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BBC Four - James May's Big Trouble in Model Britain


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18 minutes ago, gordon s said:

Having taken a month or two break from modelling and RMweb last year, I wasn't aware of the Bachmann/Hattons situation which I assume is ongoing, nor the Rails/Hornby Terrier issue from last night. As manufacturers, I would assume that formal agreements for Distribution of their products would (or should) have had a clause prohibiting a Distributor from going into direct competition and setting up their own manufacturing opportunities. Equally so, the manufacturer would also have a commitment to ongoing supply of products unless there was a material breach of the agreement.

 

I can fully understand Hatton's position if they were starved of new product or saw substantial changes in the way the previous Hornby management dealt with their Distributors, but of course weren't party to any talks that may have preceded that decision.

 

Apologies for wandering a little off topic and being late to the party, but Rails and Hatton's wouldn't have taken that action lightly, knowing the possible outcomes.

Bachmann do have such a clause, I don't know if Hornby do.

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2 minutes ago, PenrithBeacon said:

sartorial elegance issues

 

That's just rude. Industry people aren't always suited and booted or in corporate attire when not in a customer-facing environment.

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12 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

Richard Davies isn't a child, he's been in business long enough to know that selling off the back of your competitors' advertising promotion is a tactic as old as the hills. Their business will make money both from selling the Hornby to those still entertained by the 'Lima Livery Horse' style of operation, and from those who like the idea of a model to 'best current standard'. (And FWIW, I rather feel it's Bachmann getting squeezed with their previously unchallenged models of high profile classes soon to be superseded left , right and centre.)

 

Yes, I entirely agree with that. I think a lot of the comments on here about the perceived unfairness or underhandedness of Hornby's actions are coming from those with little or no real experience of running a business in a competitive market. A gentlemen's agreement not to step on each other's toes can, sometimes, be a worthwhile policy for all concerned (although, for the consumer, the risk is that such an agreement can amount to an anti-competitive cartel). But, on the other hand, going head to head with the competition raises your profile more and allows you to benefit from different marketing strategies.

 

I don't think Hatton's can really complain about Hornby's Class 66 releases, not least because Hatton's themselves have made a deliberate choice to move into the manufacturers' territory and they have to accept that the manufacturers will now treat them as a competitor as well as a customer. And, as you say, the two models aren't really in direct competition; the price-sensitive buyers wouldn't pay what the Hatton's 66 will cost and the quality-sensitive buyers won't be happy with the relatively undetailed ex-Lima version. Bachmann will be the squeezed middle here; their model is now neither the best nor the cheapest. Not that Bachmann can complain, they're not averse to a spoiler themselves - remember the debates on here when they announced their Blue Pullman shortly after the news that Olivia's Trains had commissioned one from Heljan?

 

I think that Rails may have a slightly more justified complaint; they may argue that if they'd known Hornby were planning a new Terrier then they wouldn't have gone forward with their commission for one. But, on the other hand, commissioning something is always a risk (as, indeed, Olivia's found out), and commissioning something that's known to be a staple of an existing product range even more so. I can't imagine that they didn't consider the possibility that they may come up against a re-tooled Hornby Terrier, and, while it's obviously disappointing for them that they did, it's clearly a risk they chose to take.

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6 minutes ago, PenrithBeacon said:

On further thinks I was impressed with SK but much less so with the blokes from Rails and Hattons. They both looked as though they had just finished a session on the allotment! SK, on the other hand, came across as an experienced manager who new what he was doing, while the other two blokes looked, quite apart from their sartorial elegance issues, as inexperienced big fish in a small pond. I think they are going to have to up their game.

2

 

Of course, the "inexperienced big fish in a small pond" are running multi-million-pound businesses quite successfully so perhaps judging a book by it's cover isn't always going to tell the whole story?

 

You also forget that this show was edited to follow a narrative.

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One (very important) thing to remember is that the film crew likely had one camera most of the time.

 

Don't be duped by the editor into thinking that the 'reaction shots' of the staff at the announcement to move to Margate were done at the same time. 

