Why is their no budget range for the younger modeller to get into this hobby?

[Phil Parker]

20 minutes ago, MyRule1 said:

Does anyone remember, or have an example of, the plastic Modern Traction Kits universal steam loco chassis. I brought one in the mid 70's and recall I failed to get it to run.

 

I suspect you aren't alone. Most K's kits suffered the same fate as the crude chassis designed for screw-together assembly was a challenge and even if you got it to work, the square-cut frames looks poor.

 

The problem comes back to the OP, what is wanted is something CHEAP. It also has to be excellent.

 

DJH produce beginners kits and I've used them as examples when this sort of question has come up in the past. The trouble is, the R&D required to make a "shake the box" style kit is extensive and expensive. Their Barclay is a fine model but over £200. The O gauge 02 diesel is even easier to assemble but also not pocket money prices.

 

 

The cry is that for a beginner, the kit must be cheap but with a top quality static plastic kit costing £100k to develop and having to sell for over £100, I'm inclined to think that the idea of cheap is nice, but impossible. As others have said, if there is such a ghap in the market, how come someone isn't filling it?

[009 micro modeller]

47 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

There are those that will point out that selling a kit complete with wheels, gears, and motor denies the builder the choice of wheels, gears, and motors, and the 'complete with' loco kit does not have a good reputation in the hobby.  Whitemetal kits are not considered up to the mark these days, and they aren't, the 'complete with' option here being Keyser's, which are not considered particularly good, so some prejudice against the concept remains amongst modellers of my generation; we cut our modelling teeth with them and the experience was less than universally edifying...  But one still has one's choice of wheels, gears, and motors by simply not using the ones supplied with the kit, and there is no reason why a plastic loco kit that is reasonably robust and runs well could not be produced with the parts on two or three sprues, a major production cost saving that could be reflected both in profit per unit sold and lower market prices.

 

I’m not sure this is particularly true. Certainly in 009 most kits that are not ‘body only’ seem to include a motor, especially for kits of smaller prototypes where only a small number of motors would fit. It is also a much better situation than that created by a body only kit which only fits a particular, no longer available and not very good chassis, which in effect similarly denies the builder a choice of motor.

[AY Mod]

4 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

if there is such a gap in the market, how come someone isn't filling it?

 

The old adage is "there may be a gap in the market but is there a market in the gap?". There may be a small market but it's also a small profit; why spend the same amount on R&D and steel for tooling when for a little more labour on top (the manufacturers' staff and processes are a lot better than the average modeller in this respect) you can produce a better quality and higher margin item? If I was producing stuff I'd aim it at those who do want to pay rather than those that don't.

[eldomtom2]

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

I've made up 2 of these kits in recent years, a meat van and an Interfrigo ferry van, and found no evidence at all of the tooling being degraded.  Soft polystyrene plastic is unlikely to have much impact on a steel mould even after many years of use; all that is needed surely is to clean the mould after each production run being careful not to damage it.  Rough cleaning is more likely to cause problems than extended use.

 

There is a drop in quality over the kits I built as a child in the 60s, but it is in the composition of the plastic, which is much poorer in the modern kits.  Profit on them must be pretty marginal and it is not surprising that Dapol have compromised to keep a lid on costs.  The kits both made up square and true, and while I do not use the Interfrigo because of its scale issues, which stand out in a rake of vehicles, the meat van is in traffic and gives no trouble at all.on locomotive kits of the type I have described, they'd have to be an improvement on the Ratio Midland 2-4-0, to be a factor in attracting new blood into the hobby.  

Dapol kits are luck of the draw - in my experience with their loco kits flash and warping is endemic.

