New Railway Modellers Forums

For some time now I have been dabbling with the idea of buying an N scale Terrier and I can only find models made by Dapol. I have always been put off buying Dapol products because of reports of poor quality.

Has this changed and has anyone got a Dapol Terrier and if so what are your thoughts please.

Many Thanks

My sole personal experience is in OO, and just one recent purchase of a traction model from Dapol: all around very good. Whether the same now applies in their N product I don't know.

There's no alternative for a RTR N Terrier, so if it is a Terrier you want then the question is 'what's the risk?'. Financially zero if you are prepared to do the leg work: inform the retailer of the performance standard you expect, follow the manufacturer's instructions to the letter when you immediately test the loco thoroughly on your layout - at least a couple of hours, and I would do more, see below - promptly return for refund if it fails to perform as required.

There's no way to determine whether or no there will be future problems, but my experience with the new designs of RTR OO is that about 10 hours running is enough to find the 'infant mortaility' failures, which are promptly returned for refund: and in just over 20 years I have yet to have a single mechanism failure from the locos that passed this test. Sadly very few people are interested in do such testing and reporting ...

Thanks Bigmet.

If you go ahead with the purchase, and give it an immediate thorough test, do share what you find.

Will do, but it may be a short while yet.