Ravenser

Since they have product available to order but not yet released (50, Duchess, 66, HST, Stanier, Mk2 aircon , & Mk3 coaches), and product announced but not yet available to order (57xx, J94, C astle, 37, 47) it's not surprising the announcement side has gone quiet. By April the Phase 2 stuff will be in people's hands or at least in a container. I'd expect the announcement to amount to Phase 3 going up on the website to pre-order, with prices and liveries and TT numbers. That will probably include bulking out Phase 3 with the announcement of some coaches and wagons, and confirmation of the 9F

While Hornby have been doing a number of "one-offs" , particularly in recent years, so has everyone else.... Rapido's Stirling Single and Met No 1 are exotics that very very few will buy two of . The Jones Goods is almost as exotic. KR Models produce almost nothing else.. Heljan's Worsborough Garrett looks "courageous" to me , and their ES1 electric is not going to be a regular seller. The Ivatt Bo-Bo 10800 is at least moderately easy to justify on your post war branchline layout but again you'll only buy one. Bachmann have largely steered clear (could they successfully re-run the Ivatt Co-Cos now???), though LNWR Precedents are a bit exotic, but even Accurascale have chipped in with the Class 89. (Buckjumpers are a very much better commercial prospect) I tend to agree with those saying that this sort of thing has only a limited future, but it's not a Hornby issue, it's general across the whole of OO RTR . To me it really does signal that we are running out of road in terms of new tooling, and the medium term future for OO RTR is going to be largely about re-runs from existing tooling. It seems to take anywhere from 18 months to 3 years from actual release before it becomes obvious that a given model is hanging around and didn't sell very well. Therefore assurances that everything is totally fine and this is proved because X have just announced an ABC in 4mm are wide of the mark. We will only have a decent idea whether the market took X's ABC about 2 years after it is finally released. I do think that some of these exotics are going to find the market isn't quite there

Its the week between Christmas and New Year, when every office is dead... (My employer is simply closed till 2/1/24...)

One point that is loosely related to the topic: commercial structure of TT:120 going forward. Hornby is now selling TT:120 on a retail model quite similar to that used by their "new boy" competitors : the bulk of the sales direct online supplemented by a limited number of retail stockists. (In one or two cases the same model shop offers both TT:120 and AS or Cavalex...) You could almost say there is a "TT:120" tier.... At the moment Hornby have about 8 UK retailers for TT:120 , whereas the "new boys" typically have 12-20 retailers. I suspect Hornby's retail base will enlarge over time - there was an interesting little episode where TT:120 pages appeared on Kernow's website then disappeared.. But they have included one major box-shifter in Gaugemaster , and in Germany they've made British outline TT:120 available to the four biggest German box-shifters (and nobody else , so far as I know). It's not such a big step in Germany , since all four retailers will already be doing extensive business in 1:120 scale RTR for German and Eastern European outline, and no doubt carry the Arnold TT range By and large the "new boys" here do not deal with box shifters, although Rails of Sheffield have sold some brands. It was suggested that Hornby decided to market TT:120 online not through model shops because they would have had to order an extra 300 + unkits of each set just to give each shop one set... Ergo Hornby deal with over 300 model shops for model railways, and the true total will be higher since there are shops that don't stock Hornby (eg Rails of Sheffield). Obviously those shops that stock Accurascale are not necessarily those that stock Rapido. (etc) Even so, its difficult to see the total number of retailers stocking one of the "new boys" being more than about 60-75. In other words perhaps 75% of all model shops do not sell them - those that do are a small subset of the retail trade This is one good reason why the demise of Hornby would not be in the interests of the hobby. Maybe 3/4s of model shops would lose all their Hornby sales revenue, with nothing to replace it. That would surely make quite a few unviable . It does not seem unreasonable to suggest we would lose around a third of model shops if Hornby went bust. That is sobering - especially as many of Hornby's most hostile critics claim to be fighting in defence of the local model shop. (It wouldn't be that much better if Bachmann went, for the record - although Bachmann would be much more likely to go the way of the Cheshire Cat) But there does seem to be a general trend of a retreat towards a smallish core of retailers + direct online sales in the market place. It seems unreasonable to assume that Hornby can or will swim directly against this tide and single-handedly reverse it - especially when they need sales to get into the black and can't be over picky about where and how they get them Which means the problem of retail channels, managing relationships and supplies to the retail trade, are ongoing and probably insoluble without someone losing out - whether Margate or some other party. Tiers may have gone but the commercial policy problems do not thereby disappear

