Andy Hayter

30ft x 8ft 4 track oval in H0. Good for watching the trains go by and for running in new stock.

No Colin Nearly right but not quite He reclaims the VAT he paid on the £8 but has to pay the VAT on the £10 sale. So it does cost him.

I apologise to all that I made a major blunder in this analysis. It is not exactly as if the customer had not been there at all. It is much, much worse. The seller owes the Taxman £1.67 VAT collected on the £10 sale. So he is worse off for having sold the item at its replacement cost.

In the case of locos the shop keeper may choose next time to order only 8 locos (unless 10 is a minimum order). There are however many items which sell well (as in continuously) but where the minimum order may well be a box full - replacement wheels, couplings, track pins, bits of track etc. It may then take some time to sell the full minimum orders' worth. During which time prices may well have risen - considerably. I often see the moans of how prices have gone up. In fact over the last 5-6 years prices of locos of a similar type seem to have roughly doubled - that is about the 18% inflation I referred to in my original post on this subject. It can well be that by the time it is time to re-order the purchase price from the supplier is above the old selling price. Model Railway inflation is clearly well out in front of national inflation and these are exactly the conditions where a shop has to be sure that the proceeds of sales are sufficient to fund re-stocking. It hurts the buyer - of course it does - but having even fewer model shops hurt us more.

I get them too. I have no saved searches so it must be based on things I have briefly looked at. More often than no it will be for an item that the seller does not ship to France - so EBay's intelligent system is less than fully intelligent.

Sorry but that was exactly the model that my Jeweller friend was working and it led him to bankruptcy. WE can look at it in two ways. The first is what I think he was thinking and what you seem to be thinking. I bought this item for £8 and I have sold it for £10. I have made £2 profit. Now I have to invest this £2 profit together with the £8 purchase price to get a new identical item. But I will have profit again when I sell the new £10 item for £12.50 and I will be even better off with £2.50 profit.* In the mean time of course he has no money for his living costs, his store rent, his rates, his security system ......... and everything else. *[This is known as the jam tomorrow business model.] The other way of looking at it is that at the start of the process he has a (let's say) gold ring. A customer comes in buys the ring, he buys a replacement ring and 2 weeks later at the end of the process he has a gold ring. To all intents and purposes the customer did not need to have come in and buy it. It is exactly as if there was no customer. He started with a gold ring. He ends with an identical gold ring. It is just as if the sale had never happened ................... ................... and shops that don't sell go out of business. You can argue that the gold ring he held at the end of the process was worth more than the one he held at the start - but it is an identical gold ring. So what makes it more valuable? It was only more valuable on his ledger.

Back in the 70s I knew a jeweller who had been in the business for many years. He had a simple formula for have a good business. He out a handsome set margin on everything he sold (IIRC 60%, and while that sounds a lot I guess that he had relatively low turnover even compared to a model shop. Then he was hit with a triple whammy. 1. UK inflation went up to an average 18% or so. 2. The pound plummeted against the US$ - the currency which is used to price precious metals 3. Gold prices soared as unrest in the middle east created fears of oil price hikes above those already announced. He was convinced after years of being in business that he could continue with his business model. Fact was though he had 60% margin on each watch or ring he sold, when he came to buy a replacement, it was costing him more than the money he had received from the sale. 18 months later he was bankrupt. Lesson: If the income you get from a sale is not enough to cover the stock to replace that item, you either stop stocking that item or you have to put prices up - irrespective of what you might have paid for them.

It's been a while since we had anything pre-grouping. Just saying.

I agree this time John. I think many are in for a shock should the worst happen. I disagreed when you expressed surprise at the cost of refurbishing a trashed layout. I now agree because I think many thought as you do. It's only a layout a hundred notes for wood, £2-300 for track a bit for scenic and forgetting the 1000s of man hours which is the fun - unless you have to do it all over again. So if you tell the insurance company your layout is worth £1000 (or include it in items under a set value), that is the maximum you are likely to get back. Perhaps that is a benefit of using specialist insurance who might understand the true costs of refurbishment - although I have no personal experience. As to the point of thieves targeting model shops - yes thieves on the look out for model railway equipment will target shops. However the thief breaking into your garage is more likely to be looking for anything that they think they can make money on, and if it's not power tools, a ride on mower, a motor bike etc then some new looking boxes of Hornby will do as second best.

fascinating - if only in the fact that I had never considered Somerset and Dorset as shire counties,

Evil, pure evil Skinnylinny. My new year's resolution this year (and last) was to reduce my collection of unbuilt kits. You have already led me astray with the LBSCR coaches and now it seems I am going to be tempted again (and I will inevitably have to give in - resistance is indeed futile).

