Clearwater

so much easier these days with the Liz Line but much less to see at either end. A few container trains through Stratford aside!

yes - payment taken but had the email.

How long until we see aBradley Manor at double the sale price on eBay a la Exeter? I’ve one on order and will disappointed if I don’t receive it. However, when I placed the order, not that early, I was vaguely surprised that they were still taking orders. As such, I wasn’t completely shocked to get the email I did. David

or Rotterdam and a feeder to Hull/Immingham/Teesport. Whatever was cheapest.

Thanks. He should also be able to look at the Hornby sales leger and see what sales Hornby make in Pecorama together with which are sellers and, crucially, the margin. As I recall, they sell a fullish range and full price!

If you’ve been in the themes park business, you may know which ones have struggled through the pandemic, which ones need a facelift, which need something different. A `JV to rebrand something like Drayton Manor’s `Thomas land (I know H have given up their licence rights) coupled to rides based on other brands could be a smart strategic move.

Depends. Could be. Could also be a situation where if he thinks if he has the right stock option package and there’s a possibility of using his visitor attraction skills to create something, then he might be seeing a very large personal upside.

Am I misremembering but did Dapol also plan to do the 3150 series?

Pecorama also has a neat all year round model. Huge soft play barn. Clearly runs large number of under 5s birthday parties year round. Ditto the Pullman coach for that special afternoon tea. It's not just train orientated.

The problem with Margate isn’t necessarily is what is in the Centre but that it’s in Margate. It’s geographically remote, hence also bad as a distribution centre, but won’t have anything like the passing casual visitors that another location might otherwise secure. It’d be interesting to compare their visitor numbers with pecorama. But the pecorama offering is quite multi-dimensional (gardens, soft play, mini railway, mini golf etc). What exactly are they planning and how are they going to get the numbers to visit?

I don’t think this is a real image. Otherwise it would clearly say that’s it’s been painted from a HST window shedded somewhere in Luton! Some key pointers to its deepfake status: 1) can we be certain it’s the uk without the double arrow sign? 2) theres no running in board in western region colours? 3) given it’s obviously wartime, where are the military uniforms and gas masks? Preferably those smart black uniforms with the nice red and white armbands I sometimes see people dressed in at 1940s weekends? 4). No Greggs on the platform I think there might be some other mistakes but I can’t be sure.

Not volunteering but maybe a magazine article on refurbishing a mainline manor would be good timing? (could make same argument about Class 31/37s)

Hi why don’t you try contacting Hornby customer service? They may have a spare they can send you!

As you’ve selectively quoted my post, I think you’re missing my point. I am pointing out that the “heyday” period, ans you call it, are now no longer forming the main cohort of retirees and that could/should change where the starter train set market should be pitched. I suspect we’ll see more 70s/80s scene as that generation reaches “nostalgia” phase with an rtr market to match. I’ve argued before that if you’re a “historic” modeller going back before your own memory, why wouldn’t you go back to a more colourful era? In 20 years, the number of people with a clear memory of the 1950s, will be very small. Similar to those who as primary school age children will remember the pre war Railway. Youre equally making a massive generalisation of your own in projecting your own view on the 1970s railway scene onto the market as a whole. Look at layouts like Black Country Blues or Hornsey Broadway as examples of popular successful layouts channeling that run down blue diesel era scene. I think Charwelton at the recent Stoke Mandeville show was drawing very good crowds… Or the number of Facebook groups on the 1970s railway scene.. I’ll wager they’re more likely to see a Deltic starter set as interesting over an A1 or a pretty pre grouping loco. Of course, like all generalisations, there are exceptions. Equally there are fashions in Railway modelling as in everything else. Increased availability of pregrouping liveries will show an increase in people wanting/using that stock. Ditto currently I’d venture for oo9 layouts driven by the improvement in suitable rtr,. Or 40 years ago the GWR BLT staple/cliche. Will a 1960s layout be seen as an outdated cliche in 15/20 years? I agree the preservation era impacts what people will remember. Perhaps the current trend for fictional steam Loco liveries partially reflects?