At this point , TT:120 looks reasonably successful . They can't keep sufficient stock in the warehouse. \We will only know whether the present crop of announcements have been reasonable commercial successes in 2-3 years time . If they haven't been subject to clearance/firesale and keep selling, then they must have done ok. Its the stuff that visibly won't shift that's the issue.. People declaring that an announcement of a new model demonstrates that it will be a commercial success are being rather naive. Inspection of the Hattons 66 thread (or to be very cruel , the DJM Class 71) will show But - what looks a better bet for tooling investment ? a Class 37, Class 47 and Class 66 in TT:120, where there will be no challenge for the foreseeable future , or Met 1 or a retool of Caley 123 or yet another OO 37?? There are already disturbing signs that the Bachmann 37 is strugglin g to sell, though I'm assured there are no problems with the AS 37 and every batch sells through It is possible that TT:120 will prove a flash in the pan. Perhaps it is a bubble that will burst in a year or two., But thus far it's done a hell of a lot better commercially than anyone dared to suggest, and since it doesn't seem to have had much penetration in the established hobby those sales must have come largely from new entrants -a market that was confidently predicted to be impossible. In the meantime I reckon its time to discard the belief that TT:120 is obviously a crackers idea clearly doomed to commercial failure . At this point the scenario whereby a moderately successful TT:120 has the rug pulled from under it in 5 years time by the collapse of Hornby Hobbies and the cessation of supply looks a lot more likely to me than the cenario where TT:120 fails ignominiously and burns Hornby... Given the size of trhe tooling bank Hornby and others now have, it may well make better sense to run existing tooling in rotation rather than tool up new OO RTR

That is a problem for the whole OO RTR sector . Not just (or even mainly) Hornby Hornby have at least got their freaks away. W1 sold (it was an alternative to your 4th A4..) . So did Tornado and DoG . The APT seems to have sold , since it went to a second run. The Adams Radial and Class 71 were duplicated freaks and did badly. Rocket has sold and Lion /Tiger does not appear to have failed But the Worsborough Garrett, Big Bertha, 4DD sets, the Fell, the Bulleid/Raworth "Boosters", the Class 89 Badger, Met Number 1, GT3, Jones Goods - these are not Hornby ventures When the German equivalents of these kind of things started to appear in HO , along with the "museum quality" model, widespread duplication and eye-watering prices, it turned out to be a signal that the market was saturated. Shortly after that the sky fell in on the Continental HO RTR manufacturers with sales falling by about 25% , widespread administration and takeovers/buy-outs . New budget manufacturers like Piko were the only companies to prosper in that market. I do wonder if the great 25 year boom in new tooled RTR OO is about to hit the buffers. We seem almost to have run out of sensible subjects...

There do indeed seem to be three contending "state of the art" Class 25 s in OO. How the market will sustain them is a very interesting question (Me? - I have a Chinese Hornby 25 bought "new second hand" that I robbed the 5 pole motor bogie out of to power my detailed NBL Type 2. I also have an old Bachmann 25 with slight bodyshell danage that cost me £60 to power it, and some detail bits . An entirely acceptable Class 25 should be possible from that for under £100 expenditure..) Arguments about how the market can sustain multiple Class 37s can be made - and have been, by various people over recent years. The trouble is, that isn't what we are now seeing in the market place. What we are seeing looks very like product not shifting. Bachmann have had a year to get their models away , but Hornby have had their fingers burnt a few times by second runs that overloaded the market, and there is a risk of that here. Equally, Accurascale have signalled an intention to keep their models continuously available, and if ever there was a model they might hope to keep as a "standing dish" it's a Class 37. That looks a little difficult now. (I remember expressing a doubt that something like the chaldrons could be something more than a batch project, and being told that even the chaldrons would be kept available as long as there was demand) There is another dimension here, and that's ebay. A quick look on ebay shows plenty of Bachmann Class 37s available in the range £110-145 as "buy it now". I'm not sufficiently versed in the subject to know if I'm looking at the Mk1, Mk2 , or Mk3 Bachmann 37, but it's clear there's a reasonable supply of pretty decent 37s second hand for significantly less than the price of a new Accurascale one. More strikingly, the going rate for a Vi-Trains 37 seems to be £80-90. Now regardless of the politics of the time, the Vi-Trains 37 was a perfectly respectable model, and you can have one for half the price of an Accurascale one. Times are hard. Meanwhile the Accurascale model itself seems to be going around par - some a little below manufacturers price some a little above. It's reasonable to think that both Bachmann and Accurascale will have based their 37 projects on decent long term sales. It's looking worryingly like the market won't deliver that , and quite possibly not for either It seems to take 2-3 years after first release before it becomes obvious that a model has been a commercial failure and the market won't take it. We still have a little way to go , and this won't be anything like the Class 71 disaster, but the signs aren't good. And with all the less obviously viable projects floating around I do wonder if after a quarter of a century we are finally reaching the limits of the great "high spec" RTR boom in OO If other, more esoteric, projects fail to sell through, the skies could get rather dark over the next few years. I don't particularly want to see manufacturers go under . It wouldn't be particularly good for the hobby

