Dapol "Great Western" coaches in N-scale

Both my wife and I are huge fans of The Crown TV series on Netflix. The first two seasons were great and we hope to see more in the future. One thing that caught my attention in this show, were the frequent train travels of the queen Elisabeth. And since I already had a nice N-scale British locomotive, I've decided to add some passenger cars and turn it into a train...

That's how I became the owner of three coaches produced by Dapol. They're priced at around 20 GBP each. I've ordered my pieces from the Hattons online store and they arrived quickly and in perfect condition.

The three cars look very similar to each other, and two of them are actually almost identical. But they are different models after all, as shown in the picture below.

They're all packaged in the same fashion which is not a surprise. The box is solid and makes an impression of a very safe enclosure. There's only one piece of information included: the roof removal instructions. We won't find any extra elements in the set, and the models come with Rapido-style couplers only.

I've chosen these specific items since they were advertised as "interior lighting ready". So the first thing I did was look under the car to see if there was anything that would fulfill that promise.

And yes, there are definitely some power pickups installed in the bogies. I'll be taking a closer look at this matter later in this post.

Let's see what the three cars look like overall...

...and let's notice some fine details, too.


They do look good. The paint job does not seem flawless in some places (eg. window frames), but we do get some nice tiny labels, too, and those are perfectly sharp. The body of each car offers quite a lot of small elements, and peeking inside the coaches reveals some realistic looking compartments and seats.

I've decided to remove the roof from one of the cars to confirm the "interior lighting readiness". The manual explains this process very well. Four metal pieces have to be extracted from both ends of the coach. One thing the instructions do not warn about however, is how springy those elements are. They jump away with great energy when loosened, and I almost lost one of those. So remember to secure them with one hand while detaching with the other.

Here's the inside of the car. One of its ends clearly shows...

...a tiny electrical socket. So the model not only features a set of power pickups, but it also delivers the voltage in a very elegant way.

Dapol offers a product called "lightbar" for adding internal illumination. I will be however using my own solution. Seems it will fit just fine, if I only shorten my PCBs a little. Sounds like another topic to cover on my blog in the future :)

The coaches from Dapol look very good. And considering they actually make the light installation very easy, they are really worth their price. Now I just need to find some time to complete the work and then I can give my new train a go.