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Oh Hornby - what are you doing mates? (short rant:(


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1 hour ago, Oldddudders said:

I believe all Apple products are made there. There is a high degree of market penetration by Apple, with plenty of users then upgrading/updating Macs, iPads and iPhones. If Chinese QC were inherently crap, I suggest Apple would have collapsed years ago. 

I have made this point before but some people prefer to have a rant rather than take note.

Hornby should get what they ask for and Apple should get what they ask for. 

QC is there to provide a product that is to the desired standard.

It is there to provided an acceptable reject level not to create 100% compliance to the specification. Hornby must have in mind a certain level of rejects as being acceptable. They should by doing audits to check that this level is being adhered to. At a given price point of course. Apple set a higher standard but at a considerably higher price. Although it would appear that they do have a significantly higher profit margin. 

Bernard

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2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Fair point; thought it was two, why do they need 4?  
 

With my pedant’s hat on, the dock shunter used the Transcontinental diesel bogie, which was use under the TC road switcher and the double cab electric as well.  I believe the emu bogie, a similar design but on a longer wheelbase, was used on the MetroCam dmu and the Blue Pullman, despite having cast sides representing a Southern Region 3rd rail power bogie.  The other bogies on this UK based stockwere the generic B1.   
 

The side frames on all these bogies were cosmetic and the driven wheels do not have actual axle boxes, but generic power bogie cast mazak frames prevented correct detail on the dmu or Blue Pullman.  
 

I cannot recall the power bogie for the TC Budd RDC, but IIRC it was the emu bogie with the usual generic TC coach bogie at the other end.  
 

A similar form of mechanism was used for the Co-Cos/A1A-A1As, on which the centre wheels were dummy and integral with the bogie casting, but this time the EM2 and the Brush Type 2 had correct representations of their bogie sideframes in the casting.  The later English Electric Type 3 and Brush Type 4 incorrectly used the Brush Type 2 bogie, in actual fact a 4 wheel bogie. 
 

The EM2 unit could have served as a correct bogie for the Ivatt twins or a D600 Warship, but the opportunity was not taken up.  


The Mk2 TC Series bogie was used for the R.55 Single ended Diesel Loco, The R.155 Road Switcher, the R.159 Double Ended Diesel, The Double Ended Electric Loco, The TC Switcher (The BR Series Dock Shunter without buffers and in Red or yellow), and the R.235 Dock Shunter.

 

A similar design, but using smaller diameter wheels, was used for the SR EMU and The Diesel Railcar (DMU). The EMU version had representation of the 3rd rail pick up shoe beams. The DMU version didn’t. It had plain riveted sides. The DMU version was also used on the Blue Pullman.

 

The Budd Railcar was the same basic design as that used in the EM2 type bogie, with the plastic ,

’Top Hat’ and ‘spider’ collectors. It was a proper 4-wheel bogie.

The same design was later used in the Hymek, but with a different casting.

 

The EM2, and Brush Type 2  (Class 30/31) did Indeed have different castings, both had a dummy centre wheel set. The  EE Type 3 (Class 37) used the Brush Type 2 casting, incorrectly. The cab steps are in the wrong place for a start. (Some castings have the side frames reversed, so the cab steps are at the wrong end.)

 

The original Brush Type 4 (Class 47) had a new motor bogie, with the Silver Seal Ringfield Motor. The Class 37 Ringfield Version used the Class 47 motor bogie, incorrectly again.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Wickham Green too said:

Not sure whether you mean the whole Dock Shunter resembled no known prototype or just the chassis ...... but the body certainly had ( slightly ) more than a passing resemblance to 1950s North British Loco machines - of which B.R. bought eight ( in two variants ) Nos.11700-7 / D2700-7.


 

The actual R.235 Dock Authority Shunter actually looked very like a Hunslett loco built for export...I have seen a photo somewhere..

 

Tri-ang Railways did make a small 0-4-0 Diesel Shunter that resembled the North British type. It was in the Main Range in Late Crest BR green, numbered D2700 I think...also made in light blue, no buffers numbers or Crest for an electric starter set, in red with logo stickers for the Battlespace Satellite Electric train set, and in red, and green,  with and without late crest transfers, no numbers or buffers, in clockwork versions for starter sets.

