Having now seen some better pictures, the degree of 'massaging' of the bodywork is not nearly as great as I thought, the frames are still noticeably narrower than the main bodysides. Seen some reports of owners selectively and very carefully cutting clearance inside the separate bogie frames to make the model run on R3 without fouling of the wheels, which otherwise causes the model to slow significantly on curves of this radius.Bigmet wrote:...What happens is that one or both of the bogie frames and wheels foul inside the bodywork; without the body in place it will get around 3rd radius. This is despite the body form having been significantly 'massaged' to improve internal clearance: the width over the main frames (which should be much narrower than the width over the body) has been increased to match the overall body width (bear in mind I haven't had one in my hand, this is how it looks in photos).
Have yet to see any owner attempting modifications to enable R3 (or yet smaller radii) to be useable.
This is all very brave of Rails, as this means the model cannot negotiate the standard set track point, which is unusual for a plastic bodied OO model. Probably the small volume nature of this model means that Rails felt they could risk it: even if some customers return it as unsatisfactory, they will achieve a sell out.