Great video and review, what brought me here, my wife found this set in an antique dealer and bought it for me, sadly it’s not in the great condition yours is in but the bones of it are there, I’ve no outer sleeve, and the part of the styrene packaging that held the track is gone alone with the track, one coach is missing its trucks and the engines buffers are awol, but there is lots of bonus dust, Transformer seems different than yours, mine had a model date of 1973, So my task for the future is to track and track the missing bits, helped greatly by your knowledge gained from this video, Whatever happened Lima? I got a nice set back in the mid 80’s for Xmas, a Lima SNCF electric loco with two coaches and a car transporter, 4 red cars and a car loading ramp thing, that was back when I was 7-8yrs old About 15 yrs ago I got back into the hobby kind of, I’d been collecting 1/50 diecast construction equipment and heavy haulage trucks and seen some American 1/48 O scale trains, figuring these would add to little dioramas and layouts etc I made the jump, I need to find or creat an Irish O scale engine now

i see the transport for wales logo on some of the coaches lol

Nice model from Accurascale and the quality is better than the Hattons model was. So well done to them for improving on the tooling they bought from Hattons for the Class 66. I am very much looking forward to getting some of the Accurascale Class 60 models in 2025 as well after cancelling my pre-order of the Cavalex Models examples. I am so glad that Accurascale are doing a Class 60 as I was let down by the Class 56 by Cavalex Models back in January and I even got muted on their section on RMWeb because I called out the quality issues because my model had a jammed gear tower. I won't buy anymore of their models if that is how I am going to be treated on RMWeb and I have a right to call out a bad model and I can handle the backlash too. The silver lining for me is that I have learned my lessons as I now do O Gauge and I have a couple of Class 60's and they are fantastic models. I have a micro O Gauge layout that is Hermes Road that I started this month when I became 44 earlier in the month. As for OO Gauge, Accurascale has always respected me as their customer and I will always support them as a loyal customer. 2025 is going to be another great year for model trains and will likely be when I make a new OO Gauge modern era layout too, so I will like bag a couple of these Class 66's as well once I have relocated to the US.

Great video , I did see one model shop offering to swap out the none driven bogie car with a driven bogie set , to allow a greater train length to be pulled , could be a good alternative , you may need to change the coupling type on the original replacement boogie , I thought that was a good idea , but spare parts seem difficult to obtain, even traction tyres are out of stock at present.

Another great review and another hit by A/Scale; makes sense for A/Scale to do some re-runs not only this 66 but other classes / locos.

Remember camping out at Maam Cross in the 80s with my (then) girl friend - lovely place but quite desolate then. Be very interested at how much more there is to be developed at the site

For some reason, if i download this sound profile to my decoder, power cycle it and everything, i cant control it and nothing works and it says ‘no sound profile loaded’ anyone know what i should do?

Many thanks for a great review Eugene, i have the Bachmann arriva trains wales version, it appears that bachmann are fitting the driver figures again but not sure 😊

Hi Eugene I have the Prostate Uk livery and straight out of the box it ran perfectly. Even on my less than perfect track there were no issues . I had the sound version and I am very impressed with the quality . Also the body is very easy to take off to fit crew and the new air dam . I didn’t buy a Hattons version due to the issues and glad Accurascale rectified those . Cheers Kev

Hi, I’m looking to possibly buy a Bachmann class 90 in the coming months, I’m very happy that you’ve done a review that will help me, it’s strange how this locomotive doesn’t have any windshield wipers fitted, I’m a big DB Schenker fan so a model in that livery would look great with my other DB Schenker models in my collection, it looks like a great model in all departments, thanks for sharing.

Fully agree with your review. I have 6 of them with sound and yes they run beautifully out of the box and the livery application across each one is deep & expertly applied and the detail is something else. Only downsides so far is the sound vibration thru the body but mainly on the plastic exhaust on the removal roof panel as I think it is slightly loose causing the buzzing sound, the other one is the cab end handrails haven't been glued on properly by the factory which is evident on all 6 loco's of mine and on nearly every Class 66 I've seen on social media thus that needs to be nipped in the bud by Accurascale. Refine it a bit more in regards to cab ends handrail fitment and get rid of the sound vibration/buzzing thru the roof panel then Accurascale will have a license to print money on these models and I will continually buy them as they get released. 9.5/10 for me.

