IRM A Class Now In Production! Here's why you should get your pre-orders in sooner than later...

[Warbonnet]

Hi everyone,

Now that Chinese New Year is over, work continues on our A Class models.

As you can see above, the injection moulding is complete, and painting is now underway. Then it will be assembly, testing, packing and shipping to Dublin! 

We will have further updates in the coming weeks, but at the time of writing we are still on course for a delivery of late May.

Cheers!

Fran

[ttc0169]

25 minutes ago, Warbonnet said:

Hi everyone,

Now that Chinese New Year is over, work continues on our A Class models.

As you can see above, the injection moulding is complete, and painting is now underway. Then it will be assembly, testing, packing and shipping to Dublin! 

We will have further updates in the coming weeks, but at the time of writing we are still on course for a delivery of late May.

Cheers!

Fran

Many thanks Fran great to see progress,well done IRM.

[RedRich]

Only a few furlongs to go then. The  latest images Stephen posted look amazing. It's nice to see the most numerous class of Diesel loco in model form at last.

Rich,

[BosKonay]

We’re beyond excited to finally land these. It’s been a long road but the end’s in sight!

[Sean Hogan]

Who's front room is that fran.

[Warbonnet]

On 10/3/2021 at 8:41 PM, Sean Hogan said:

Who's front room is that fran.

Dave Bracken, they're the decorations for his Christmas tree this year 

[Bumble_Bee]

I know these aren't due for another few months yet but after placing my order I'm already sitting at the window waiting for the postman in anticipation  

[DJ Dangerous]

Only realising now that we're actually pretty close to seeing the A's for real soon. How the years have passed. I wonder how many people will be struggling to balance their budget for a few A's without forefeiting a post-lockdown trip down here.

Have you guys decided on packaging, yet?

The 121's were badly let down by packaging, being useless for both transport and for display. I read that the 201's suffered from the plastic being too thin at the loco ends, with locos ripping through it in transit and subsequently bouncing around inside the boxes. One or two of my 201's did suffer damaged ends due to moving around inside the plastic, but didn't actually rip through it.

The 071 / 201 / IRM wagon style packaging is the best so far for display, though. Sit the box back into the upturned lid and it's visually perfect. Maybe a few pieces of removeable foam at the ends, between loco and plastic, with slightly thicker plastic, would be the best way to go.

 

[Noel]

36 minutes ago, DJ Dangerous said:

Only realising now that we're actually pretty close to seeing the A's for real soon. How the years have passed. I wonder how many people will be struggling to balance their budget for a few A's without forefeiting a post-lockdown trip down here.

Have you guys decided on packaging, yet?

The 121's were badly let down by packaging, being useless for both transport and for display. I read that the 201's suffered from the plastic being too thin at the loco ends, with locos ripping through it in transit and subsequently bouncing around inside the boxes. One or two of my 201's did suffer damaged ends due to moving around inside the plastic, but didn't actually rip through it.

The 071 / 201 / IRM wagon style packaging is the best so far for display, though. Sit the box back into the upturned lid and it's visually perfect. Maybe a few pieces of removeable foam at the ends, between loco and plastic, with slightly thicker plastic, would be the best way to go.

 

Imho, Trains are to be driven rather than wasted on display. The 141/181 packaging was my favourite. Didn't like the bachmann packaging of the mk2a's, left the coach sides exposed. IRM have a successful formula which I assume they'll stick to with the A class. The problem I had with 121s was the outer packaging boxes were badly padded out, the MM box and foam was pretty good, but if it gets percussively bashed against the sides of an outer cardboard box in transit, bits were bound to fall off, but the loco body was well protected and could have been dropped from a 2 story window and survived such was the thickness and density of the foam innards which had to be removed very very carefully so as not to pull a horn off with it.

[DJ Dangerous]

13 minutes ago, Noel said:

Imho, Trains are to be driven rather than wasted on display. The 141/181 packaging was my favourite. Didn't like the bachmann packaging of the mk2a's, left the coach sides exposed. IRM have a successful formula which I assume they'll stick to with the A class. The problem I had with 121s was the outer packaging boxes were badly padded out, the MM box and foam was pretty good, but if it gets percussively bashed against the sides of an outer cardboard box in transit, bits were bound to fall off, but the loco body was well protected and could have been dropped from a 2 story window and survived such was the thickness and density of the foam innards which had to be removed very very carefully so as not to pull a horn off with it.

I'm just not that privileged. For the next thirty years, my trains will be lucky to be run once every few months. The rest of the time, they are a daily reminder of the light at the end of tunnel.

Most of my 121's were sitting back at an angle, with either broken or disconnected hand rails, and they have to be removed from the packaging entirely for display.