[CloggyDog]

On 17/08/2020 at 23:42, The Johnster said:

How about coming at if from a different tack, the plastic construction kit guys,  Tamiya, Italieri, Revell, and a load of others I don't know about because I'm not into aircraft and tanks.  If they produced one or two locomotives as plastic construction kits to start with, complete with motors, gearboxes, and pickups, so that relatively unskilled modellers could kit built them, it would introduce the idea to people who model aircraft, tanks, battleships and such.  They already do railway guns; i built a big German Tamiya one that had a narrow gauge railway aboard it for shifting the shells around for a friend many years ago.  For this reason, the Kriegslok presents itself as the first port of call, but a few of the world's more common locos would get the idea up and running; P8s, Mary diesels (known as Stalin's Revenge in Poland), EMD stuff.  Rolling stock would follow, perhaps generic at first. and perhaps with a tendency towards military prototypes.

 

There are already loco and rolling stock kits in injection-moulded plastic from some of those firms - Revell do a DR 132/DBAG232 'Ludmilla' Co-Co, DRG Br01 Pacific, DRG Br 42 2-10-0 heavy frieght while Italeri have a Br41 2-8-2 mixed traffic loco and some FS wagons, Kibri do a lovely 4-wheel steel flat/stake , all in HO.

 

Generally on  par with or slightly better than the Kitmaster/Airfix/Dapol OO kits. 

 

Not aware of any motorising kits available, though tbh I've never really looked that closely for them. I do recall many years ago there were some motorising kits available for the Kitmaster/etc range - I certainly had a chassis for the Std 4 2-6-0, though the valvegear defeated the pre-teen me. 

 

In larger scales, the military modellers have a 1:35 Br52 Kreigslok and the Br86 2-6-2T, plus a selection of stock, but then 1:35 is a very popular AFV scale. Again, I'm not aware of motorising options, mainly becaise the German market is well-ish served by Gauge 1 RTR.

 

 

[MAURICE040947]

  15 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

if there is such a gap in the, how come someone isn't filling it?

 

Someone is. As I have said before, Marklin is the name and the range is called My World. It is aimed at the child market and is integrated with Lego systems for maximum play value. It is not aimed at  us older cynics. It is what I would call affordable and both my 6y.o. grandsons love it. I hope it generates a lifelong interest in the hobby.

[009 micro modeller]

5 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

The problem comes back to the OP, what is wanted is something CHEAP. It also has to be excellent.

 

I realise with my idea I might have got sidetracked and changed the emphasis slightly to ‘what could get more people involved’ rather than ‘how could things be cheaper to make the hobby more accessible to beginners.’ But I do think it is a relevant point. I know several people in my own age group, as well as both younger and older, who like craft activities or making things. Meanwhile, in other areas of model-making assembling a kit, or at least painting or detailing something, is something that a beginner does fairly early on, so the actual experience of building a kit is or could be an enjoyable aspect of the hobby for many people, rather than just a means for experienced modellers to get something more obscure that isn’t available RTR. More importantly for the purposes of this thread, it would appeal to a potentially quite large number of people who would not be interested in buying a train set so that they could run an RTR loco and some wagons round in circles.

 

I remember talking to someone in the 009 Society a few years ago. He was getting an 009 layout group set up at his local (general, non-scale specific) MRC, and I was very surprised when he told me that many of his participants (all completely new to 009 but some with a reasonable amount of general model railway experience) had never assembled a wagon kit. As NG modellers both of us found this slightly bizarre...

 

On a related subject I wonder whether track to make a shunting puzzle could be supplied in sets instead of the normal oval - I can see that appealing to groups who wouldn’t otherwise be interested (who like ‘puzzles,’ games etc.) as well, but maybe we should leave that for another time...

[009 micro modeller]

15 minutes ago, CloggyDog said:

In larger scales, the military modellers have a 1:35 Br52 Kreigslok and the Br86 2-6-2T, plus a selection of stock, but then 1:35 is a very popular AFV scale. Again, I'm not aware of motorising options, mainly becaise the German market is well-ish served by Gauge 1 RTR.