The camera op would not have been swinging it round wildly to capture instant reactions of the staff to the announcement, because that would increase the chances of missing something and make lots of unusable Blair Witch-style footage.

 

-Film Lyndon making the announcement

-Film various members of staff on long lens listening to somebody talk (might have been a completely different occasion)

-Editor deletes audio from second clip, run audio from first clip over the second. Bingo, it looks like a reaction shot. 

 

The main thing is that what they went with is funnier and more entertaining, which will be their priority.

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1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

This programme met it's objective, to show Hornby isn't going away - it is aggressively holding on to what it has and adding new stuff in as well.

 

Hattons will sell it's 66s still, the people who will buy the Railroad 66 wouldn't have bought Hatton's target Bachmann 66.

 

Terriers are an ongoing selling model, there is probably space for two manufacturers over a long period of time.

 

Just because it is model railways shouldn't mean that the business should operate any differently to any other business - they are all in it to get their product to market first and make a profit.  Hattons and Rails appreciate this as much as Hornby as do Accurascale, Dapol, Revolution, Rapido, DJM and all the other companies vying to sell us product.

 

At the moment I believe the loser is Bachmann - Lord Nelson, 66 and Deltic with new manufacturers and delays in their own models and in some cases actual ranges being shelved (N J72)

That may have been Hornby's objective in granting access but the programme makers' objective wasn't, or certainly shouldn't have been, to affirm Hornby. It would raher have been to make informative and entertaining television about a subject that interests many viewers, warts and all. There can be a danger of producers getting too cosy with the world their programmes are about if they have a long term relationship with it, but that shouldn't happen with a one-off factual programme like this. Whether it took too much at face value I couldn't say, others may be able to.

 

It seems to me that Model railways is one of those markets where growing the cake is equally or even more important than maintaining or growing market share. There was a time when model railways from different manufacturers were incompatible which tended to lock customers into one brand. That may have been good for market share but did nothing to help grow the hobby; someone who bought  a loco and found it wouldnt run on their OO railway might well just dismiss model railways altogether.  Probably less true nowadays but it also produced an odd dichotomy of "proprietary" v "scale" that seems to have been largely peculiar to Britain.

 

The catch with cut-throat competition is that everyone can end up with their throat cut (though cosy cartels are just as bad)   

 

Edited by Pacific231G
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3 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

 

That's just rude. Industry people aren't always suited and booted or in corporate attire when not in a customer-facing environment.

 

Your just saying that 'cos you're a scruffy Oik yourself !

 

Get yourself a business suit, polish your shoes and pull yourself up Andy.

I'll let you off the haircut.

 

 

:jester::jester::jester::jester:

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8 minutes ago, Jeff Smith said:

Forgive my ignorance but what are the improvements the new Terriers are likely to have over the current one?  Are we talking appearance/details/accuracy or mechanism?  Or both?

 

Good point, personally (note emphasis) I thought the old tooling was fine, but then I'm no expert in these little engines. I did fit a DCC decoder to one for a chap I met at Warley last year. The wife thought it was "cute".

 

Looking at the photos the obvious improvement is in the fidelity of the brake rigging. I'm sure others will list the errors etc in the ex-Dapol version in due course ;)

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I feel that Hornby, and other manufacturers have got what they deserve. If you don't own the means of of production, merely commissioning runs from a factory in China, then you can't complain when someone else does the same.

 

As an N gauge modeller I'm unlikely to ever buy a Hornby product but I do wish them well having started with a 2nd hand Hornby Clockwork 0 gauge set before moving on to Hornby Dublo as I got older, I owe the old Hornby for introducing me to the enjoyment of 60+yrs of playing trains.

 

However the market has moved on from a factory building solely for its owner and nobody else, to production on the other side of the world with firms making items for any manufacturer. I have currently on order a Hattons N gauge LMS Garratt and two Hunslett diesel shunters from the N Gauge Society. That's the way production is going, neither would be likely to be made by the N gauge manufacturers [the 148 scale equivalents to Hornby]. Added to this,  Crowd Funding has been with us for several years and seems to work at least as well as Hornby et al in producing what the buyer wants.

