Dapol O Gauge Class 66 Update!

[DJ Dangerous]

Great news on DAPOL'S O GAUGE CLASS 66! I honestly thought that this was going to fall through, but it looks like they're going to make it work:

https://railsofsheffield.com/blogs/news/dapol-o-gauge-class-66-major-project-update

From the Rails of Sheffield website:

Dapol have provided a major update for their highly anticipated Class 66 in O Gauge! Significant progress has now been made, with the arrival of a working engineering sample. The final models are now expected Q4 2025. Read on for more...

Update from Dapol

"As you may be aware from our last update (02/2023) Dapol's new design team members had taken over this project and set to work making corrections. They and Dapol as a whole has expended a huge amount of time and resources to make this model as good as it possibly can be. We have got to the stage where we now have a second re-tooled and re-engineered prototype. there are a few minor issues left to sort out but on the whole we are very pleased with it.

Unfortunately, we have recently had communication from the factory that we have chosen to partner us in this project that they require a significantly higher price per unit (40% higher) to complete the project. At this stage, after we have invested hundreds of thousands of pounds in the tooling and have bent over backwards to get the project back on track to say we are disappointed is a huge understatement.

To all of us at Dapol, this type of behavior is unacceptable and we have made the painful decision to move the tooling to one of our other factories, whom have agreed to take on the project with some new timescales for completion. The new factory has produced our incredibly popular OO gauge Hawthorn Leslie and O gauge GWR Railcars, 3MT and J94/Austerity, so we know their quality standards and attention to detail is superb and are confident they will make an exemplary job of the Class 66.

Unfortunately, as part of the hand over we have had to accept a higher price per unit for the model. Normally Dapol would look to absorb these extra costs but due to the delays we have experienced and post COVID, inflationary pressures in the Far East, these costs are too much for us to bear alone and we will have to pass some of these on to the modeller."

 

 

Edited September 9 by DJ Dangerous
EDIT: Added Dapol URL

[Robert Shrives]

Indeed loco does look good  and price increase reflects model changes as well as the difficult job of changing factories- extracting intact tooling etc. And then new factory picking up project  hopefully it will fulfill a big gap in market.

Robert

[DJ Dangerous]

Christmas 2025 or Easter 2026 will be a bonanza!