 

As I mentioned earlier, although it’s close to Gauge 1 I think at least some of the 1:35 scale plastic kits designed to accompany military models actually use accurately-gauged but incompatible 41mm gauge track. Not to say that a suitable motorised chassis kit couldn’t use 45mm of course.

Edited August 19, 2020 by 009 micro modeller

[Phil Parker]

47 minutes ago, MAURICE040947 said:

Someone is. As I have said before, Marklin is the name and the range is called My World. It is aimed at the child market and is integrated with Lego systems for maximum play value. It is not aimed at  us older cynics. It is what I would call affordable and both my 6y.o. grandsons love it. I hope it generates a lifelong interest in the hobby.

 

And it is excellent. Well made and a proper, expandable system. Even the prices aren't bad - £23 for 3 wagons seems like a bargain. I've played with it and am very impressed.

 

I suspect the problem is that it's all too toy like for the OP and others so doesn't quite tick all the boxes.

[Joseph_Pestell]

52 minutes ago, MAURICE040947 said:

  15 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

if there is such a gap in the, how come someone isn't filling it?

 

Someone is. As I have said before, Marklin is the name and the range is called My World. It is aimed at the child market and is integrated with Lego systems for maximum play value. It is not aimed at  us older cynics. It is what I would call affordable and both my 6y.o. grandsons love it. I hope it generates a lifelong interest in the hobby.

 

As Phil says, although there is a certain level of compatibility between the Marklin range and "proper" models, they are not really something that you would want to run together as you get more sophisticated in your view of railways.

[Phil Parker]

42 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

More importantly for the purposes of this thread, it would appeal to a potentially quite large number of people who would not be interested in buying a train set so that they could run an RTR loco and some wagons round in circles.

 

I'm not sure you can extrapolate from half a dozen people on a model railway forum into a mass market capable of buying up 3000 train sets. We tend to be a pretty self-selecting group.

 

43 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

On a related subject I wonder whether track to make a shunting puzzle could be supplied in sets instead of the normal oval - I can see that appealing to groups who wouldn’t otherwise be interested (who like ‘puzzles,’ games etc.) as well, but maybe we should leave that for another time...

 

Not a bad idea. I've always argued that a good train set must include a siding. Would someone interested in puzzles be willing to assemble the set though? At a guess, you need something like Bachmann ez-track to so you can quickly go from box to working puzzle. Price would be an issue as an inglenook style puzzle will need 8 wagons, a loco, track and controller. Price rapidly heading to a couple of hundred quid, and I say that as someone who has tried to put something similar together for a commercial product. That's a long way from the cheap stuff the OP was after.

 

46 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

Meanwhile, in other areas of model-making assembling a kit, or at least painting or detailing something, is something that a beginner does fairly early on, so the actual experience of building a kit is or could be an enjoyable aspect of the hobby for many people, rather than just a means for experienced modellers to get something more obscure that isn’t available RTR.

 

Build a building kit. Simple and little to go wrong. Mr Metcalfe has plenty of excellent options. Or Petite Properties who have a large community of non-railway modellers happily building their kits.

[Joseph_Pestell]

47 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 

 

 

On a related subject I wonder whether track to make a shunting puzzle could be supplied in sets instead of the normal oval - I can see that appealing to groups who wouldn’t otherwise be interested (who like ‘puzzles,’ games etc.) as well, but maybe we should leave that for another time...

 

A good point. Someone mentioned a cheap HST + oval of track earlier. But how does that generate much interest? No play value at all when you are competing with computer games.

[009 micro modeller]

6 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

I suspect the problem is that it's all too toy like for the OP and others so doesn't quite tick all the boxes.

 

1 minute ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

As Phil says, although there is a certain level of compatibility between the Marklin range and "proper" models, they are not really something that you would want to run together as you get more sophisticated in your view of railways.

 

Exactly. What age range does the OP have in mind? Preschool-age kids? Young teenagers? Older teens and young adults? Obviously it all makes a difference. The key is probably to have enough compatibility that the basic system can be gradually improved and ‘grow up with’ the user, to avoid the Tomica/Hornby complete replacement situation I described earlier in the thread.

