PARK ROYAL RAILBUS

I've just been running-in my Dapol Park Royal railbus, mounted on a fantastic ready-to-run 'BullAnt' chassis from the Hollywood Foundry. The high-spec motorised chassis comes fully assembled, with just the mounting to the model's floor necessary, via a few minor modifications to the plastic kit components.

The ancient Dapol kit (originally a 1960s Airfix product) still creates a good model, being impressively accurate as far as dimensions and outline are concerned. However, the age of the moulds and the basic nature of the kit (it's basically an empty shell), means that a good bit of extra detailing work is necessary to achieve a realistic model. Especially if it's to sit well alongside one of Heljan's forthcoming ready-to-run AC Cars and Waggon und Maschinenbau vehicles.

With the chassis fitted and some weight added to the bodyshell, the 'bus' has been cruising along on my rolling road for the past few hours to bed in the cardan shaft gears (although they barely needed this as the unit is exquisitely constructed. The main drive is delivered via a belt drive which offers superb performance and it's remarkably quiet.

Look out for a full demo on how to fit this power unit, plus a more detailed assessment of performance in Model Rail issue 161, out on 8 September...