JDW

I have to admit, I'm struggling to follow the pricing of some of the Hornby wagons! I know they're aimed at the collector/fun market, but £9.99 for the 2023 Roadshow and £23.99 for the Christmas one? Essentially the same wagon (I know they're not the same, but you get what I mean) with added load of parcels for almost 2.5 times the price? And more expensive than the prototypical ZDA/OAA, Satlink ZRA (£19.99) and even the bogie Palvan (£21.99). Even the TEA bogie tanker, as much as it might not be the most accurate model ever, will satisfy a lot of people at just £3.50 more than the Christmas wagon.

I thought the same. On the one hand, it's a train set so lots of different colours, different wagons, one that you can put something in, one that you can load containers on and off, plus a bright yellow maintenance coach, it'll attract the attention of train set buyers. But I can't help feeling that something that could have built into something better more easily and usefully would be better. But maybe that's me thinking from a model railway perspective rather than a train set perspective. And I imagine that in terms of 'bang for your buck', the open wagon and container flat are pretty big wagons for their cost - what do they consist of, a floor, a body and two bogies for the hopper? 4 parts, six if you count the coupling hooks, plus four sets of wheels, quick and simple to assemble. Ditto the container wagon. I can't imagine something like (off the top of my head) an old-style HAA or TTA would cost much less, but they're only half the size which probably counts for a lot in a train set when it comes to visual appeal on the shelf.

It does feel like there's a bit of a desire to look for "failures". Whether that's frustration that it wasn't produced or influenced by the pervading negativity is hard to know, but I think calling it a failure to deliver when expressions of interest showed that there wasn't any (or not enough, at any rate) is unnecessary exaggeration

And a success in realising it

It does look like an interesting choice. I think the 'lower-end' Railroad type stuff does have a place, and it's nice to see some variety - I suspect the Network Rail 101 will be popular - but I think the prices are heading in the wrong direction for what they are. Without wanting to go down the road of a long discussion about rising costs etc, I'm not convinced that the £100+ tags reflect the product, and to me it feels a bit like they're over-priced for the more entry-level modeller, but under-deliver for those with bigger budgets or aspirations. I have to admit, I quite like the Network Rail 101. I know it's probably more 'representational' than accurate, but for a lot of people, it's something a bit different and with a bit of toning down could probably look quite nice. I'd be tempted (I keep saying I'll do a Serco one) at somewhere around £90-95, I don't need one but I'd probably buy one because it's different. At £130+, I'm not sure that represents good value any more, to me at least. Or maybe I'm just getting old and remembering the days when a Lima 101 cost £49.99... Going back to the 37, was 37698 the only one in Loadhaul with a centre headcode? While I don't expect Hornby to consider every aspect of what everyone wants from every model, assuming the artwork on the image is right and it is a centre-headcode body then 698 would not only be right, but could have that extra appeal for those who want to do a bit of personalisation. It carried miniature snowploughs and spent some time with an engine room door from an EWS-liveried loco, both easy detailing projects and for anyone who knows a bit about the hobby and who has looked at photos, something that's be quite easy to pick up on when deciding which loco to produce, I'm sure. That said, the artwork also shows red buffer beams. Maybe it's just an illustrative example, maybe they've re-used artwork from a BR blue example and not changed the ends, just the sides? Does Hornby have the right body for 37710, with no headcodes? Maybe it's a fuss about nothing. The Sentinels are quite nice, and I'm glad they chose to produce the buffer-less version rather than just go with an 'it'll do' version with buffers. RfD 47200 though... shouldn't the roof be blue on all RfD European locos? It looks distinctly grey to me.

