You pays your money you takes your choice, modern OO locos and their price

[wasabi]

Part of the answer must be demand.  When I came back to the hobby some years ago I restarted in OO9 and was using some N gauge mechanisms which led me on to changing fully to N.  I then went Japanese because good quality models were much cheaper, although they are still made in China.  The reason is that in Japan the N market is dominant (and reckoned to be more than the whole of Europe) so volume is higher and fixed costs can be spread across more units produced.  I don't know how many railway modellers there are in the UK but the main magazines such as RM or Model Rail seem to shift 30 - 35,000 copies per issue, with the insular OO gauge restricting the ability to export in the main scale here.  Of course, were I still in 4mm then I would resist changing to HO and British HO will have to attract new entrants to grow.

 

It is of course possible that the hobby might develop in China and the factories will switch to producing N gauge QJs rather than OO 9Fs.  

[polybear]

58 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

Some assembly will always be necessary and the RTR makers all say that this is the largest part of any production cost.

 

 

 

Offering a RTR option as a kit (if that makes sense) could be fun......

[wasabi]

5 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Offering a RTR option as a kit (if that makes sense) could be fun......

Was it Triang that tried that with their CKD range maybe 40 years ago?

 

[IPW]

[spamcan61]

7 minutes ago, wasabi said:

Was it Triang that tried that with their CKD range maybe 40 years ago?

 

[IPW]

They did, although I reckon it's more like 55 years ago; it was only cost effective as it reduced the tax paid on the item.

[Butler Henderson]

22 hours ago, Kylestrome said:

Anyone who thinks that today's prices are too high should spend some time with an online inflation calculator, such as this one:

https://www.inflationtool.com/british-pound/1980-to-present-value?amount=41

A direct comparison can be made with now Railroad Hornby A4 - in 1980 it was a year old and improved significantly on the 1979 version by Hornby at long last applying a painted finish rather than using pre coloured plastic. That improvement contributed to a 25% increase in its price (from £19.95 to £24.95) and today equates to £98.34 while the Railroad A4 is £110.99 with further improvements on the 1980 model by way by loco rather than tender drive and sprung buffers.

[Butler Henderson]

12 minutes ago, wasabi said:

Was it Triang that tried that with their CKD range maybe 40 years ago?

Problem is the costs associated with the necessary customer support has always caused manufacturers to steer away from doing the same.

[Nearholmer]

One retro 0-gauge maker periodically supplies small quantities of CKD-style kits, and they always 'fly off the shelves', but I think its mainly a way of clearing the parts bins after a production batch, rather than a core part of their activity.

[The Johnster]

43 minutes ago, wasabi said:

Was it Triang that tried that with their CKD range maybe 40 years ago?

 

[IPW]

They did; you could get Princess Elizabeth, Electra, and the scale length mk1s.  Trix did a similar range, which included the Western (I know, I made it), and I think the Britannia.  It was a means of getting around purchase tax; i suspect that any saving on assembly costs was lost in the extra packaging needed.

 

 

[spamcan61]

I think part of the cost perception problem is that many other consumer goods we can spend our money on have fallen in price in real terms over the years, whereas, as pointed out above, the price of toy trains has remained fairly static.

 

For some reason somebody has uploaded the entire 1978 Argos catalogue to Flickr, it does make for a bit of nostalgia at least.

 

Looking at the toy trains page the Hornby sets are around 16 quid a pop:-

 

 

... and a car radio sets you back about 32 quid:-

 

Whereas a roughly equivalent train set in the current Argos catalogue will set you back 175 quid:-

 

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/7503225

 

... and a car radio 100 quid - with plenty available elsewhere for half that.

 

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/7503225

 

So broadly speaking a train set has gone from costing half a car radio to nearly two car radios. I'm sure a similar exercise could be carried out for TVs, white goods etc. with similar results.

 

 

[Philou]

Well .... I remember when I had my first car in 1970 - a Morris Innocenti IM3 (L/H drive), petrol sold by 'Curly' Humphries in Tudor Road, Cardiff was 6/8d a gallon, so for £1 I could buy 13.5 litres of 4-star (and got pages of Green Shield stamps too). How much is that today? £1.30/l? The same quantity today would set you back £17.55 - so would train prices have increased in the same ratio too? I don't remember what I bought in 1970 - probably not much as there was severe competition between railway modelling, the car, women and the pub!!!