Very nice indeed

whats the point in all the stuff in little plastic bags. Could they just not drop them into one or not at all, Seems a bit wasteful.

So, chimney then eh? you'll be calling an exhaust port a funnel next....! ( I've got that bloody Dick Van Dyke song in my head now, chim, chim-e-ney chim chim-e-ney...)

Bought the same sound fitted green "Fred" and so far it's very good. I never had the Hattons version so have nothing to compare it to. Also thought the sound volume was quite low and don't know why they fit couplings to both ends at the factory as I would have thought most would only want to pull. Bought both driver packs so will fit one of those and change the buffer beam. I also have a Bachmann Red DB 66 fitted with a Hornby TTS (pcb is 21 pin) and uprated speaker and stay alive, but there is no comparison - lights are much brighter, no markers, cannot control rear lights, both cabs on together and bogie mounted NEM pockets, so no rear air deflector available. Maybe it needs a rewire then fit a 21 pin TXS decoder.

I have got three of them. I think they are the best loco on the market at the moment. They sound fab. Put a heavy train on them and use F7 (Lock Hold ) and rev them up taking F7 on and off to give it a slow start with all the revs and no model sounds as good as them. I have had no problems with any of them and I would score them 10/10

So is the plan to reopen the line in 5ft3in gauge or 3ft gauge?

Thanks for this review. Your reviews are one of the best on KZbin. I was put off the Hattons model by all the negative points but loved the detailing. This Accurascale model does look to have finally made this to be a 5 star model with performance to match. Let's hope that there will be no motor issues.

A great review of an outstanding model, I have 13 of the Hattons 66's. Well done Accurascale for rectifying the axle box, underbody detail and lighting issues. Got 1 of these but as it's now sold out I'll wait patiently for run 2

Superb models and a great review Eugene, thank you. Let's just hope that those failing motors of their previous classes that caused so much hassle and anxiety are now a thing of the past. Hopefully these will prove to run robustly for many years to come and rescue Accurascale from its poor motor reliability reputation. Regards Julian

Great review as always, one thing to note the green freightliner is not the powerhaul version of the livery but the original freightliner green yellow livery. the Powerhaul version has a grey sweeping line under each cab.

I like your choice of the Green Freightliner and the red Deutsch Bahn. These would be the two I would have bought, if I was prepared to part with the cash! Thanks for uploading.

Great video. They spend so much on detail I just wish a driver was put in. Would not cost much. I hate taking Locos apart.

I have the DRS Livery Accurascale 66, and I don't have the sound distortion issue, that being said my roof section is very tight so maybe that is helping with the resonance issue.

Would love to see a class 56 Cavelex review from you one day Eugene! Havent as yet seen a bad thing to say about them! Like to see what you think.

Your hard work doesn't go unnoticed in compiling these reviews Eugene and we thank you. If you do decide to part ex what would it be, Hattons or Bachmann 66's?

I totally agree with all your individual ratings Eugene, outstanding? Absolutely! Your reviews are a joy to view, As always fair and honest. I haven't encountered any vibrations as yet with 66415 Tangoed Freightliner and the EWS 66001 exclusive, fingers crossed. As for the overall sound very happy, it sounds right, i know as i see and hear them almost every day, i found the Hattons sound too bass for my liking. Admit im a rivet counter when it comes to liveries and logos as I'm not happy with 66415's! The overall orange is far too pale, and the irony is the excellence box art is exactly the right tone that it should be. Accurascale didnt research it properly as they went off Hattons 66623 Tango livery which was also too pale. As always enjoyed and i feel a couple more should be ordered, only dont tell the wife!

Many thanks for the review but can I just put this out there. Are the EWS ones the wrong colour?. Are they too red and the gold stripe is yellow!. Also I have the Freightliner orange version. Is this too pale because mine is very, very pale?.

I had vibration issues on two of the new 66s. This was not the DCC access lid, as the vibration continued with that taken off. I found it was more the fixing of the speaker to the PCB. This was fixed by removing the clips and using two pieces of black tack to hold the speaker down gently (not hard pressed down). The sound is also improved greatly by increasing the bass CV 196 and treble CV 197 settings (which allows slightly lower volume).