The angles between the orange and black look all wrong to me, I'm sure they're too vertical. As for the nose, I hadn't noticed but if that's correct it seems a very odd choice. Even at the 'attract youngsters at a decent price' level, when there are other more appropriate numbers to choose from, why pick one that's the most wrong? OK, it's a basic model and the roof detail is likely wrong, but that's something fewer people will know about or spot. And at an intermediate level, there are those younger ones or those on a limited budget who at least want something vaguely right. I'd have been pretty disappointed if I'd bought the Yeomen 59/0 as a kid then realised as I became more knowledgeable that it used a 59/1 body. A fairly generic 37 is fine, but when it'd be as easy to pick a better number, it just seems daft. It's hard to see how they could look at pictures and decide that's the right option to produce. And yes, schoolboy errors like the 'class 121 Bo-Bo' are equally odd. Did no-one with any subject knowledge proofread it? (It feels a lot like I could copy and paste many of these thoughts from my recent post in the KR Models thread...)

Oops, that's not good, but very fortunate in where it landed. My first thoughts too were that given it looks to be on the curved route, it would seem highly likely that the frame has been pushed sideways by contact with the curved platform. I'd have expected it to have been going from left to right given right-hand running (ie exiting the station at this end) but that scenario would be even more likely if the frame (which presumably is much wider than a standard vehicle) has run up the platform ramp and been tilted over. That would have landed it pretty much where it is. It's hard to make out any obvious damage to track, platform or wall in that clip though.

I'll second the need for good glue, something like Araldite or epoxy, as things like Plastic Weld won't do much!

I'd agree with a lot of this, apart from one thing, which I think has been a sticking point for many on the topic: They are indeed producing some models which, let's be honest, are a lot better than most of us could build, and enable a lot more people to have a model they wouldn't otherwise have the skill to make themselves. And building to a price is fine too, so long as it works. But I think the stumbling block isn't so much that some things have been wrong per se but it's what was wrong. If it were, say, the shape of a class 37 or 50 windscreen, it's a very complex area and very difficult to get spot-on. Something like that might have been moaned about, but at the same time it's fairly understandable. But when it's something that would have been just as easy to get right, I think that's when it becomes a problem - sticking with the Fell, if both ends are identical, then it stands to reason that the boiler ports will be diagonally opposite, there's little interpretation required. Hopefully, it'll be part of a learning curve for all involved, which will up the quality next time. There's certainly a place for them in the market.

Having started reading this thread, I had a quick look at the KR Models site and picked a loco at random, the British Steel Hunslet. The price at the top of the page, and in the "select livery" etc boxes, is shown as £150 to £233.33, yet lower down in the blurb as £180 to £280, with no clarification. I did find that confusing, though having read here assumed the difference to be VAT. On going through to my basket, the initial postage cost was £23 but changed to £4.95 when I changed the country to UK. The proice was shown as £180 with a note saying that it included £30 VAT. I suspect it's got more to do with the standard North American way of not adding VAT until the checkout than any malicious or nefarious intent, but I'm not sure ignorance or lack of technical ability excuses it either when a large part of your market is in a country where it's expected for prices to include VAT. It might well seem totally normal to the KR folks over there, they might be wondering what the fuss is about... but it's important to understand the market you're selling into - not just the models, but the nuances and the technical and commercial expectations. One other thing I've noticed in KR's adverts (and I stress, I see it in others too, but it pops up much more in KR's, or at least I've noticed it more) is poor grammar. The one shown by Bernard Lamb a few posts back for example. "a ready to run model of the GT3 Gas Turbine RTR Loco" - for a start, all those extra capital letters hurt my eyes. Gas turbine and loco aren't names, they don't need them. But it's definitely not a model of a "Gas Turbine RTR Loco". Or even of a gas turbine RTR loco. [For clarity, RTR stands for "ready to run", a term which describes the model not the prototype and indicates that it's not a kit]. "To" should be "to" as it's a continuation of the sentence that started two lines above. "DCC ready" (lower case) but "DCC Sound" - why the upper case S, sound isn't a name? (You could probably argue that it should really be "Brings" not Bring as well, if you're being pedantic, as a company [KR Models] is really an "it" not a "they". It brings, they [the people] bring.) I know it makes me sound like a pedant, and lots of people might not even notice, but to me that's the point. It's about getting things right, being accurate. Lots of people might not notice the Fell roof error, it doesn't make it right. And not caring enough to proofread, or get someone with a better level of English to do it, to me that's a sign of the general attitude of a business or organisation. I'm not trying to have a go at the writer, and it's not just KR, I think it's an important point in general - if they can't be bothered to get their publicity right, and think it doesn't matter, it's a red flag that says "what will their product/service/etc be like?" (NB - I know we can't all be perfect at it, and yes, we all make errors from time to time, even in print - I'm sure the BRM team will agree on that - and it's not the end of the world, but I'm speaking here about consistency not just a one-off)