[murphaph]

The 121 packaging looked good in theory but locos were to free to actually move about. I also had a loco sitting back at an angle.

The standard IRM sandwich packaging has done well for me so far.

[Warbonnet]

Sturdy card box, spongy foam lining, plastic ice shell to not allow movement with plastic wrapping to avoid paint rubbing off against the plastic shell. They will be well protected for postal transit

[DJ Dangerous]

14 minutes ago, Warbonnet said:

Sturdy card box, spongy foam lining, plastic ice shell to not allow movement with plastic wrapping to avoid paint rubbing off against the plastic shell. They will be well protected for postal transit

Deadly, well planned and will look awesome!!!

[DJ Dangerous]

Lots of media noise over trade wars with China at the moment.

I hope that IRM haven't made any anti-China public announcements over the past twelve months!

Can we have a hint as to the quantities, and of which A's, that are running low on pre-order, please?

[Warbonnet]

22 minutes ago, DJ Dangerous said:

Lots of media noise over trade wars with China at the moment.

I hope that IRM haven't made any anti-China public announcements over the past twelve months!

Can we have a hint as to the quantities, and of which A's, that are running low on pre-order, please?

We have adopted a "The Chinese, a great bunch of lads" approach. Actually our contacts in China really are great people and we have a fantastic relationship with them. They really do get portrayed badly by companies, but they have bent over backwards for us in the past and gone above and beyond. I guess it's easy to blame those with no voice in these situations.

As for which is selling most? We wont reveal true quantities of what's on the way, but if you sort them by best selling on the website it will tell you which is the most endangered species https://irishrailwaymodels.com/collections/a-class-locomotive

The best selling are the closest to selling out, particularly that top line... 

Cheers!

Fran

[Noel]

3 hours ago, Warbonnet said:

We have adopted a "The Chinese, a great bunch of lads" approach. Actually our contacts in China really are great people and we have a fantastic relationship with them. They really do get portrayed badly by companies, but they have bent over backwards for us in the past and gone above and beyond. I guess it's easy to blame those with no voice in these situations.

As for which is selling most? We wont reveal true quantities of what's on the way, but if you sort them by best selling on the website it will tell you which is the most endangered species https://irishrailwaymodels.com/collections/a-class-locomotive

The best selling are the closest to selling out, particularly that top line... 

Cheers!

Fran

Yes in truth they "are a great bunch of lads" to deal with, pals who do business in China always extolling their quality and professionalism 

Hope this muppet doesn't cause shipping delays across the globe for the next few months. Apparently there is a massive backlog and tail back of shipping caused the suez grounding. It happened during a sandstorm!!!! OOTW has some questions to answer, these things have augmented GPS accurate to 1 meter for when visibility is poor. Hopefully the A's might be flying anyway.

[Georgeconna]

13 hours ago, DJ Dangerous said:

Lots of media noise over trade wars with China at the moment.

I hope that IRM haven't made any anti-China public announcements over the past twelve months!

Can we have a hint as to the quantities, and of which A's, that are running low on pre-order, please?

 

 

People tow the Party line, China at best is a shadowy place complete with poor work practices. Maybe slowly changing but I personally would not live there no matter how great the lads are, It only for the Yankee Dollar they please.

 

 

[DJ Dangerous]

4 minutes ago, Georgeconna said:

 

 

People tow the Party line, China at best is a shadowy place complete with poor work practices. Maybe slowly changing but I personally would not live there no matter how great the lads are, It only for the Yankee Dollar they please.

 

 

Not disagreeing with you, but the bottom line is that there would be no high quality ready to run models at affordable prices if weren't exploiting somebody, somewhere.

[ShaneC]

1 hour ago, DJ Dangerous said:

Not disagreeing with you, but the bottom line is that there would be no high quality ready to run models at affordable prices if weren't exploiting somebody, somewhere.

Don't want to get into this again but just saying - not all models are produced in China or the Far-East and the final product ends up costing about the same, maybe it's the margins that take the hit.

On another note though - the Chinese region/city most model train factories are located in has some of the highest safety regulations and wages in the country, so it's not like they're being produced in sweatshops. Rapido said in 2018 (when they moved their factory elsewhere for these exact reasons..) that the wages they were paying to the workers there were close to on-par what they'd have to pay to workers in the US, though Chinese workers on average work more hours and have crazy levels of productivity / efficiency.

[DJ Dangerous]

35 minutes ago, ShaneC said:

Don't want to get into this again but just saying - not all models are produced in China or the Far-East and the final product ends up costing about the same, maybe it's the margins that take the hit.

On another note though - the Chinese region/city most model train factories are located in has some of the highest safety regulations and wages in the country, so it's not like they're being produced in sweatshops. Rapido said in 2018 (when they moved their factory elsewhere for these exact reasons..) that the wages they were paying to the workers there were close to on-par what they'd have to pay to workers in the US, though Chinese workers on average work more hours and have crazy levels of productivity / efficiency.

