinks before full production commences. While the first livery samples of these locomotives do look very nice indeed, we have identified areas that require further improvement, such as:

• Copper chimney is too red and top should be copper as well
• Firebox coal will be a more realistic colour when flicker is off
• The coal load will be further refined and receive greater finesse
• Nameplates will be fully etched and fitted, with etched number plates provided in the detailing pack.
• Further polishing of the diecast body to remove any seam remnants
• locomotive numbers are slightly too large and will be corrected 
• Orientation of our lamp brackets

• Adjustment to front coupler to ensure it can be stowed on the hook

These improvements will now be fed back to the factory and implemented ahead of full production. As these are minor tweaks and improvements it means that production will commence very shortly, with a delivery date of Q2 2022 now slated. We apologise for this delay, but with supply chain issues hitting production lines hard in 2021, as well as the pandemic, not to mention our striving to make the very best steam locomotive we can, we feel that this slight delay will be fully justified in the final model.

In the new year we will bring you pictures of the other livery samples, including BR black and other GWR flavours, as well as video of these beauties in action, featuring the custom DCC sound project too.

Excited? We certainly are! Pre-order your Manor from your local Accurascale stockist, or direct by clicking here!

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