Fourteen months ago we shared a computer render of our ten launch kits to show off the possibilities of the Rapido Sirdar chassis... and now they are finally here. Those who placed pre-orders have all been contacted (and in many cases, now have chassis and kits in hand), and we now have our first batches of kits available to purchase on the Fourdees website.

For those who prefer to wait for stock items (and initial reviews) before purchasing, the Rapido Trains Sirdar chassis is also available to purchase from our website for £74.95. Don't forget, if you like this chassis, and are looking for something a little different, the order book is still open for the Rapido Cranmore mechanism.

We did not get our hands on a production chassis until a few weeks ago, and as such, we've had a pretty intensive turnaround in order to get the kits ready. This is why we've dropped to one Facebook post a week. It's also the reason that the launch models are only photographed in plain resin... we simply haven't had chance to paint them up yet!

We have designed and printed a decal for each and every model, but again, as we have not painted them up yet, we haven't had time to test them. We shall endevour to get these finished over the next few weeks, and of course, we shall show you our progress on here first. As you can see, these models have been printed in our new HD resin, and are the first of our small models (after the Tin Turtles) to be used exclusively in this resin.

There has been a slight revision in price for six kits (Henna, Beagle, Dulas, Fowey, Onchan and Beta) to £34.99. Due to the very small nature of these models, we deamed that just removing the boiler backhead was not sufficient to help with painting... so the entire cab interior on these models is now a separate component. For those who pre-ordered, we honour the pre-order price, but the new pieces have added complexity to the printing, washing and cleaning stage of production, but we hope you agree that this decision was worth it.

We have some more models lined up for this chassis, and will hopefully be able to add to this range in the coming months (including in other scales...). But for now, we hope these keep you excited to keep modelling in the amazing scale of OO9 for the rest of the Summer 😎