 

The body moulding had various boxes added to clear the wheels on the “Nellie” type chassis used in the electric versions, and the rear buffer beam was moved outwards, and a toolbox added to the rear of the cab.

 

 

 

 

 

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17 minutes ago, Sarahagain said:


 

The actual R.235 Dock Authority Shunter actually looked very like a Hunslett loco built for export...I have seen a photo somewhere..

 

 

 

 

 

Been looking into this recently for 'Cyclops' my freelance NCB 1950s diesel (see 'South Wales Valleys in the 1950s', my layout thread on Layout Topics). Some Hunslets look a bit like Dokafority, as do some Drewrys, but the closest are some Bagnalls exported to New Zealand.  The cabs are quite different though, and the only thing that has cab windows like that in real life is a Deltic... further modifications to 'Cyclops' will entail new cab front windows.  The real locos, Hunslet, Drewry, or Bagnall, had mechanical gearbox jackshaft drive to coupled driving wheels (think 03/04) and no outside frames.  I assume 'Cyclops' to be a diesel hydraulic.

 

I've worked her up a little, repaint in freelance royal blue livery with yellow 'NCB" on the cabsides, control desk with handles and dials, a driver with his legs cut off, cab window glazing, and nameplates. I like the idea of naming small locos after mighty heroes, classical gods, monsters etc, and the single headlight suggested 'Cyclops'.  I've picked out the handrails in white and painted the marker light lenses red and white like a shunting engine ought to be.  Apart from redesigning the cab front windows to look a bit more credible for a small 1950s shunting loco, she's also going to get new bigger industrial looking buffers.  To my surprise, she runs well enough on code 100 Streamline including turnouts, can pull a house down (knurled wheels), runs quietly almost to modern RTR standards, and can be controlled down to below scale 10mph with a Gaugemaster.  The light still worked, but has been taken out to make room for ballast, but beyond adjusting b2bs not much work beyond a serious deep clean and new home made pickup sprung wire to get her running smoothly!

 

I've had to shave some clearances; she's about 1mm wide each side to UK loading gauge.  

 

 

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I've been racking my brains about the two diesels we rescued from Whiteheads Steelworks, Newport. Finally! They're (were) Yorkshire Engine, very close in shape o the BR 02. Can't remember if  they were electric or hydraulic transmission.  One went to Caerphilly, the other to the Gwili Railway. Sad to say they were both scrapped, due to radiator problems.  A bit of your Dock Authority in outline.  

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11 hours ago, Bernard Lamb said:

I have made this point before but some people prefer to have a rant rather than take note.

Hornby should get what they ask for and Apple should get what they ask for. 

QC is there to provide a product that is to the desired standard.

It is there to provided an acceptable reject level not to create 100% compliance to the specification. Hornby must have in mind a certain level of rejects as being acceptable. They should by doing audits to check that this level is being adhered to. At a given price point of course. Apple set a higher standard but at a considerably higher price. Although it would appear that they do have a significantly higher profit margin. 

Bernard

 

The danger in this argument is that it establishes a culture which accepts failure rather than one which targets zero defects through product and process design and on the shop floor.

 

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26 minutes ago, 2750Papyrus said:

 

The danger in this argument is that it establishes a culture which accepts failure rather than one which targets zero defects through product and process design and on the shop floor.

 

 

Defects will never be completely eliminated. No matter how thorough designs & processes are, there will always be some returns/repairs.

They could try to achieve less defects, but at what cost? The last few points of perfection have always been the hardest & costliest to achieve, so a product which 99% are perfect may well cost double of 98%, but since you will need to employ after-sales staff anyway, the difference at this part may be minimal. The cost would therefore need to be passed on to the customer, so by chasing that extra 1% success, the purchase price may have nearly doubled. Since we are talking about Rocket, this could have made it a £300 model. Would this affect sales?

 

These are all factors which the manufacturer needs to weigh up for themselves & since they need to make money to exist, they need to work out what works for them.

 

Sorry, but don't expect perfect models any time soon.

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16 minutes ago, Pete the Elaner said:

 

They could try to achieve less defects, but at what cost? The last few points of perfection have always been the hardest & costliest to achieve, so a product which 99% are perfect may well cost double of 98%, but since you will need to employ after-sales staff anyway, the difference at this part may be minimal. The cost would therefore need to be passed on to the customer, so by chasing that extra 1% success, the purchase price may have nearly doubled. 

