Narrow Gauge Brake Vans

[TerencetheTractor525]

With the narrow gauge brake vans now announced, one thing that Thomas fans have already been wondering across social media is what the brake vans will be based on.

For starters, one thing that is great is that only one new tooling will be needed, since the red and blue narrow gauge brake vans are the same tooling on the show, unlike the previously announced narrow gauge red and blue carriages.

Personally, I would prefer to see Bachmann base the narrow gauge brake vans on the television series model.



Television Series Red Brake Van


 
Television Series Blue Brake Van

The narrow gauge brake van in the television series is essentially a hybrid between Talyllyn Brake Van #5 and Talyllyn Brake Van #6, considering that it has the ticket windows of Talyllyn Brake Van #5 (which is the key feature of the narrow gauge brake vans), but is the length of Talyllyn Brake Van #6, which is clearly shorter than Talyllyn Brake Van #5.



Talyllyn Brake Van #5



Talyllyn Brake Van #6

Frankly, Talyllyn Brake Van #5 looks too long in my eyes. This is because narrow gauge brake vans have always been shorter than Talyllyn Brake Van #5 throughout the entire Thomas television series, including the nostalgic model series (with the exception of very minor appearances in the CGI era). Additionally, seeing that Bachmann has done many great hybrids for the Thomas line in the past such as the Spiteful Brake Van, I do not think that doing the same with the narrow gauge brake vans is far fetched at all.

Finally, the shade of red and blue of the brake vans should definitely match the shade of red and blue of the narrow gauge carriages. That light blue of the blue carriage in particular is nostalgic.

Looking forward to reading everyone’s thoughts on this.

[Chaz]

My hope for the brake vans is that they go for the television series models as a reference while making them.  They seem to be the right basic shape and would allow for future recolor possibilities like a brown brake van to happen soon too.  Hopefully that gets announced sometime either at the NMRA this year or sometime in 2021 with Sir Handel.

[STL]

I'm kind of hoping they follow their pattern of making the rolling stock accurate to their respective TR basis' and make it as close to Talyllyn No.6 (Ex-Corris). Perhaps even one variant is directly based on No.6 and the other with a small tooling variant to have the dual ticket windows. Thinking far too optimistically and dreaming really, maybe one will be based on TR No.5, course like I said, that's more a dream scenario given what happened with the stock images for the NG coaches.

[TerencetheTractor525]

While it has recently occurred to me that the 3D printed narrow gauge brake vans from Shapeways are not the same height as Bachmann’s narrow gauge red and blue carriages, I am now even more interested to see how Bachmann’s narrow gauge red and blue brake vans will turn out in terms of toolings.

As shown in the earlier post above, while I would still prefer for Bachmann to use the proportions of the television series model for the brake vans, Bachmann Thomas fans seem to be evenly split on this topic across social media.





Thus, one suggestion would be to base one of the brake vans on one of the real-life basis such as Talyllyn Guard’s Van #5, and base the other one the television series model. If this were to be possible, I would like to see the red brake van based on the real-life basis, and the blue brake van based on the television series model.

All in all, as long as at least one of the narrow gauge brake vans is based on the proportions of the television series model, (preferably the blue one), I will definitely be purchasing it.

[DucktheGWREngine08]

I'd prefer if they used the prototype basis for the brake vans like in the books, it'll make it easier tbh.

[STL]

Honestly I sort of hope for a middle ground sort, where the red is based on Brake 5, and they did at one point have a 3d model of it in the show. The other is for the blue to be based entirely on Brake 6, ex-corris van, but with an added duckett. Wouldn't really be accurate to when it had one under the Corris, those took up the entire panel they were attached too