It's most unlikely crimson /cream clerestories would represent ex GE stock, because one large-scale official anomaly was that pre-Grouping stock on the GE Section continued to be painted LNER brown at Stratford after nationalisation. As I understand it , the rationale was that the coaches concerned were not long for this world and therefore didn't merit the new livery. The Saffron Waldon push-pull sets were still in brown in the summer of 1956 (colour photo ) and presumably remained so until the stock concerned was withdrawn the following February... GE 50' corridor stock seems to have been painted brown, too

I'm not in the market for a new 37 - not central to my modelling and sadly too hotly political in 4mm and too much a declaration of personal allegencies for nearly two decades. But looking through the last 6-8 pages of this thread (and the last pages of the thread about the rival model) I can't help seeing blood in the water. The market is saturated, and the models can't be shifted for prices commemsurate with what it costs to make them. Nor is it clear that the rival model is a success and this a failure... It is not clear that either model represents a compelling improvement over the prior model sufficient to justify upgrade. People are openly talking about moving on some of the models they've bought The last time we saw the price of a model dumped as steeply as this was the Hattons 66 - not an encouraging precedent . And this for a model which doesn't seem to have significant black marks against it... It is difficult to see how Bachmann are going to make a good return on their investment in this tooling project in these conditions. At some point they are going to have to allocate production slots to something that the market will bear rather than 37s for firesale . At the same time the rival product doesn't exactly have a clear run in this market , either I've seen a lot of arguments in the past for endless retooling of the same subjects and the benefits of rival models . But here it looks very like the market can't sustain two rival 37s in OO , and it is not certain either party is a sure fire winner. Well - if the market can't take 2 x 37s head to head, then I'm not sure there's anything it will take duplicated. And there are things much more exposed under development. After all , some folk buy 10 x 37s . You can only credibly run one Big Bertha, or one Worsborough Garrett....

A GW Toad is available in TT:120 from Osborns as 3D RTR . Some of those were still in engineers' use in1984

Considering that the story was written in the 1860s it has an extraordinarily "modern"feel. It does feel very much as if it could be set either side of WW1. A reminder that Dickens' local line the SER were pioneers of block signalling

For the record - a Mk1 all second [previously signalled as TSO , but SK would simply be an alternative interior moulding] and BG are promised for TT120 in Phases 3 + 4. Gresley BTK and CK are also promised . If you are prepared to tolerate the gangway mismatch (as the LMR, WR and ScR perforce had to in real life..) then LMS P3 all first and all third +BG should be available in TT120 in a few monthsa You omit Hornby's substantial commitment to non-gangwayed stock - two ranges of LNER non-gangwayed coaches, an LMS P3 non-gangwayed range (that sold very badly despite being perfectly good models) and GW Collett non-gangway stock (which sold only a little better ). The 58' Maunsell rebuilds did ok.. Not to mention the generic 4 and 6 wheelers Also the Coronation and Coronation Scot sets - those vehicles were used in general service post war... However Hornby seem to have got their fingers a little burnt on coaching stock in recent years, and after a huge investment over the last 15 years I can see investment in new tooling in this area being reined right back. The trouble with the LMS CK is that the 60' underframe was used for little else, which bumps up your tooling cost. Apart from a couple of new Dean clerestories I can't see many 4mm opportunities And new-tooled coaches in OO are now coming out around the £80 mark . This is one area where I think Hornby will now sit tight and simply run their existing 4mm scale tooling at the £60-£65 mark for the foreseeable future. In the last 15 years they've been the market leader in new coach tooling but I think that's over. Bachmann have been fairly quiet on this front for quite a while It is quite hard to find a potential OO coach subject that while be any where near as good a prospect for investment as that Mk1 all sdecond in TT:120....