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3 hours ago, Edwardian said:

I have yet to see episode 2.

 

However, apologies, pedantry warning!

 

Just to be clear - and this is certainly not a complaint, merely an observation -  with the exception of 2 Limited Edition M7s in Drummond and Urie liveries, until Dapol released its B4, there were no LSWR locomotives RTR. I think the B4 is currently the only one.

 

 

I appreciate Stroudley was not LSWR but his Terrier was available in LSWR livery. gallery_4181_4316_1384608.jpeg

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19 minutes ago, Jeff Smith said:

Forgive my ignorance but what are the improvements the new Terriers are likely to have over the current one?  Are we talking appearance/details/accuracy or mechanism?  Or both?

 

And how about the other various duplications?

 

Must be on another thread, but someone has posted a pic with the two side by side. If you thought the old Dapol/Terrier was small, it wasn't! Towers over the new one.

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Ever since one of our members noted the resemblance with David Brent and an episode of the office all I can see is Ricky Gervais when SK is on screen, it's almost more like the Office than the Office was. Not only are Hornby treading on the toes of Hattons and Rails, they're stepping on the toes of TV sit coms, forgetting the classic advice to avoid fighting a war on multiple fronts. 

 

I preferred episode 1, personally, but either way it was excellent TV. I don't think it told us anything about Hornby really, it was a bit of stage managed PR and if viewed as such I think the show was a tremendous success for Hornby. It showed a little bit of what goes into our models behind the scenes, a quick lift of the skirt to see some of the politics of the hobby (just enough to titillate) and some nice drama.

 

The elephant in the room which wasn't addressed was the financial situation and the fact that Hornby have been pushed to the equivalent of a lender of last resort. You didn't have to look between any lines to see that Hornby are a company pushing the limits of a credit line more than one pushing the limits of technology or product development.

 

The VR segment was interesting, I think that VR has the potential to re-invigorate the hobby for a younger audience and that VR and physical models could be complementary. If they are serious about growing a business for the long term then that's the sort of thin they need to be exploring.

 

I thought it was a shame that we didn't hear from LD in episode 2 as he is the one who strikes me as having a plan and having what it takes to turn Hornby around, he would appear to be happy to let SK have the limelight while he gets on with the big stuff.

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26 minutes ago, GeoffAlan said:

I feel that Hornby, and other manufacturers have got what they deserve. If you don't own the means of of production, merely commissioning runs from a factory in China, then you can't complain when someone else does the same.

 

 Crowd Funding has been with us for several years and seems to work at least as well as Hornby et al in producing what the buyer wants.

 

'Manufacturers have got what they deserve!'  Do you think said manufacturers would or could have survived the nineties had they not moved production abroad?  

 

'Crowd funding seems to work at least as well as Hornby!'  There are several threads on here that may further illuminate this area of expertise.

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For the latest in combining railways and VR, have a look at 'Derail Valley'. It's an arcade-like simulator where the player has to pick up waybills and complete jobs, doing nearly all the work of the railway themselves. It looks like good fun.

http://www.derailvalley.com/

 

What I really want is a 00 gauge Class 47 with a camera in the cab, I put on my VR goggles and have the camera's point of view with all the controls at my fingertips!

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1 hour ago, 57xx said:

 

I seem to recall that when he was trying to defend his actions to Mr Rails down at the Hornby HQ, he also said the project had started during his first tenure. It can't be both, so which is the truth? 

 

As a non-partisan person with no colours nailed to any manufacturer's mast, he came across to me as a petty and sly person. 

 

I believe it was said that the Terrier took 9 months from drawings to completion (because the CADs have been previously completed but then put on the shelf). 

Edited by NickC
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27 minutes ago, Jeff Smith said:

Forgive my ignorance but what are the improvements the new Terriers are likely to have over the current one?  Are we talking appearance/details/accuracy or mechanism?  Or both?