I’d agree club membership gives some insights but as @gatesheadgeek the membership fee suggest you need to spend £300 to break even. But people will stay members because they like being a membe rand value the fringe benefits, eg exclusives, as well as the discount. However, if they’ve got any sense they’ll use the raw sales data from website logins/sales. They should have a targeted sales system with precise offers to follow up initial sales. Investment I’m relatively few sales analysts can drive overall sales/margin.

Sure but that doesn't mean other stuff wouldn't sell. I'd suggest a Deltic plus three coaches is equally a more modern equivalent of the A1 set. Kolher obviously had a view of what sold and to whom and why but they may be taking a different direction in the future. Given Hornby and Kohler parted company, we can wonder the extent to which they differed on strategy. What we don't know is how the internal strategy documents set out how the range would evolve if successful. If I was a director approving the tooling, I'd have wanted a series of exit points if it wasn't successful and equally a sense of vision as to what to do if it was making money.

I think the arguments about people having less space and hence there being a market opening for TT have some traction. However, if you're thinking about the market segments, I'd wonder whether TT should be targeting 70s diesel era not the A3 or A4 plus carriages? If the hypothesis is that the best sellers for Hornby are the "I'll buy him a train set as he retires market now he's got time" then the age of those people retiring are now the ones increasingly for whom their railway salad days were 1968-1980 (a 10 year old in 1968 is 65 and even a 10 year old in 1980 is now 53). I can see a logic that those people still have the smaller modern houses and hence might not want OO or larger but be amenable to something not as fiddly as N gauge. Hornby's brand is such that they pick up sales here that others don't. A TT blue/yellow HST set would play to that market plus a certain level of the nostalgia market given it was a core OO set in the late 70s/80s. David

I suspect its part of the normal sales / market development conversations between commercial parties. "are you interested in furhter commissions?" "yes - what have you got?" "this or this" "hmm maybe but I'd be more interested in y as we think a gap" " well we could do that but we'd need this from you to cover development costs" "in that case we'd need the tooling to be exclusive to us" " ah ok, but for what time period?" " we would like an exclusive livery of your tooling but we want to be the only retailer doing that variant" etc etc.

Their sales are already over £8m in the "D2C" channel. Rails don't publish turnover in their accounts. Hatton's turnover is c.£12.5m (all brands). As such, I'd wager Hornby is already the largest seller of Hornby in the UK. Note in their extract they talk about the greater control over sales price/gross margin in the D2C segment. I'd suggest that they already have the scaleable infrastructure to be able to take on extra distribution staff. I don't think a factor of 10/100 is a reasonable estimate of the increased distribution costs. In any event, they directly recharge that to customers. Given that goods come in from China and will then be distributed intra UK from their warehouse, they've already funded a warehouse to take a larger amount of stock that they sell directly.

I think both management approaches are looking to take retail sales directly to Hornby and the margin themselves. Fire sales are a direct symptom and readily available. However, I would strongly suspect that retailers, particularly independent non-internet businesses, would not relish their supplier / manufacturer competing against them in the sales market. Hornby's ability to use Collectors Club and other loyalty programmes is as much a competitive threat to the small model shop as a fire sale. From Hornby's perspective, why wouldn't they want to squeeze out the large internet retailers and take that margin themselves? Afterall, those entities compete against Hornby through their own label commissions? Given Hornby don't really manufacture themselves, I see increasingly little difference between them and the likes of Hattons/Rails/Kernow.

What's interesting to me is the change in strategy since LCD came in. IIRC, one of the things he came in saying (and I'm paraphrasing) is that H needs to stop its online sales, value retailers etc etc. Now this report has gone back to talking about the value of the D2C channel....

Enterprise Value (Market Cap plus Net Debt) = c£38m. Stock is £21m (lower of cost and realisable value - hope auditors kick that tyre). It does look cheap....

Gosh - I think that crosses the "want" to "need" boundary. Addition of an etched brass plate to the cab side will elevate it further.

I can see your logic. However, didn’t the a4 black label take ages to sell? The random buyer might not see value relative to,Hornby but the rmwebber might not want to pay the extra? Dapol will know what sold and over what time frame. Perhaps high spec but more niche targeted?

slightly before my time but slightly surreal to see someone in my old school uniform. Keep wondering in threads like this whether I’ll see a photo of me one day….