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DJ Models: company wound-up and liquidation closed


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16 hours ago, Clearwater said:

 I might have tried to buy the class 71 and J94 rights to take them off the market.  We’ll see over the next few years what emerges.

 

Possibly. I was under the impression that while the 71 was not as good as the Hornby model, the J94 was much better? Could we see reuse of those tools?

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18 minutes ago, JohnR said:

 

Possibly. I was under the impression that while the 71 was not as good as the Hornby model, the J94 was much better? Could we see reuse of those tools?

Having read the thread a while back the running qualities of the DJM one tend to be poor/inconsistent so although the DJM one is better detailed the Hornby tends to be a smoother runner. all IMHO of course.

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1 hour ago, cctransuk said:

 

I hope those affected have learned a lesson.

 

John Isherwood.

 

John as one of "those affected", I find your comment very Headmasterish (made up word) and unnecessary.

 

Thankfully I got refunded by my bank but I would understand if any that didn't, felt hurt by your remark.

 

Regarding DJM, for me the turning point was the fact that he took so long to submit those accounts when under threat of strike off and also the nonsense over refunding pay pal payments, and his method of selecting who got refunds.

 

As for his apparent non  cooperation with the liquidators (failing to give list of people who had made payments for models) I can understand that they must have decided he was not worth chasing.

 

I know its a confidential report, but I'm sure the liquidators report on the conduct of the Directors of the Company to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy would make interesting reading. 

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The other piece of tooling that is out there somewhere but doesn't appear to have been mentioned is the n gauge mermaid. Clearly it appears no more likely that DJM ever owned it than any of the others mentioned.

 

I purchased a couple as the first DJM product in N, as much as anything to see whether the then hype was justified. At the time I thought it the best small N wagon I had seen, but understand from those better qualified on here that it is not quite "the definitive mermaid"

 

Despite that it has, I think, only been produced in black and dutch so might be interesting to the right concern at the right price?

 

Rob

Edited by Suffolk Rob
Sorry missed the post immediately above!
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1 hour ago, Tricky-CRS said:

 

Unfortunately some of us knew his character and history during and before his time at Dapol. Our warnings were taken as being negative or attacks against the great man from Dapol. Having meet him numerous times I saw both sides of Dave during his time at Dapol and DJM. He could be quite frankly extremly rude and on other occasions very friendly, I would not give him money upfront for anything (even buying a cup of tea) as I would not trust him. He also announced products on purpose to annoy people, to try to trump competitors or simply out of spit. I know because he did it to me, when he knew I was working on the N Gauge Mermaid with Dapol. He then tried to get me to take on products with him as a way of apology, ie I have done this on purpose but I'll let you have this instead if you work with me instead of Dapol. 

 

DJM good ridence, although I will miss the threads they were very entertaining, fanciful and the fanboy approach was fantastic, verging on worship.

I met the guy a couple of times, once as N'Thusiast Resprays, 2nd under Dapol,  I've never had another human make my skin crawl so much. 

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He was enthusiastic , had the gift of the gab and absolutely no business acumen or organisation .  That's the charitable view .   And it isn't hindsight . Warnings were being sounded at the time . For me it was the announcement of N gauge APT, that quickly became OO that was available in 5, 7 ,14 and I think numbers in between  with yellow and black windscreen surrounds . Clearly there was no well thought out plan . Very ad hoc spur of the moment stuff . What was in today , got sidelined next month when a new shiny toy  took his attention.

 

I still think he got away with it .

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4 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

We know the IP/CADs for N gauge Shark and 'King' have been bought by KR and they are moving towards production so that's accounted for just about everything and that ties up neatly with the received sum of £2,300 in the liquidator's report.

 

Or ... we don't know and it doesn't tie up neatly, not if as reported earlier in the thread the two locos were the Class 71 and the Austerity. I'm confused where this "other site" got this information from, however.

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Does anyone remember the talk he gave at RMWeb Live? Hmm interesting at the time.

 

I had dealings with him indirectly regarding a project to make a wagon model when he was still at Dapol. Lets just say the total costs went up from £25k to nearly £75k in a matter of months. Suffice to say the project didn't go ahead. However when the project was taken over the total costs miraculously went back to £25k hmmm. Magic numbers on a magic calculator I think. I missed out on a talk he gave at the 8E Association about two years ago would have been interesting to hear what he said.

Cheers Paul

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4 hours ago, cctransuk said:

If someone approached you with a proposal to produce a new kettle / toaster / food mixer, and wanted you to fund it up-front, would you oblige?

 

Any company that proposes a new venture of high quality should have been able to convince a financial institution to provide funding; if they can't, you should ask why!

 

This whole tale of woe is a classic case of letting enthusiasm and hype cloud judgement, and come before common sense and financial prudence.

 

Thanks goodness those who backed the Revolution Trains Pendolino didn't share the same attitude or N Gauge would be a lot poorer.

 

Steven B.

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I only met Dave at one exhibition, and spoke for a short time about the proposed N gauge Class 17, of which he had a prototype static model in grey on the stand. I don't now why I didn't stump up the money for it then, but I'm very glad I didn't!

