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Kelly

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Everything posted by Kelly

  1. The print magazine industry in general has seen a decline over the last 5-10 years especially, possibly also hastened by the pandemic. A number of publications have ceased operating (mainly Tech and Craft related, no hobby related that I know of yet).
  2. Plus yesterday it was announced one of the photo etching companies (Photo Etching Consultants Ltd. IIRC?) has ceased trading. This will cause some ripples of disruption to etch kit suppliers as people scramble to retrieve their artwork and source their etching elsewhere, which will naturally cause a bit of a bubble effect of delays. Hopefully most people will be graceful about such delays and understanding of price increases if things are clearly communicated. I wouldn't want to be a small business or sole trader right now though!
  3. This is of course on top of the struggles many shops suffered during the pandemic, yes some got help from the public purse, but in a number of cases small businesses and self employed didn't survive or barely did. Though we lost a number of high street brands and have been for a while now (the high street has been struggling to compete with the likes of amazon, ebay etc and the supermarkets and out of town shopping centres). It is going to be a tough winter for many and I can't see either of the two challengers for PM doing much to really help people where it is needed most. Personally I'm just not buying anything outside of food etc unless it can go on pay weekly/pay fortnightly. Magazine subs and other subscriptions were amongst the first things to go a while ago.
  4. Smaller suppliers might be suffering however as one of the Photoetch suppliers has recently announced they're ceasing trading. Most with orders/artwork with them will probably be fine, but will face some delays and as they look for an alternative, those alternatives will have extra work. So smaller suppliers of etched items might have stock problems for a short time on top of the increased cost of etching.
  5. Some of the problem is related to component shortages as well. The majority of the car manufacturers cancelled their chip orders when lockdowns started to save money. That has rather backfired on them as the production companies have either sold their allocations to someone else or stopped producing that process (processes being measured in nm, most modern smartphones and PCs are on somewhere between 10nm and 3nm these days, the chips the car companies used were on 20nm+ nodes, which the companies long ago deemed obsolete and is really only used for memory chips iirc otherwise (the lockdown put a higher demand on computers, so you can see where some of that 20nm+ node capacity might have gone)). Electric cars probably as well suffer from the problems diesel cars have suffered for decades. Less of them are sold of the overall amount, so the cost per vehicle is higher. We're less than 8 years away from the manufacturers not being able to sell new petrol or diesel cars in 2030, and a lot of them are winding down their petrol and diesel engine car lines slowly (Volvo I think is moving to fully BEV or HEV), and after 2035, they won't be able to sell new hybrid cars. Some claim hydrogen is the answer, but there are myriad problems with that too. It is of course not unique to the UK, most of the EU countries have similar bans planned, except germany which currently i believe has 2050 as the cut off date for sale of petrol and diesel cars.
  6. Kelly

