… and something else!
This is sort of how the Class 205 is looking at the moment, unfortunately, progress is crawling as it is stuck in development hell. The other problem is how the scaling has affected the model data in GLB and I’ve also removed the textures for the time being, but yes, it appeared in Connex colours (remember them?). Model is a bit of a mess at the moment, but it is just to show you the progress. The bogie however or the trailer one, has been shown on another entry.
However, I also spent a few hours, note not a lot of time on this too:
This is one of these older models I based it on and improved on – well I had some railbuses as in previous posts (here, here and here) and naturally, what would come up? The Class 141 railbus. Its slightly shorter than the original model, which was slightly out of shape. The scale was wrong.
In this model however, its not 100% there as believe it or not, there is no textures, its all self coloured materials (And as a result as it has been optimised in 3DS max, exported to FBX and imported into Blender to exported to a GLB file), so because it has been optimized to take up less space and keeping hold of my precious 5GB of web space, its not the final version and some bits of detail have got lost because of the compression and optimisation, like the rubber on the doors, or the way I built them. As it is also one “final model”, it also got optimised as one. Also, you may of noticed it has something at the front.
For those that know a little history about these units, 13 of them went to Iran, as a result, some of the changes they made, one got painted into an interesting livery, a silver, gold and green livery from memory, although most stayed in WYPTE, they gained mirrors, buffers, screw link coupling (which lost their multiple working), an obstacle deflector and mirrors either side. I don’t think as reported elsewhere they got converted to left hand drive (which would have been difficult),
One day, I’ll look through the history and track what is left, all I can say, of the 13 that went to Iran, their history or whereabouts is unknown as Iran is difficult to get photos or even information from at the best of times. 2 went to the Netherlands and I believe they never got used, last known to be still there rusting away. One got scrapped while in the UK before entering preservation, however, 2 more have been scrapped since preservation, which means there is 2 left, 141 113 (which my model was heavily based on) and 141 108. It would be also interesting to track the other pre production and post production units, Lev 1 still exists, Lev 2 sadly bit the dust in 2020, Lev 3 (also known as R3) was in Northern Ireland, its now in the UK in Wales, RB002 is still in (the republic of) Ireland, in its resting place, there is a movement in trying to bring it back to the UK, but last I heard or understood, no one knows the owner. RB004 is happily preserved, but has been around many railways, the 2 car demonstrator which I don’t have a designation for, but I’ve called it RB005 (basically a 2 car version of RB002), the whereabouts is unknown. As it was used on metre gauge railways in the far east, it may of long departed or even rusting somewhere.
The Class 142, 143 and 144s in one way, more difficult to track (there were 96 Class 142s, 14 Class 143’s and about 23 Class 144s, 10 with MS coaches that have a different history to the rest of the unit – I.e. not owned by the ROSCOs) as they are larger fleets, but also easier because there is a LOT of history on them and some even went abroad to try and gain orders from international customers, which is well documented.
I would love to hear of any information about these oddities, if you do, please send me a message.
Edit (a little later):
You may notice at the moment, my work is fluctuating a lot with time I can commit. We are mostly getting ready for Christmas and the London Waterloo block, which as I write this, London Waterloo station is closed from the 25th December to the 29th December. Then the slow lines are open which is 2 out of 8 lines. This is to allow Network Rail to replace the points around Queenstowns Road (Battersea) – see here (navigates away from the site) and a lot of planning went into it. If I am honest, so far, it’s the biggest project I’ve been involved in since I came into my current job. No, I cannot talk a lot about it as there is a social media policy, which I may of fallen foul of.