Great review of an outstanding model 👏 😊

Superb models. Your review makes them very tempting

Fully agree excellent model

Nice review, this seems like a great rendering of the class 66, both in looks and performance. Just out of curiosity, did you have the problem with the roof vibration with your DB model too?

I would disagree with you on the soundfile the free Esu class 66 soundfile is much better and far better than the accurascale file

Hi Eugene, good review I agree with your assessment of the Accurascale 66s love my four wish I could have bought more haven’t had the problem with vibration of the roof on mine compared to the Hattons one it’s chalk and cheese cheers Al

My 66763 was very jerky on the running in for the first 30 or 40 seconds and after a minute or two sorted itself out I have no idea what was going on with it no issues with it now after fully running in on dcc

FYI for me the second section of video is mono sound, made me wonder if my AirPods were broken as no sound from the left one.

This is the quality you get when model trains are made by model train fans.they know exactly what's wanted by the customer .they are not in competition with hornby as hornby are not in the same league.

Do you think the Hattons 66 contributed to the stores closure?

im abit of noob with dcc, at 2:43 is there already a dcc decoder installed on this model, or when you put the loksound 5 into the pin socket, that is the dcc decoder itself. im just wondering, if i was to buy a loksound 5 with a sound speaker and stay alive, do i need to buy a seperate decoder for the loksound, or is it a decoder itself?

I remembered stopping here last year and the year before, glad you guys are doing this, hope you all do the same to the other railway stations, but I do love to have this railway up and running tbh, so yeah

Convincing sound effects. The only thing that's not realistic is that the engine sounds just as loud in the distance! Of course on a OO gauge layout, the actual distance can only be a matter of a few feet, but the scale distance would attenuate the sound. I think you might be able to attenuate the sound in Audacity to make it more realistic as the loco pulls away. Thanks for uploading!

Would love to see efforts like this done to some of the railways here in Donegal

Should be the lights go out on starting up and come back on just something that they got slightly wrong with the model

Great work, very encouraging, and I hope to visit some day. I hope a substantial part of the original standard gauge line can be restored in both directions.

Great stuff. My 66 landed a few days ago. May I ask where you got those hoppers from? I have hopper envy now 😂

A good video, perhaps a little too long, it also would have been nice to see a Driver in the Cab ! I only use DCC sound on my ‘O’ gauge stock due to the Quality and the cost involved. I do also fit CREWS into all my Steam and Diesel stock !

Another belter from Accurascale! All seems fine with this new version of the old Hattons model, Accurascale seem to worked out all the old faults and produced a fine looking and sounding model. I have to agree with the comments elsewhere, although I’ve always been impressed with the sound from my Hattons model, it always sounded like it had too much bass - the whole loft seemed to shake!! Looking forward to your full review Eugene Cheers John b😎

Love all my Bachmann Class 66's and have 12 of them solid reliable models, but the Accurascale models are even better so hats off again to the Accurascale boys. I recieved the GBRf, DRS and GBRf prostrate cancer livery models about a week and a half ago and got the shipping notification that the Freightliner G&W orange charity one arrives early next week. Also exciting news was the Accurascale Class 60 announcement. Placed my order already and have a couple of Cavalex Class 60's on order so looking forward to comparing them. Again have to admit the Hornby Class 60 is an excellent model and have 8 of them but they still annoy me with there lack of liveries and the prices. Saying that you can get some real bargains now on Hornby Class 60's.

To be honest I’m a bit disappointed with some of the sound functions. Whilst I do agree the overall sound is very good I think some of the sound effects are set too low ‘out of the box’ e.g. coupling clank, door slam, sanders, rail joint. I did change the CV settings for these functions per the supplied functions card and this made a considerable improvement in these sounds. However, after I had done this I found the cab lights wouldn’t operate. I’ve now reset to the factory settings and the cab lights are working again. I would be very interested to know if anyone else has had a go at altering CV sound settings and how you got on. Another wee question is if anyone has the Evening Star do you have a bell sound on F17 & F18. I only get the bell sound on F17. Perhaps just a typo on sound function card supplied with the models. When I select F18 nothing happens.