Thanks. I didn't know they were still available, I haven't seen them on Ebay for a while. I'd say that if you need a 323, then it's better than starting from scratch. But as you've seen from mine, it's needed a fair bit of work. Chiefly that's meant straightening the splayed bodysides after gluing the two halves together; filling the cut-outs above the bogies in the lower bodyside; adding a floor plus a strip along the lower bodyside to add around 1.5mm; adding new strengthening plates below the doors. The bogie frames are much too thick as supplied and need thinning down. I used Southern Pride bogies and Hornby 12.6mm wheels. All of the above combine to give a reasonable overall height and ride height. As far as I know, no underframe parts are available, nor etched window frames. I used 3D printed gangways from a seller on Ebay designed for Hornby class 466 units, also not currently available. If the bogie frames aren't available, options could include using a Bachmann 166 chasis for the bogies and drivetrain or modifying some easily-available Hornby class 156 bogie frames - they'd need to be modified to remove the tread brakes and add the extra arms (dampers?) on the sides. Neither option is great, a 166 isn't cheap and the 156 bogies would need a lot of work. Hope that helps!

As some Tesla owners found out at Christmas "having charging options" doesn't necessarily mean than no one else will be thinking the same! The NC500 route gets pretty busy in summer, though for now at least, most are probably still running on petrol/diesel.

I think the point isn't so much whether it's cars, hi-fi's or whatever, more that it's often quite difficult to find things to say in any market where the product has significantly improved and even the "worst" will do a decent job of whatever it is, be it a cheap car, a cheap hi-fi or a Railroad-range, 'Design Clever' model train. The question then becomes to what level does a reviewer "nit-pick", for want of a better phrase, and be accused of negativity? The cheapest car on the market might not score highly in a review, but will likely be highly satisfactory for its purchasers and their needs. Likewise a stereo system, many might not even be able to tell the difference in sound quality, and a cheaper one is likely just as acceptable. How we apply that to models, though, is probably a bigger point of contention. As we've seen on this thread and elsewhere, one person's "it looks like how I picture the Fell, it's good enough for me" is another person's "doesn't look anything like it, it's barely recognisable". Which makes setting a benchmark for reviews very difficult, and whichever way you go, people will disagree. Not enough criticism, too much criticism, to bland, too detailed, and from that no doubt extrapolate that it's been done that way because of some real or imagined axe to grind or bonus from the manufacturer.

I'm not sure that with the much improved road network compared to the previous heyday of Motorail there would be enough demand on enough routes to justify it any more, as much as we might like the concept and the nostalgia. But if anything were going to increase the demand and make it viable again, the move to electric cars could be the thing that does it, if not within the UK then in places like mainland Europe where heading from, say, the Netherlands or German down to the south of France or Italy by car for a holiday is pretty common but out of the reach of electric cars without stops to charge. Of course, that could well be overtaken by developments either in flash/rapid charging, alternative green fuels like hydrogen, or increased range.