20 - 40k expensive? Try getting a professional to replace a garage sized fully scenic-ed layout. The man hours involved makes the cost high even if the intrinsic value of individual items might be low. And in the event of major destruction, I don't see it unwarranted to get a professional in to repair/replace what may be a lifetime's worth of your own work.

Didn't work for me - thank goodness. Moved country twice and I have not shed an empty box/Xerox of a magazine article. Now working through all those kits bought years ago for what today are pence compared with their ebay asking prices and have a wealth of books, photographs and magazine to help back up the builds.

Ks (Keyser) produced the Milestone series, but from memory there was nothing to fit the GN/GE joint area. The nearest was probably a LT&S tank. Although long out of production, they do sometimes turn up on a well known auction site.

And they honour the guarantees. I had an electric chain saw where the on/off switch stopped working as it should. Contacted them and explained that after 2.5 years the till receipt had faded to read nothing at all - along with several others in that year's pile. They sent a postal slip. I returned the body and it came back fully functional within 10 days of me sending it off.

I am fairly certain that the LNWR did have running rights as far as York. My first ever layout attempt was to have been a version of York Queen Street. I don't have the reference to hand but a look at the rail map shows the LNWR running into its central terminus in Leeds but with a diversion line from west of Holbeck onto the NER line running to South Milford and Church Fenton.

That's a business model I am familiar with and one open to smoke and mirrors manipulation. My first point would be however, so much for full support for our trade network. We've got plenty but no more for you Mr trade support.. As for manipulation (and I have no evidence that H have done this, just that it is possible to do and has been done by some companies in the past): You have a production run that does not sell as expected. You offer the surplus to yourself via your on-line web shop. You announce the item as sold out/out of stock. You create a market where there was not one before.

If you go to the Hornby website you can still pre-order a number of the 29 items announced. The number you can still pre-order is 29. Sorry Phil but it looks as if you have been sold a pup. Yes Hornby may be increasing production of these items and that is why they are still available for pre-order - although excuse me for being sceptical. If it ere so simple why did they not increase production on other recently completely sold out items? First run of Pecketts, Wainwright SECR H Class et al. Has increasing production levels suddenly become so much easier than it was just a few months ago?

I have alerted my mates in CRO and UWFRA.

And likewise I have known people that will only fill up with xxx (chose brand as required) because it is better than the rest. Whereas in most cases the fuel delivered comes from the same refinery and tank as the station down the road but carrying another badge. They clearly believe that Texaco send petrol from Milford Haven to Falkirk, while BP are sending petrol from Grangemouth to Swansea.

Of course if you want a locomotive designed for timber and freight movements over steep grades and tight curves then a Mallet design 0-6-6-0 articulated would be a good way to go The two currently in service on the Vivarais are sharing a joint 200th year birthday this year. And here is one I prepared (for the OH and her layout) earlier

Blame president Chump. Putting sanctions back on Iran means one of the worlds largest producers of crude (maybe even the largest) will not be selling anything like the quantities it has been. If the rest of OPEC stay with their agreed quotas, there will be something of a shortage coming - and most oil is bought in advance, even if a price hike today means more expensive petrol tomorrow.

Not to mention a severely reduced working week - 48hours being the norm. Many working on 6 days of the week.

The Huet designed streamlining on the 231 H 1* of the PLM looks a bit odd from the front but from the side it looks like a wreck in a scrap yard. http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/peclegg/sncf/articles/article_2003_10.html note they did not build a 231 H 2 which says something for the design.

Polythene?? For use in kits?? I think not. For one there is practically no glue to fix polythene parts together. I think you may have meant polystyrene. Airfix figure sets however may well be made from polythene given how difficult it can be to get paint to adhere and then withstand handling.