As these are showing what looks like a TOPS code IFA , can someone confirm that these are in fact wagons used on the Continent but essentially to a British container flat design ? I suspect they may have been put up on the website in error - the 66 won't be out until next summer

Several people have done a Hymek from a Lincoln Locos body. If a way to motorise a Western from a LL body can be found then a mid 70s WR main line looks pretty possible The key package I think will be available once the 66 is out - a 66 + an 08 is what you need for most modern freight operations.The labels on the stand said Summer 2024 for the 66, Spring 2024 for the TTAs and Summer 2024 for the HAAs. Obviously wagons then become an issue - TTA and HAA are not perfect for the 21st century. But wagons are territory where 3D printing becomes a serious possibility, even ahead of kits. What could be rescaled from existing 3D prints for N , 3mm and even 4mm is an interesting question. It won't be shake-the-box modelling, but that itself will appeal to some. A TEA would be very useful , wherever it comes from I notice that Hornby are now displaying both Toad B (wooden ducket) and Toad E (steel ducket) brake vans. By next summer things should have moved on substantially. If the market absorbs these new models and they keep flying out of the warehouse this scale could start to take wings Peco had some of their PO minerals running round a display layout behind an 08. The scenic work and structures were very crisp and high quality

Thr problem with that is it may be the old tat that makes the money.... Hornby seem to have no problem selling ex Lima 66s, 37s and 47s, which most folk on here would regard as old tat. On the other hand they are stuck with J15s - a nice enough model - that they can't get shot of. The K1 was a well regarded model - and another one that was a commercial failure clogging up the warehouse. Yet the ever-reviled Gresley Pacifics seem to sell and sell The way that Hornby have repeatedly re-run the Railroad ex Lima 31 while rarely producing their full fat high spec 31 is very significant . For about 15 years they "owned" the subject. But the Railroad model got the production slots. I fear we may not like the results of a rigourous assessment of model profitability . It may be the hifi stuff (not the Dublo collectables though) that gets the chop....

So much for rationalisation of Hornby's branding into a coherent structure

So we now have three next generation digital systems, from three different major names in the British hobby, all developed in-house in Britain. The days of selling US and German systems, rebadged or otherwise, seem to be over

On every TT:120 Facebook group. Where lots of the posters are evidently new to railway modelling And - go to major shows and you see barely a trace of TT:120 unless the Hornby stand is there Look around this place - barely a sniff (Those posting in the TT:120 threads seem largely from N gauge, 3mm or Continental backgrounds . The new range has some traction with those on the Continent interested in models of British outline - but not if they are made in a British scale) But the stuff is selling strongly. Therefore sales are being made outside the established hobby, and particularly , not to people currently in 4mm I may have missed it but I don't even recall a mention of TT:120 in DEMU Update. The only trace of it at Showcase was a few items on the West Hill Wagon Works stand. Yet an 08 is out, a 50 and HST are imminent along with Mk2e/f and Mk3 coaches, TTA, then 66, 37, 47,... If this stuff was selling to people currently working in 4mm , you would expect to come across people expressing an interest in having a dabble. It would at least be being talked about in those circles. But - there is silence punctuated by the occasional dismissive declaration that the speaker refuses to hear about the subject. Yet Hornby can't make it fast enough to keep stock in the warehouse. People are buying it, but those people clearly aren't existing 4mm modellers. (And I really don't think this venture is diverting the legendary collectors market from OO)

TT:120 has strikingly little penetration in the "established hobby". Anecdotal evidence also suggests that a very substantial proportion of those involved are new to the hobby. If it is converting some OO sales to TT:120, Hornby are only a part of the OO market and it is entirely possible the sales revenue is at the expense of Bachmann and Dapol (and others) . Equally as a small scale for compact spaces TT:120 is competing head-on with N and OO, so the diversion of revenue may well be from those scales - where Hornby have no presence. And TT:120 is quite small relative to Hornby Hobbies overall, or even the model railway market The "cannibalising their own OO sales" theory was floated quite vigourously on here at the launch, when there was a broad consensus that Hornby's stated target market of newcomers to the hobby was delusional and the bulk of sales would have to be to existing modellers currently working in other scales. That consensus view has been proved very wrong in the last 12 months , so any conversion of Hornby OO sales to TT:120 is likely to be very small relative to Hornby's overall OO sales Put another way - when Bachmann launched RTR OO9 , did people go round shaking their heads and saying "this will cannibalise their OO and N gauge sales" ? Err, no... (Even though it looks like production slots for OO9 have been found at Farish's expense)

Something available in the Hornby range...

