Rapido expands Evolution range with horsebox and carriage truck
Rapido’s Evolution range gained a horsebox and open carriage truck, filling the utility-stock gap that makes pre-grouping trains feel complete.
Rapido Trains UK has pushed Project Evolution beyond bogie coaches and into the sort of working stock that makes a pre-grouping train look right on the rails. The new OO-gauge horsebox and open carriage truck extend a line that began as a range of generic 48ft pre-Grouping bogie coaches in many liveries, with the first batch arriving in early 2026 and two further batches still due later in the year. Rapido had already shown the strategy was driven by demand when it brought non-corridor First Class and Full Brake coaches forward into the second batch in October 2024.
That expansion matters because these are not filler wagons. Rapido says the open carriage truck was used to carry horse-drawn carriages and other road vehicles, reflecting the need to move people and vehicles to and from stations that were not conveniently close by. The horsebox fills a different job entirely, and a useful one at that. The Great Eastern Railway Society notes that horseboxes typically carried horses, a groom’s compartment, and storage for harness and other equipment, while other railway history notes describe them as passenger-carriage-standard vehicles with continuous brakes and longer springs, built to run at speed in passenger trains. Rails of Sheffield adds that they saw use for special events, auctions, military manoeuvres, and recreational travel.
Rapido has loaded both models with the kind of detail pre-grouping modellers actually notice. Each comes with brass bearing cups and NEM coupling pockets, plus two fixed-bar couplings in the box. The carriage truck will come in three styles with three different load options, while the horsebox includes adjustable interior lighting operated by a supplied magnetic wand and optional open droplight windows. Rapido plans 22 versions of the open carriage truck and 27 different horseboxes, and the horsebox itself is a 4-wheel pre-grouping design, 16ft long, with a single groom’s compartment. Rapido says versions of this type survived right through to the end of steam and would have been seen across the UK.
The retailer interest shows how quickly the range is becoming a usable ecosystem rather than a set of isolated releases. Rails of Sheffield commissioned North British Railway and South Eastern & Chatham Railway versions of both models, and listed the horsebox at £39.95. Its specification calls out oil lighting, short footboards, Mansell wheels running in pinpoint bearings, and working lighting. Put beside the existing Evolution coaches, the new horsebox and carriage truck finally give the range the awkward, practical stock that ties a pre-grouping formation together and makes the whole thing believable.
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