 

I do have some stock dating from about that time with the price tickets still on the boxes - but I can't recall WHEN I bought them.

 

I would guess that proportionally, the prices of model trains today are probably similar to those of yesteryear.

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

[Nearholmer]

In 1971 a basic Hornby 0-4-0T cost £2.50 (Nellie-alike), now a basic Hornby 0-4-0T costs £30 (Smokey Joe). That gives a 1:12 price ratio for what amounts to the same thing in function and quality terms.

 

Applying the test to a mainstream diesel loco, where functionality (operational performance) has increased hugely, and likewise detailing, we can compare the ex-Triang Class 08(ish) at £2.60 in 1971, with the current model at c£100, we get a 1:38 price ratio.

 

The cover price of the Railway Modeller has a 1:27 ratio over the same period. 

 

The BoE inflation calculator gives an overall ratio of 1:14 over the same period.

 

Wage inflation is more difficult to get figures for, but seems to be about 1:17 over the same period for 'national average wage', with most of that having occurred up to 2008, since when the increase has been small.

 

This suggests that our toys have indeed raced ahead of many other things (although not house prices at >1:50) in cost terms, and possibly quality improvement is a significant driver, perhaps along with falling volumes of sale per type (which reflects 'improving quality' by getting more specific to very particular prototypes).

 

The current 'price pain' is probably particularly acute, because if we wind the clock back to 2008 most of the wage inflation had occurred, and our reference Class 08 had become high-quality, but it cost a lot less than it does now - I can't find a figure, but I think c£50 ......... it felt affordable then, it feels expensive now, because then it ate a far lower proportion of our weekly/annual income.

 

The answer is clearly to buy unused, ten year old models, as people who over-indulged then liquidate their stashes in sterner times.

 

 

Edited February 23, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Philou]

So my petrol-inflator model holds good for the 'lower' end of the the market as 'Nellie' in petro-units would cost today £43.87, but not so good for the other one as 'Smokey Joe' ought to have cost just £45.63 - oh well .................

[Nearholmer]

Petrol prices contain a heavy percentage of tax, and my reading of it is that governments have been careful to make sure that petrol prices rise broadly in-line with general price inflation and wage inflation, because using fuel as a tax-cow, while surely tempting, is politically bad-medicine (it gets the gilet-jaune-copyists out in droves), and allowing fuel prices to fall behind inflation would leave a revenue hole that would have to be filled by raising income tax to balance the books, which would also be politically bad-medicine.

Edited February 23, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Mike Buckner]

My compliments to everyone. This has been an interesting, thought-provoking thread, with many pertinent points.

 

Cheers!

[Crisis Rail]

12 hours ago, spamcan61 said:

I think part of the cost perception problem is that many other consumer goods we can spend our money on have fallen in price in real terms over the years, whereas, as pointed out above, the price of toy trains has remained fairly static.

 

For some reason somebody has uploaded the entire 1978 Argos catalogue to Flickr, it does make for a bit of nostalgia at least.

 

Looking at the toy trains page the Hornby sets are around 16 quid a pop:-

 

 

... and a car radio sets you back about 32 quid:-

 

Whereas a roughly equivalent train set in the current Argos catalogue will set you back 175 quid:-

 

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/7503225

 

... and a car radio 100 quid - with plenty available elsewhere for half that.

 

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/7503225

 

So broadly speaking a train set has gone from costing half a car radio to nearly two car radios. I'm sure a similar exercise could be carried out for TVs, white goods etc. with similar results.

 

 

 

Lordy - that BR Hymek  - (Catalogue No:20) takes me back.

 

£14.95 was a weeks Engineering apprentice wage....!

 

 

Edited February 24, 2020 by Crisis Rail

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

12 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

...The current 'price pain' is probably particularly acute, because if we wind the clock back to 2008 most of the wage inflation had occurred, and our reference Class 08 had become high-quality, but it cost a lot less than it does now...

That's part of it. There was also a rash of massive discounting 2004 - 2008, where already reasonable prices for the much superior newly tooled product from China were slashed to about what the very inferior European produced product had sold for some ten years or so previously. Hornby's new Gresley and Riddles pacifics could be had for £40 split from cheap sets, Bachmann's 57xx and 3F for under £30, and much else.

 

 

Regarding supplying the models as kits.