I think you make some very sound points there @jjb1970, I was thinking something very similar. Certainly I agree on your latter point about car reviews. The last few electric commercial vehicles I've test driven, beyond points of taste and personal preference, and features which might be more appealing to (or suit) some operators than others, there's very little to say despite all the hype from manufacturers. Even recent diesels. They generally do what they say. Yes, some cabs could be better laid out, but they work, and many drivers are probably less picky than me and wouldn't even give it a second thought. So it's hard to write anything genuinely exciting. "These bits I liked, these bits are good, these bits could be better," and occasionally "that's not so great" but it's all very much of a muchness and you've got to be looking at it a lot harder than the average driver/user would. Even economy is to an extent pointless, as each operator is more interested in "can it do a full day's work" based on what they need from it, than absolute range. I'm not sure about the comparison mentioned above to coarse-scale O, I'm not sure it'd be meaningful to anyone but a small selection of those who are into that, and instinctively I'd be wondering whether there's value in comparing the latest hi-fidelity model to something "coarse", though that's probably as much to do with semantics as the reality, and running comparisons against something high quality that works very well and could be seen as a benchmark are perhaps not unfair. One thing I have found when reading reviews recently is that I tend to be more drawn to the accompanying prototype features than the review itself. It's nice to have a review, and some are more useful/interesting than others, and yes, I do read them if it's a product I'm interested in, but at the same time they often don't tell me much about the actual model that I haven't already seen myself or can't see from the images. I find the comparison with the real thing and placing the model in a wider context are what sell a magazine to me rather than it having a review per se.

Hmmm... Not much progress to report, i've been working on the next set of bogies, but discovered that I only have enough bogie side frames for 4 coaches. I'm sure I bought enough for both sets, but have no idea where the others might be if I did. Or maybe I planned to use something else for the powered vehicles. It's been work in progress so long, I can't remember! On a slight plus note, I happened to stand the 158 next to it earlier and it looks pretty much on the money in terms of height, so I think my decision to add the extra 1.5mm or so was the right one. The bodies are around 10mm longer though. I know the 323s are pretty long, but a scale 2.5 feet seems a lot. A quick look at Wikipedia suggests 22.57m or 74' 1" for a 158 and 22.81m or 74' 10" for a 323, an extra 24cm or 9".

I do think sometimes reading some of the posts on RMWeb, some people seem a bit quick to want to assume malice or intention where it's likely there is none, or at least not the the extent imagined. But who doesn't love a good conspiracy?! I fully appreciate the difficulties of reviewing products, and in my own job have similar difficulties sometimes, i.e. trying to say that something isn't as good as it could be, without upsetting our advertisers. It's a difficult balance, but there are ways and means of saying things, and we can usually get the message across. Likewise, some good points made about the time and resources available. I tend to ask the manufacturer to review a text for accuracy before we print a piece, partly because they know the product best and will spot inaccuracies (and to my mind, what I write is both an interesting feature but also a historical record, whether I intend it to be or not) so they are best placed for that. In such a niche field (possibly more so that railway modelling), finding others with the expertise to proofread both grammar and content is very difficult - although my colleagues in the office who deal with the commercial side of our business often say they'll help if ever it's needed, it's pointless to an extent as they might know good English, but not the technical or operational subject matter at hand. I do think we forget that RMWeb is probably skewed towards the 'high' or 'discerning' end of the market sometimes. For many people, a model that looks substantially like the real thing is perfectly fine, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think we often confuse the issue of whether something is good enough to please the mass market with whether the manufacturer could have made it better, although at the same time, the two questions are often intrinsically linked, especially where obvious design errors (let's use the KR Fell's roof as an example) crop up. Someone mentioned DMUs a few pages back, and I think that's a good point. I just "accidentally" bought another Bachmann WYPTE 158, the old version. No doubt, it's not as shiny as the new model, and I can spot a few faults - the bulbous LED lights, the knuckle-style dummy coupling, exhaust stack that ends level with the lower bodyside, wrong roof detail for some liveries... if it were a loco, heaven help us a 37 or 47, people would have been slating the manufacturer the day it was released 20-odd years ago. Does it run well? Yes, excellently (well, in general, I haven't tested the new one yet!). Does it look largely like what it should look like? Yes. Would most people be happy with it? I imagine so. And I think in a lot of cases, it's the same. People moan about prices, yet initiatives (I won't go into specific models or whether it could have been done better) like "Design Clever" which aim to reduce cost and deliver models that are perfectly adequate for many are mocked or knocked while prices for things with detail to the nth degree go ever higher. There are a lot of generally good models out there - I'd say most things produced in the last 20 years would pass the 'three feet' test for most people - but from some threads you'd never know it. Of course, that doesn't excuse sloppy design, and I'd say the water filler port or whatever it is being at the wrong end of the roof on the KR Fell probably falls into that category, but we could probably have a hundred pages on where to draw the line between what is and isn't acceptable as a compromise in manufacturing and reach no consensus.