 

And how about the other various duplications?

 

In a nutshell, the new Hornby Terrier will be to a much more modern standard and much more refined. Crucially, the tooling does distinguish between the original A1 configuration and the rebuilt A1X configuration. This is important because, although it retains a certain rustic charm, the old Dapol/Hornby Terrier is not only relatively crude, but is an unhappy A1-A1X hybrid, making it wholly inaccurate for both main variants.

 

That said, the new Hornby model reveals some limitations, and it seems likely that this will, in due course, be a factor when it is inevitably compared with the rival product.  In briefest summary:

 

- It does look as if some compromises have been made on the tooling suite. While some tooling limitations are inevitable for such a varied subject, it is surprising, for instance, to see that the side tanks used on the A1X just released are the same as the ones shown for the A1.  The tanks are in fact only appropriate only for the A1s. 

 

- There is some evidence of illiteracy in translating the research into a model, for instance, the buffers are not inset into the buffer beams, a feature that even the old Dapol/Hornby model got right, and the tank tops are modelled flush, omitting the recess that results from the fact that the tanks have outer cladding.  This is a feature that Bachmann happily captured on its E4 model, so there is no reason for Hornby not to have done so.   

 

- In some respects the new Terrier is still a bit old school. It has a 3-pole motor (Rails had announced 5-pole) and some of the moulded plastic features are a bit 'heavy', even crude, e.g. the guard irons, as are the crank pin bosses, or whatever they are called.

 

So, it's a big step forward from the old Terrier, but sadly is probably not state of the art in terms of any of the main criteria - performance, accuracy, refinement - so may have to rely on being the relatively budget option, and it is priced sensibly.

 

I gather that the Class 66 falls into this category as a "Lima Livery Horse", but it is more surprising to find that mid-range quality in a brand-new retool. Was that deliberate, or a result of the perceived need to rush it to market?  

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6 minutes ago, RedgateModels said:

 

So both statements could be right :)

 

Indeed, the missing bit for me was the pause in the project. So they started the project, canned it at the CAD stage, then dusted it off after the Rails announcement. So SK was being very disingenuous when he tried to deny it being a spoiler and implied they had been running the project for years.

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I cannot believe people appear to be more interested in the dress code than the conversation dynamics. Simon Kohler is fully aware of what he is doing when releasing the 66 and the Terrier, especially the former with all the livery variations. Whether the 66 will have the degree of bodywork variation the Hattons one has is doubtful.Hornby have a long history of bringing out older models/ Railroad stock to feed off the back of others announcements. I will not be surprised to see a RR 59 when the Dapol one is near release, and anything else that will generate income off the back of others projects. I suppose the important thing for the likes of Hattons/Rails etc.is to keep it quiet as long as possible and make a superior model to the Hornby cheapo. I have a Hattons order for a 66, I simply would not buy a Horby one.

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4 minutes ago, RAF96 said:

I was impressed by the lack of enthusiasm of the gathered masses when the move back to Margate was announced.

 

Read my post below,.

 

1 hour ago, Corbs said:

One (very important) thing to remember is that the film crew likely had one camera most of the time.

 

Don't be duped by the editor into thinking that the 'reaction shots' of the staff at the announcement to move to Margate were done at the same time. 

The camera op would not have been swinging it round wildly to capture instant reactions of the staff to the announcement, because that would increase the chances of missing something and make lots of unusable Blair Witch-style footage.

 

-Film Lyndon making the announcement

-Film various members of staff on long lens listening to somebody talk (might have been a completely different occasion)

-Editor deletes audio from second clip, run audio from first clip over the second. Bingo, it looks like a reaction shot. 

 

The main thing is that what they went with is funnier and more entertaining, which will be their priority.

 

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I’m a bit confused by the chap recording the Terrier sounds. Hornby currently sell TTS decoders with 8 pins, and they are medium sized. Yet the new Terrier is advertised as having a 6 pin socket, the decoder appearing to be a standard Hornby one size wise. Is there room in Hornby's Terrier for both a TTS decoder and a speaker? It wouldn’t go in Rail’s Terrier, as that's Next 21, Dapol O gauge is 21 pin.