Absolutely. I used to work with a "six sigma black belt" who had seen companies spend millions to save thousands; bonkers. Finding the profit maximising quality point can be tricky, particularly in a market like toy trains where the potential customer base has a hugely varying definition of quality.

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1 hour ago, Pete the Elaner said:

 

Defects will never be completely eliminated. No matter how thorough designs & processes are, there will always be some returns/repairs.

They could try to achieve less defects, but at what cost? The last few points of perfection have always been the hardest & costliest to achieve, so a product which 99% are perfect may well cost double of 98%, but since you will need to employ after-sales staff anyway, the difference at this part may be minimal. The cost would therefore need to be passed on to the customer, so by chasing that extra 1% success, the purchase price may have nearly doubled. Since we are talking about Rocket, this could have made it a £300 model. Would this affect sales?

 

These are all factors which the manufacturer needs to weigh up for themselves & since they need to make money to exist, they need to work out what works for them.

 

Sorry, but don't expect perfect models any time soon.

 

Your point about cost is the reason I talked about culture.   It is easy to throw money at things but what we are looking for is an improvement in quality at low or zero cost by making everyone in the supply chain aware that quality matters.

 

The product designer will identify a number of different solutions to a given task (such as electrical connections between engine and tender).  To what extent does he make his choice based upon quality, reliability and maintainability? The same considerations may apply during process (including tooling) design: for example can a process be made self-checking?  The product may cost no more by including features preventing faulty assembly, for example, but these features will only be included if quality forms part of the design mind set. 

 

Many years ago during my student apprenticeship, I was told my a machine operator that it was his job to make things.  It was somebody else's job to check whether they were correct or not.  Let us hope that the inspector detected any faulty components, in which case the costs were those of her wages and of the scrap involved.  But inspection doubles the manpower requirement and may not work - inspectors see what they expect to see.  So the fault may not have come to light until assembly (stopping the process) or by the customer during installation or in-service failure. All additional costs incurred because the operator did not think he was responsible for the quality of his work.

 

Is there not a parallel with our Chinese-produced models?  Have the operators, assembly and packing operators been trained to believe that quality matters and that, if they see something that doesn't look quite right, they should flag it up?  Or is quality not part of the culture in which they work; their customer will expect and allow for quality problems, which will be identified by the end-user on the other side of the world.  I wonder which approach actually costs more? 

 

The quality and reliability of other consumer products has improved dramatically over the last fifty years.  In simple terms, I would suggest that the main reason is that consumer pressure has forced suppliers to address quality throughout their organisations. Costs may have increased somewhat but I don't think the costs of manufacture have rocketed.

 

Maybe we should be asking our favourite manufacturers about their approach to quality, and telling them that is as important as, for example, choice of prototype.

 

 

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To be fair to Hornby, in terms of length of time to return the model, their offices and repairs department were shut until early July. They had a huge backlog of repairs which they are working through. I tried to send them something in April, and they advised to hold off until they reopened. I got an email this week to advise I was at the top of the line for work and could I send my model in. Sounds like you were unlucky and sent your model in just before lockdown and their new system coming into place.

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The simple issue is they have used the wrong wire, whether by design or lack of QC in China - thin very flexible wire is readily available and should have been used instead. When mine turns up assuming it looks intact the first thing I am going to do after connecting the tender to the loco is push a suitably sized piece of wire sheathing onto the plastic pin to make sure the tender remains coupled.

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6 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

It's amazing what can go wrong with model railways according to those handling returns. Motors fall out of locos. Etched nameplates vanish into thin air leaving only glue marks - and always on the side at the bottom when the model arrives. As for models that people have tried to fix themselves, those stories are hilarious.

 

My favourite came from the model boat world. One kit manufacturer had a model brought in because the builder said he'd followed the instructions and it didn't work. The ship arrived on the desk with a thump and on inspection, the hull was full of Blue Circle's finest product. It seems the instructions about cementing parts in place hadn't entirely been understood...

To be fair, there are real ships made of concrete...