That does sound like a similar situation to the one linked to on Google Streetview a few posts above, with extra-wide wide 'pavements' that could easily (some might say sensibly) be used for parking as well as walking. Better still (and it sounds as if the tarmac/paving did so in that case) if there's some kind of a division between the part used for walking, and the part that could sensibly be used for parking. As is often the case, you can have a rule/law for something, but it doesn't always work everywhere and in every case. Personally, I don't like to park on the pavement in most situations, and try to avoid it even when other cars are parked with two wheels slightly on it unless there's an obvious reason/need to, but when I'm staying at my parents' house, it's the most sensible place - it's at the end of a cul-de-sac, there's no other house, the pavement's not a walking route to anywhere, and parking right up against the garden wall and at the very end of the street leaves space for other people to come and go or turn around with no impediment. Technically wrong, as I'm blocking the pavement, but in the 30+ years they've owned the house, I don't think anyone's ever needed to walk around there!

I hadn't missed the point, just didn't want to get into a long rambling post that was trying to cover every possible angle. It's very valid I think to say that once one model has been produced, someone else might be less likely to (in the short or medium term at least). But at the same time, we could go round in circles for hours debating whether anyone else actually would have produced one! I do suspect, though, that the majority of purchasers probably won't know or care that, say, the radius of the cab windows is slightly out. They have "a 4DD" and they'll be happy with that. And while there are the two parallel arguments of whether it's right to produce a model which isn't as correct as it could be, and whether it's right to buy the model and support that (thereby validating the choice to produce a less-than-correct model, as well as possibly depriving people of a more-correct one), I suspect that again so few people who buy will be in the know enough to be able to spot the flaws that it won't matter to them. They have a 4DD (or whatever). Certainly with oddballs like the Fell, I bet without reading a review, most people wouldn't know there was anything amiss, as very few will actually sit it next to a picture and study it. Overlooking the actual choice to make it, I would imagine there are a lot of people whose outlook is to accept it as "it's better than I could make" and "the best I'm going to get at any point now or in the foreseeable future". Whether that justifies or outweighs producing something that is less correct than it could be takes us back to the same circular discussion though (and possibly even further off topic).

Reading through some of the KR threads, I do think we need to be careful to make sure comments are directed properly (ie at the business or model rather than personally), though with small or 'one-man-band' companies that's always going to overlap. Criticising KR is pretty much criticising Keith and Michael. Criticising Hornby is criticising some nameless designer or team effort in a office. I did think the roof profile of the 4DD looks a bit off, I agree, and the front windows should have a bigger radius. And it's easy to argue that things that are as easy (relatively speaking) to get right as to get wrong should be right. On the other hand, I suspect a good number of purchasers won't be on here or be the connoisseurs for detail that many of us are. I'm not sure I fully understand why the Fell ended up quite so wrong on one side, and arguably it could/should have been right, but for many people who won't be looking at it alongside a picture of the real thing, it looks like a Fell, and is something unusual. Whether we agree or not, whether we like it or not, and whether it could have been better or not, it's satisfied a need. The 4DD looks slightly off, but if I'm honest, it looks close enough to me that I'd still buy one if I were in the market for one. The roof of the Hornby class 153 is generally said to be too flat, yet plenty of people have bought them (I've accumulated 8, plus a pair used as a basis for a 155). Should things be correct from the start? Yes, arguably. But at the same time I think we have to accept that for lots of people, manufacturers and purchasers, 'close enough' is, well, close enough.