    EBay madness

    IIRC the Golden Arrow kit was designed around a Hornby 8F chassis. Its a while since I looked at the Golden Arrow range however (I think they're still selling resin bodies on ebay occasionally and did go to ExpoEM before the pandemic, not sure if they still do).
  7. There's also the narrow gauge diesel bagley from Bachmann coming. If Hornby ever did move into narrow gauge, their 48ds would be a good basis for the narrow gauge versions made (I'm simplifying here though). There are many variations of the sentinel from different engine manufacturers as well that could be done.
  8. Plenty of industrial designs for battery, electric, diesel and steam (and even petrol). The Hornby pecketts and 48ds as well as the sentinel have been some of their more popular releases in recent years. With the cost of living, a small affordable industrial locomotive (especially if it was available in ncb and could work with the wagons they already have) would be a good seller I reckon. Certainly an area for the smaller makers to exploit as there's so many options available to choose from and their unlikely to be copied by the bigger names.
  9. Set up last night. A nice spacious venue. Looking forward to a great show.
  10. Always going to get complaining of some kind I think regardless of what you do. People tend to love a moan. Anyway, you have done what you could given difficult circumstances and I expect most people will understand the situation. I think as long as you're clear about the catering situation then people will have the ability to plan accordingly. There's a Toby carvery not too far from the city centre that does good meals last time I visited it. Typically in the past I've tended to take my own food as the offerings are usually not cheap at a lot of shows (especially the larger shows), so taking your own can save you a fair amount to put towards the traders.
  11. As Darius says, as they've only just taken over the range, there will be lots of accumulated stock to go through, catalogue, moulds to inspect and catalogue, prices to calculate and so on. All this takes a lot of time like it did with the exKirk range and others. The fact the range has been aquired and will return is the important thing as very few companies produce such stock.
  12. They no longer seem to be active on eBay it would seem, so potentially they've stopped selling the kits now? I know they were trying to get people to buy outside of eBay to avoid the fees however, which eBay really doesn't like.
  13. Plus they have been used for some departmental use, including as barrier coaches for unit moves. Doing the translqtors could open them up to modellers who would not normally have a interest.
  14. If we're going to hear anything I expect it will be at Warley or in February potentially now. Though they've moved to the every 3 months model of announcements so there could be some surpises in October.
  15. The work EE did with the locomotives for South Africa and the Southern Railway as well as the LMS for 10201-3 and 10000-1 really helped them get a solid foundation for when they produced the 40s, 37s and others which carried lessons learned from those 3 locomotives forward.
  16. A lot of the trouble came from I believe companies that had much more experience building steam engines, and were building licenced copies of German engineered engines. At the time it was politically too sensitive for a German company to be allowed to supply all the engines, hence licence building. Of course trouble came from the steam heating equipment too and BR was generally rather slow to move to air braking and electric train heating compared with the continent.
  17. It is a bit of a piece of string argument really. It depends how long your layout is and whether you have a layout capable of taking a full length HST or loco + 10+ coaches or just a loco + 2 or + 4 or a 4 car unit.
  18. Quite a bit of experimentation is happening with hydrogen in Germany and other countries I believe.
  19. Quite and new battery technologies are on the horizon from Tesla and Toyota amongst others. Toyoya working on solid state batteries, which make them lighter and thinner as well as much harder to set on fire.
  20. When I said less likely to be needed for a given layout, what I meant was a Class 37 or 47 will potentially have more than just passenger service uses, so more options are potentially needed. A DMU or EMU will be typically a couple, one for each direction at minimum, dependant upon length that might be 4 or six.
  21. Quite people need enough things like 37s, 47s, 24s etc that with multiple options there's plenty to choose from. Units are typically in the less demand and less likely to be needed for a given layout depending upon the length. So already there is a limit of how many customers you can reach. Then you factor the geographical locations and their livery plus being in service a lot less time and again the potential market is smaller. It appears that the manufacturers in some cases by the factories get told that they should reconsider as the factories know what is in development. I still think that the electrostars would be a good idea for someone to do with so many variations that it could be a range stable for years. Again though targeting a rather small number of modellers in general compared with locomotives.
  22. Ordering new was never going to be on the cards unless it was on another line and caused cascading again. There will be new units in the next 5 years probably, but gradually they may well not be diesel if the fuel costs keep going up. I expect we'll see more battery units potentially, especially on relatively short lines or maybe hybrid units. Hydrogen still remains a possibility.
  23. The seating/interior is down to the operator to choose. The comments early on about the seating of them were all against demonstration seating thatd been installed I believe.
  24. They were probably much more likely to be cascaded than renewed for where they were. My view has always been that there was plenty of life left in the d stock, especially as the bogies and motors had been refurbished not long before retirement by tfl. It is far better in these days of expense and such to reuse where it makes sense. If they're only ever a stop gap until other units become available that is still better than things like 142s and the like continuing in service decades after they should have gone for scrap!
  25. Some of the 'not reckoned to be upto the job' and 'unpopular' monikers for some classes came from the tribalism for the pre-grouping railways that some crews still harboured well into grouping. So some of it is more pinch of salt as to relevance about the actual locomotives performance. Some of it though was different ways of doing things and not getting the efficiencies expected and so on.
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