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I remember a story of a kit manufacturer who was greeted at a show by a modeller with one of his kits assembled, and who then proceeded to annoy the manufacturer by describing all the problems he had encountered and how he had overcome them. Now at this point it may be a "tall story" as the version I heard then stated how after carefully examining the model it 'slipped out' of the manufacturers hand and shattered to pieces on the floor. The stunned modeller was handed another of the kit with the comment "As you had such a good time building it you can do it again"

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1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

To be fair, there are real ships made of concrete...

 

Yes indeed. If you look left on the graving dock in Portsmouth (alongside the M27) you will see several examples of concrete-built boats. On the opposite side, we'd see the daddy of them all, which is-were AFAIK, sections of the Mulberry Harbour.

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Concrete barges and narrow boats were made during the first and second world wars.

 

Most being ferro-concrete. A wire mesh frame encased in concrete using shuttering.
 

The barges were rather large...there is / was one at The Boat Museum at Ellesmere Port. (Now part of the CRT National Waterways Museum).

 

There was another barge and a narrow boat at The former British Waterways Gloucester National Waterways Museum, now also CRT.

 

I’m not sure where these are now...there has been some rearranging since I was last there! ;)

 

 

 

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The Americans made concrete ocean going steamers during their brief involvement in WW1, and there is a harbour on the Alaskan coast somewhere protected by breakwaters consisting of sunken examples of them.  
 

Glad I got that off my chest; it’s got b- all to do with Hornby’s QC...

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Purely out of interest, has anyone posted comparison pictures of both the old Triang Rocket and this new Hornby one side by side? After the first 5 pages without result I can't be bothered to trawl more through the whole 59-odd-page 'other Thread' on the subject. :rolleyes: :mosking:

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9 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The Americans made concrete ocean going steamers during their brief involvement in WW1, and there is a harbour on the Alaskan coast somewhere protected by breakwaters consisting of sunken examples of them.  
 

Glad I got that off my chest; it’s got b- all to do with Hornby’s QC...

An old mate of mine built himself a concrete hulled fishing boat in Kalgoorlie, dragged it all the way down to Perth. launched it in in the Swan river, got halfway across then gurgle, gurgle , gurgle and they all swam back to shore......still there as far as we know.

 

Rgds...Mike

 

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10 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

Purely out of interest, has anyone posted comparison pictures of both the old Triang Rocket and this new Hornby one side by side? After the first 5 pages without result I can't be bothered to trawl more through the whole 59-odd-page 'other Thread' on the subject. :rolleyes: :mosking:

Pretty sure there is one on that thread, do a search on it for Triang to narrow down the postings

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2 hours ago, ikks said:

An old mate of mine built himself a concrete hulled fishing boat in Kalgoorlie, dragged it all the way down to Perth. launched it in in the Swan river, got halfway across then gurgle, gurgle , gurgle and they all swam back to shore......still there as far as we know.

 

Rgds...Mike

 

I seem to remember a fad for reinforced concrete hull cruising yachts in the 70s and 80s; they are easy (ish) to build at home, low maintenance, less prone to catching fire than grp, suffered less from condensation inside than grp, and strong.  They said iron hulled ships would never float as well!  Not a yottie so don't really know how it panned out over time; I doubt many of the grp hulls built in that period are still seaworthy, mind.  I have a yottie chum though that I'm seeing on Tuesday, so I'll ask him.

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OP update.

 

Received a very nice (and lengthy) email from Hornby's Head of Quality (Andy Walker) who, after a rather grumbly email from me, had clearly looked into my case in great detail.

 

It seems the tender wiring is one big issue with the Rocket and that re-soldering loose wires has proven very difficult for the repair guys to do successfully. He explained that they use a jig to hold everything in optimum place but it's still very tricky apparently. No surprise really if you look at it with the solder points practically in the same place as the pivot (in my non-engineer opinion).

 

Anyway, it seems that in my case Hornby do actually care a great deal about their customers, he had clearly taken quite some time to look into my case and write a response.

 

They got it right with the Ruston - have a good weekend everyone.

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On 30/07/2020 at 12:05, Pete the Elaner said:

86214 was indeed a good machine

Not sure that an electric loco that was series only would be much good, but would be a bit of a 86235. 
 

Andi

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