Oops. Despite already having a fleet of 158s in all three main versions of WYPTE colours, I accidentally bought another. I was searching Ebay for some new bodies for a First Transpennine part-vinylled unit (awful colour, why did I buy it?!) and came across a West Yorks unit at a low price. In the short term, a cheeky touch with a black marker and white paint on the numbers will change it from 158906 to 158908, in the longer term it might get yellow fairings and Arriva logos and be renumbered to 158902, inspired by a picture on Martin Loader's website/gallery. The Kadees will be replaced too, as they seem too long and too low, and the gangway needs a minor repair. I did also buy a cheap pair of Regional Railways shells for the Transpennine unit, with minor damage but they can hopefully be made good. What to do with the Transpennine bodies... ...Hmmm, I've always liked the Ginsters livery...

I'm sure I've seen pictures of something like that in pictures somewhere, on a flat or well wagon. The top of them won't look much like the top of a real bogie though, and it'll be very much on show if you're loading them on a wagon.

Picking up on the point, Scotland is a good example I think, since the express coach alternative is pretty good compared to elsewhere in the UK. The Citylink/megabus "Saltire Cross" network links all the major traffic objectives in a relatively easy to understand way with hourly services and easy connections using relatively modern coaches (yes, they'll never be as smooth or spacious as a train, but some of the newer ones, in particular the Plaxton double-deckers, are quite nice). Layer on top the expanding Ember, which has the cachet of using electric coaches on its routes between Dundee and Edinburgh/Glasgow, plus occasional Flixbus journeys too, as well as the (mainly Stagecoach-operated) long distance regional routes into places like Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and from the south-west into Glasgow, and it provides a credible (though maybe not equal) alternative to the train on a lot of major axes.

With apologies for continuing off topic, as much as I agree that people should have the right to seek improved pay and conditions, I can't see this ending well in the bigger picture. It's gone on long enough that the railway risks becoming an irrelevance. At a time when we need to be getting people back on board (and with apologies for hugely over-simplifying), there needs to be a concerted effort to run a railway at a time when passenger growth is desperately needed, rather than get bogged down in squabbles about DOO or point-scoring over pay. Whose fault it is - Government, unions, staff, management - won't matter when there's no-one left using the trains because they're too unreliable, and there's only so long the public will stay 'on side' for. Likewise the 'make your own way' or 'don't travel' messaging around disruption of any kind - why would anyone bother using the train if they didn't have to? I wouldn't.

Some small progress this afternoon, though it feels like quite big progress as it means coaches actually sitting on their wheels for the first time. The gangway connections are 3D printed ones I bought in bulk with the 465s in mind but which also seem suitable for this project. They are only tacked in place for now, partly to help check the ride height and also to help protect the bogie pivots which are a bit flimsy. I might swap them for captive nuts and bolts. Overall, it's looking promising though a push around some curves showed the wheels binding on the floor at times. It's highly likely that things aren't perfectly level, for reasons which are probably obvious to anyone who has followed the build so far! I think with a bit of gouging the floor to clear the flanges, it should be ok though. I don't want to lift it up any higher and end up with a big gap between body and bogie. The centre car isn't sitting level, so will need more work to sort out before I tackle the second driving car. Definitely feels like progress though. All that's really needed on the bodies is the strengthening plates below the doors and they should be ready to prime/paint. Still no idea what to do about the glazing, nor the underframe equipment - the idea of building lots of boxes from plastic doesn't appeal, especially as I struggle to get anything properly square...