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3 hours ago, t8hants said:

No one has mentioned the VR section of the programme.  If in the near future, you will build your Airfix Spitfire 'on screen' in VR and then take off and fight the dastardly Hun in endless air battles, where does that leave the need for space cluttering real models?  Likewise we have had low definition build your own layout simulators for years, but when they finally crack HD VR railways, any era, place, or stock, again confined to the system of your choice, who will want to take up valuable physical space in ever shrinking sized homes with a real layout. 

 

If I could create a layout where I could take a stroll through the countryside, and watch the shunting in the yard I have created, or get underneath the loco and watch the motion, even sit in the fire-box and watch the coal coming in, perhaps take a drink the pub, be a guest at the wedding, or help fight the fire: in other words be a participant in the the hundred and one different scenarios modellers have created in static models, why would I want to bother with space consuming largely static conventional layout?  If such a system was available now, I perhaps wouldn't even consider traditional railway modeling and I'm in my mid sixties. 

 

Hornby must go down that path, or they will be like the British bike industry of the sixties, blind to the winds of change, luckily the UK is renown for it high quality VR work, so the future should remain bright for Hornby, but we might not recognize the company in the future.

 

Couldn't disagree more. I thought this part of the programme came across as really cringe-inducing, and the recipe for a real waste of money.

 

What exactly would Hornby or Airfix bring to these platforms? As someone else has already commented, there are plenty of other players with far more experience, clout, and funds than Hornby could offer. CAD developed for tool making wouldn't even be much use for gaming\VR applications. Perhaps, as per LEGO, if Hornby were really astute and could negotiate well, they could license their brand(s) to an existing game developer for something like this - but the pitch we saw looked much more like a developer wanting an (expensive) commission.

 

But the whole premise of "young people only want computer games" is fundamentally flawed, and like the perpetual "the hobby is dying off" conversations, a broken record. The unique selling point of all of the Hornby brands is that they involve some kind of physical MAKING. Yes you could do some of those things virtually - and indeed there is already Trainz and Train Simulator, not to mention any number of flight simulators (for which VR would be a very easy change) - but the two are so different there is no sense in seeing them as in competition, or one replacing the other. Liking gaming doesn't mean no interest in making. 

 

In fact, it seems like a really common mistake of older people to confuse kids and teenagers liking using iPads or gaming consoles all the time with being "into computers". I teach undergraduate students, and many actively HATE computers. They can browse the web and write a document in Word, but anything else scares them. I'd actually say the "iPad generation" are much LESS computer literate than those of us who were at school in the 1990s or 2000s.  

 

As someone else said, a lot of the attraction for 'making' hobbies is providing a break from screen-based time, or more generally from *consuming* entertainment, and I think this is just as true for kids as for adults. Construction toys and activities are actually getting more sophisticated, and creatively minded kids who in the past might have been content to build Airfix kits might now be tinkering with 3D printers or Arduino kit available at school or a local MakerSpace type activity. Crucially, this type of stuff seems to be getting much more inclusive, especially for girls! But you have to be realistic that anything like this is only ever going to appeal to a subset of kids - whether physical or virtual construction.

 

There are tech aspects to modelling that could bridge into this market quite nicely - how about a RailRoad version of Roco's camera fitted locos? Roco has only fitted it to super-detailed high end locos, but the tech itself could be implemented pretty cheaply - its basically just a WiFi connected CCTV camera circuit. Watching the driver's eye view of your ACTUAL layout on your iPad would be a great actual value-add to having a physical model! 

 

Justin

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On dress code, if you own the company you can dress how you want. And most companies won't lose sleep if a particularly productive and successful employee isn't the best dressed person in the building. I am familiar with at least one extremely successful mover in shipping who owns some very high value companies whose favoured attire at work is a tee shirt, leather jacket and jeans (although it must be said that his underlings don't dress like that).

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