In the next few weeks of me pondering paying up front to Dave, I came across a Kato model that was, very similar to the Class 17.  I bought two of them and repainted them, one in green, the other in blue.

 

What we forget with this kind of deal is that it's possible to find your money is gone and no comeback. I currently have three part paid for model locos due. Two from the N gauge Society, which I'm pretty much confident of getting, given the Society's record on rtr models. Plus a loco from Sonic models. Their partner in this is RevolutioN, a company with a proven track record.

 

I do hope that crowd funding or whatever variant of funding seems applicable continues, and I will be making further ventures in the future, at my own risk. 

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6 hours ago, Steven B said:

 

Thanks goodness those who backed the Revolution Trains Pendolino didn't share the same attitude or N Gauge would be a lot poorer.

 

Steven B.

 

I'm sorry but  that is just not fair on Revolution Trains, in fact its more than "not fair" as PMP points out far more eloquently than I could above.

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23 hours ago, truffy said:

It's currently in casting. I understand that Johnny Vegas has been approached to play @DJM Dave, with Bruce Willis touted for @AY Mod. A large part will be set in Shanghai, so as to assure Chinese funding; as all the best Hollywood blockbusters do.

 

Shenzhen surely...

 

Will it be crowd-funded??

 

There's also the question  of who gets to play the poor Chinese factory owner

Edited by Ravenser
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10 hours ago, JohnR said:

 

Possibly. I was under the impression that while the 71 was not as good as the Hornby model, the J94 was much better? Could we see reuse of those tools?

 

I don't think so

 

I got a pair of J94s, with all the talk of raising the standards (which ones I'd like to know)

One of them burnt out the motor after a couple of laps on the club test track.

A friend at the same club had the same experience with his, and with the replacement!

 

Wouldn't have another if they did re-appear

Edited by Ken.W
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17 minutes ago, Ravenser said:

 

There's also the question  of who gets to play the poor Chinese factory owner

 

 

Jackie Chan. And Morgan Freeman to bring gravitas and world weary wisdom as The Stationmaster.

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I had the J94, it was a good runner - in a straight line - but seemed determined to throw itself off the rails at the merest hint of a corner

 

I also have three N gauge Mermaids.  The first one, a black livery one ran really nicely but the subsequent two Dutch ones just would not stay coupled together or indeed half the time on the track.

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Hi Guy's 

 

i really feel sorry for the ones that have lost in these affairs.

 

i also believe that until the laws change then this will be a talking point for many years to come one thing that I feel needs to change is if you go into administration via anyway shape or form then a director or directors should be held responsible for the debt of any company no matter whether it's limited or not the way I'd do that is by taken a set amount of their wages or benefits and if they go bankrupt I'd make it law that they would never have any assets or cash again that way it holds the person responsible for life I know it's harsh but their needs to be a way that this kind of thing stops

 

thanks

Alan

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Yeah, put people in the poor house. Good idea. Why don’t we bring back public flogging too?

 

I’m not sure you’ll be getting elected into political office any time soon...

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11 hours ago, JohnR said:

 

Possibly. I was under the impression that while the 71 was not as good as the Hornby model, the J94 was much better? Could we see reuse of those tools?

 

The Class 71 was a decent model. It had it's problems, but nothing that couldn't be put right. It was also designed so that you could make a Class 74 from it. The Class 74 was the only one of the models that I did consider ordering blind, but that would have been through Kernow.

 

The problem was Hornby released theirs and many of the retailers discounted it heavily. I think I paid about £60 for my Hornby version.

 

The Austerity was better than the antiquated Dapol model which came out in about 1985. But it also had a few issues. Mainly in it's running capabilities.

 

Also add in models made for others such as the LSWR O2, Beattie Well Tank and 14XX. All had problems, but in the right hands I reckon those problems could be overcome.

 

Would people buy them if they sorted out the problems? Of course they would.

 

 

 

Jason

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I had a J94 for around a week before I ended up returning it.

 

Detail was really nice and I thought id got it running ok, then one day it ran badly and started to play dead. Sometimes it was ok, other times it wasn't so back it went.

 

Im tempted by a kernow 1361 and certainly tempted to try another J94 but worried about a repeat of last time

 

The J94 can still be got new from Hereford models in a few liveries including the ltd edition yellow

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On 03/06/2020 at 15:28, Miss Prism said:

Would it be correct to say that the 14xx is wholly (tooling, rights etc) owned by Hattons?

 

 

So the article posted earlier says this:

 

"Other models made by DJ Models were completed as contracts for suppliers, such as Merseyside-based Hattons Model Railways, for which it made a 4mm GWR 0-4-2T 14XX class steam locomotive. In these cases, IP ownership rests with the specifier."

 

What IP ownership means is unknown.

 

What we can guess though is that the tooling and anything else in China was fully paid for (otherwise the models would have never made it to Hattons), so it is likely a safe guess that Hatton's owns it.

 

But equally given how long those models stayed in inventory (remembering that most people wouldn't have been aware of the issues), I doubt that Hatton's will be in any hurry to do another run particularly given they likely would want to spend additional money fixing the mechanism.

 

 

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