Sounds kind of like you do.

Final product may end up costing the same to the consumer, but it's not the same product, not the same level of quality (think MM 121 and IRM A Class vs. Lima 201), not being sold to the same market, not being manufactured with the same economies of scale.

Like comparing Chinese apples and American oranges.

For somebody who wants a low-fi American loco, cool, go for it, but I want an IRM A Class, or two, or three, and that's not the same.

[ShaneC]

 

 

Rapido have a whole bunch of videos posted of their factories over the years - well worth a watch to see what goes into these models:

 

[Warbonnet]

8 hours ago, ShaneC said:

 

 

Rapido have a whole bunch of videos posted of their factories over the years - well worth a watch to see what goes into these models:

 

With one video featuring a current IRM employee who has done some amazing magic on the A Class decoration in particular 

[Noel]

The american guy seems annoyingly loud. Interesting video.

The copper masking is clever.

When I saw this on the video I first thought they were models of canal house boats like you see in Amsterdam, rather than trains.

Edited March 26, 2021 by Noel

[Billycan]

Enjoyed watching that video.  Nice and informative with good insight into a very sophisticated engineering process that employs humans in preference to robots.  Seems to lift the expression handmade to a higher level.  Would enjoy watching similar for the 121 and the A-Class.  Thanks for the link ShaneC

 

[BosKonay]

I'm sure once travel restrictions are lifted, Gareth would love to return to the factory (with his IRM T-Shirt on this time ) 

[DJ Dangerous]

31 minutes ago, BosKonay said:

I'm sure once travel restrictions are lifted, Gareth would love to return to the factory (with his IRM T-Shirt on this time ) 

You guys are selling IRM merchandise now???

[Warbonnet]

2 hours ago, Noel said:

The american guy seems annoyingly loud. Interesting video.

A proud Canadian actually, but yes, Jason is quite zany. However, he does give great insights which makes for interesting video as you say.

I think Gareth is enjoying his quieter life he's having with us these days. 

2 minutes ago, DJ Dangerous said:

You guys are selling IRM merchandise now???

It's something we are considering. We must start a thread and gauge demand! 

[Broithe]

24 minutes ago, Warbonnet said:

A proud Canadian

When I meet a new person with a North American accent, I always ask them if they're Canadian.

Canadians love it and US citizens are somewhat less happy - you can't lose.

[Noel]

16 minutes ago, Broithe said:

When I meet a new person with a North American accent, I always ask them if they're Canadian.

Canadians love it and US citizens are somewhat less happy - you can't lose.

Its just like asking a Cork man what part of Kerry his family hail from.

[Westcorkrailway]

43 minutes ago, Warbonnet said:

It's something we are considering. We must start a thread and gauge demand! 

alright everyone.....put your hand up if you want this!

[DJ Dangerous]

1 hour ago, Warbonnet said:

It's something we are considering. We must start a thread and gauge demand! 

Never one to miss out on a pun. You'll be on track with t-shirts, might go off the rails a bit if you dabble in y-fronts, though.

[DiveController]

On 26/3/2021 at 7:15 AM, Westcorkrailway said:

alright everyone.....put your hand up if you want this!

Not if they won't do it in 21mm gauge, that looks to be the 16.5mm version

[jhb171achill]

On ‎26‎/‎03‎/‎2021 at 12:10 PM, Noel said:

Its just like asking a Cork man what part of Kerry his family hail from.

"Now DAT is a DISHGRACE, you're INSULTING d'good peeeple of Kerry, boy; you need to TAKE DAT BACK!", Michael Healy-Rae has just told me.........

23 minutes ago, DiveController said:

Not if they won't do it in 21mm gauge, that looks to be the 16.5mm version

I think there's quite a few of us here wouldn't even fit into the 21mm gauge ones...........

[Noel]

4 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

"Now DAT is a DISHGRACE, you're INSULTING d'good peeeple of Kerry, boy; you need to TAKE DAT BACK!", Michael Healy-Rae has just told me.........

I think there's quite a few of us here wouldn't even fit into the 21mm gauge ones...........

I tell ou now, nowat dats an uttur dissgraesh, ou wudnt no a kiry man if ou met him at all at all, ou haf me kilt schton ded wit laughing ut loud. Doz miserable detwanderthals from cark haf not one bit uv a brain cell between al uv dem, ant dey all talk like gerls singing wurds. Dish is de kingdum riaght fella.   No yella in kiry. Wat class uv A fella wud tink udderwise?

Edited March 28, 2021 by Noel

[WRENNEIRE]

Just wondering if its compulsory to answer every thread?
Asking for a friend.....