16 hours ago, Butler Henderson said:

Problem is the costs associated with the necessary customer support has always caused manufacturers to steer away from doing the same.

That indeed is a problem. Especially as the support is in the home high wage economy.

16 hours ago, The Johnster said:

I suspect that any saving on assembly costs was lost in the extra packaging needed.

And that too, and not just packaging, 'someone' has to get all the parts together in the right quantity to avoid one of the major customer support issues, missing parts. The beauty of the 'assembled kit' is that it is self checking: line operatives compare to photographs to make sure it is all complete.

 

But the fundamental problem is that the majority of the customer base just doesn't want to build kits. I buy quite a lot of s/h RTR, and most locos come with the detail parts pack sealed, even if they have obviously been run quite a lot...

[Butler Henderson]

An aside is  how brittle many parts of a Hornby (in particular) model are - successfully packaging them in a manner that does not break them and equally allowing the end user to unpack them successfully would be an issue. If they are on a sprue I do wonder just how many get broken during assembly in the factory - its a problem of the plastic used in a succession of models by a number of Chinese / Hong Kong manufactures back to the Airfix Railway System whereas those made by Kader for Mainline/Replica/Bachmann are generally more readily handled without fear of damage - on some Hornby models just sneezing near them is almost enough to cause bits to break off. Hence for exhibition purposes where stock gets handled regularly I preferred Bachmann models over Hornby and had a plastic tub to hand to collect all the bits that had fallen off and subsequent evenings spent refitting them back on.

[rob D2]

Everyone has their own Glass ceiling.

 

i brought 2 Hornby coal fish from Cheltenham the other day, about £19 each. £20 is my ceiling for a simple box wagon, I wanted to make the rake to 6 and I wanted to support the shop as I was there anyway - so I brought them when usually I’d “ watch “ a few on eBay instead and hope I got lucky in the £15 bracket.

[tomparryharry]

A good observation. As I am building up a rake of 16 ton wagons, I'll shop about for those kits, and fairly-priced wagons that fit the bill. 

 

However; what is a fair price? Is it a kit from Dapol, which turns into a reasonable mineral wagon, or a £25:00 model, at 3X the initial price?

 

Hmmm.....

[letterspider]

Life is too short to kit build a 16T wagon

 

 

 

 

[caradoc]

1978 RRP for the Hymek passenger set £18.95 - What a bargain. However I started work in 1978 and my first week's wage (in a salaried, clerical job) was £37.50. Half my pay on toy trains !!

[Allegheny1600]

23 minutes ago, letterspider said:

Life is too short to kit build a 16T wagon

 

 

 

 

Eh!?!

[Crisis Rail]

1 minute ago, caradoc said:

1978 RRP for the Hymek passenger set £18.95 - What a bargain. However I started work in 1978 and my first week's wage (in a salaried, clerical job) was £37.50. Half my pay on toy trains !!

 

 Sad nostagia - i've had to have a look  Cat:R758  D7063 

 Mine must've done 2000 miles and collected all sorts of carpet fluff pulling Prime Pork -  Fine Fish  - NORSTAND - you get the picture.

[phil-b259]

On 23/02/2020 at 01:10, Snowdon Ranger said:

Hornby has already moved some of its production to India, at least some of the latest Airfix releases are produced there.

 

They also moved production of Humbrol paints back to the UK, due to quality issues that arose after production moved to China (it was crap). 

 

Producing Airfix kits is basically a case of putting plastic bits into boxes - there is zero assembly required at the factory.

 

Meanwhile producing Humbrol paints can be fully automated and requires minimal labour - hence its transfer back to the UK was economically viable.

 

While I believe there have been experiments with assembling detailed products in India by Hornby, the end quality was woeful and Hornby have quite sensibly decided to keep the Labour intensive (yet very fiddly and demanding if its to be got right) assembly of model trains in China.

 

Thus while its true that Hornby and others may well move away from China in time, they can only do so if a similarly skilled workforce is available elsewhere. When looked at from that perspective Africa and India are not realistic prospects in the foreseeable future

 

 

[tomparryharry]

39 minutes ago, letterspider said:

Life is too short to kit build a 16T wagon

 

 

 

 

It depends how many you might like to have.  50 wagons, at £20 each, equals £1,000. Pop a locomotive & van on there, and you're now accelerating towards £1,500. Times that number by full & empty rakes, and it gets thought provoking....