I don't model either the West Midlands or the North West, and I've given up modelling things under the wires because I never get the wires up, but.... I hope this is a commercial success, even though the area of operations is a little restricted -compared to say Classes 317, 319, and 321 (other options could be a lot more restricted though). It may well be they have spread their wings a little with the expansion of electrification in the North West At 3 cars it is going to be cheaper and easier to fit on a layout than the 4 car units used in the South East I've a feeling this is Dapol's first multi-vehicle multiple unit in modern times. The 155, 150, and even their Pendolino were a long time ago I really hope this doesn't face duplication . That would spell commercial disaster for both parties. The degree to which new announcements in OO, even of niche subjects, are being duplicated now is very worrying.

An increase in debt might be attributable to TT:120 - representing the investment in the project. But an increase in losses should not . New tooling should not be charged entirely against profit and loss in Year 1 . That is handled gradually through depreciation. TT:120 has sold well. Discounting may have been higher than they expected , since the TT club membership was clearly much higher than they expected and in the first year that gave you a discount. But if you sell only via the website at RRP (subject club discount) then you really shouldn't be selling the stuff at a loss , unless you have completely cocked-up your pricing calculations. There has been no product recall, no firesales in TT:120 On the other hand Hornby plainly have had large stocks of OO coaches, and some very slow moving OO locos in the warehouse . Adams Radials and Dean Goods really shouldn't still be in stock. Clearing those things out at bargain prices - for which there is some evidence - might well result in a loss against book/stock value which would need to be taken as a hit to profit/loss. It's been suggested in another thread that the hobby buys only 2 coaches for evey loco it buys.. If that's near the mark an excess of coaches may have taken some shifting We have grown used to Hornby tooling up a new range of coaches each year. But there was a long period , about 20 years from the early 80s to just after the Millenium , when Hornby tooled up almost no new coaches. We may be going back to that - they have a huge tooling bank for coaching stock now My real concern is that Hornby do need to stop the year on year bleeding , otherwise in 5 years' time the position may be critical and unsustainable

Well, I am pretty confident about the existing companies who won't get involved: Bachmann, Dapol and Accurascale Heljan flirted with the idea. RevolutionBen's comments are very interesting. And there is the question of who was behind Gaugemaster's kite-flying about a TT:120 Class 66. I'm convinced that a Continental manufacturer with existing TT interests must have been behind that., So my speculation about further entrants into British outline TT:120 would be: 1. A Continental manufacturer with TT interests (Tillig, Roco, Piko or whoever) 2. Heljan might decide to go for it after all 3. Revolution? 4. Rapido?? But I would be doubtful that we will see any model from anyone bar Hornby on sale in the next 5 years. Other players will want to be certain that there's a significant market long-term before investing in tooling

Oddly enough passenger trains are much less of an issue. The minimum to give the right impression is a 1 car Class 153 , More realistically there are a lot of 2 car units around, and a lot of the time they work as a single unit. The catch is that there's a lack of interest in modelling multiple unit passenger operations, because they tend to be operationally quite simple

The huge selling point for TT:120 is that it's getting near enough impossible to model contemporary freight operations in 4mm . There are very very few 4 wheel wagons left in revenue freight traffic. A 66 - the defining 21st century freight loco - is 12" long in 4mm . A 3'6" - 4' long freight train is a 66 + 3 bogie wagons , which risks looking a bit silly. If you accept the "rule of 3" that a the visible portion of layout should be 3x the length of the longest train , then you need 12' length visible + a 4' fiddle yard to run a freight train that looks absurdly short.... That's 16' , and most contemporary housing doesn't have rooms which have 16' long walls.... There is a reason micros have become popular. And post pandemic the balance of the hobby has shifted : there are fewer and smaller shows, and more focus on building small layouts in domestic settings. This translates into a substantial reduction in bookings /opportunities for exhibition layouts - further pushing the emphasis back on home layouts Now obviously N gauge can also offer space reduction. But as someone currently attempting an N gauge modern shunting layout, there are restrictions in N. When you look closely a large majority of N gauge layouts are medium sized continuous circuit layouts . Terminus/fiddle yard layouts are not common in N . I've even heard a number of times the view that "N gauge is not for shunting" . Reasons for this can be found - despite British N's mini-renaissance after Bachmann bought out Farish , in my experience N gauge running is still a generation behind OO. That is - modern N RTR is about on a par with what you could get when you tweaked a Lima or Hornby pancake motored loco to the recognised max... While people have commented that the scale difference between TT:120 and N is modest, it still equates to TT:120 models having twice the volume of N . That is potentially a very significant difference when it comes to packing in a mechanism The big prize for TT:120 may be sensible shunting layouts and branchline termini in spaces where 4mm demands severe compression