[009 micro modeller]

3 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

I'm not sure you can extrapolate from half a dozen people on a model railway forum into a mass market capable of buying up 3000 train sets. We tend to be a pretty self-selecting group.

 

I wasn’t extrapolating from people on RMWeb. I was basing it on people I either know now or have known in the past who enjoy other forms of crafting/model-making, or like railways, or history, technology etc., or some combination of these, but wouldn’t be interested in a conventional train set. It’s still difficult to pin down the exact market though...

 

7 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

Build a building kit. Simple and little to go wrong. Mr Metcalfe has plenty of excellent options. Or Petite Properties who have a large community of non-railway modellers happily building their kits.

 

This sort of presupposes that the beginner is at the stage of building a layout, which they may not be yet. Building rolling stock (which could then be run on temporary track) could take place at an earlier stage.

 

11 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

A good point. Someone mentioned a cheap HST + oval of track earlier. But how does that generate much interest? No play value at all when you are competing with computer games.

 

I notice the ‘starter’ track pack for Hornby steampunk isn’t an oval...

[Binky]

50 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

On a related subject I wonder whether track to make a shunting puzzle could be supplied in sets instead of the normal oval - I can see that appealing to groups who wouldn’t otherwise be interested (who like ‘puzzles,’ games etc.) as well, but maybe we should leave that for another time...

 

Going by the popularity of inglenook and shelf style layouts I think this might be a good idea. When people think of train sets they think of needing enough room for an oval and there can be a concern about space. If there was a diagram showing the different track patterns that could be made with the set (like Scalextric) potential buyers could see what spaces they really could fit a model railway into, and could build a shunting puzzle, goods yard, small station etc for different operating and prototype following oppurtunities.

 

On a similar note I'd been wondering that if a UK standard module system was adopted (and train sets produced that allowed them to be built) would there be an interest for small layouts that could be used on their own at home but joined together at a local club to allow participants to run their longer trains in a way they don't have the space to at home? I'm thinking something like a micro inglenook with an extra through track that would connect to others, and built on a small baseboard or box like the Ikea box module idea that was disussed in the Gn15 community a few years back.

[Binky]

19 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

 Price would be an issue as an inglenook style puzzle will need 8 wagons, a loco, track and controller.

 

Make it a micro inglenook with 5 wagons and a loco.

[009 micro modeller]

22 minutes ago, Binky said:

Going by the popularity of inglenook and shelf style layouts I think this might be a good idea. When people think of train sets they think of needing enough room for an oval and there can be a concern about space.

 

I was partly thinking of this as well when I suggested it. In 9mm gauge you can get a reasonable oval on a 4x2ft board, 16.5mm gauge wouldn’t allow this without going down to some very restrictive radii (there are other reasons why I chose 009, before anyone says that ). However, if you stop making it all about getting an oval in the smallest space possible the options for small spaces are opened up more.

 

19 minutes ago, Binky said:

 

Make it a micro inglenook with 5 wagons and a loco.

 

A good idea, although I wonder if Phil was thinking of a larger plan to give more variations and more complexity and thus hold the operator’s interest for longer.

Edited August 19, 2020 by 009 micro modeller

[298]

27 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

I've always argued that a good train set must include a siding. Would someone interested in puzzles be willing to assemble the set though? At a guess, you need something like Bachmann ez-track to so you can quickly go from box to working puzzle. Price would be an issue as an inglenook style puzzle will need 8 wagons, a loco, track and controller. Price rapidly heading to a couple of hundred quid, and I say that as someone who has tried to put something similar together for a commercial product. That's a long way from the cheap stuff the OP was after.

 

Or a 3-2-2 with five wagons, less space required and easier to solve, and you can sell extra track and wagons as an add on.

 

I'd probably seen BLTs in cast off magazines but the first one that I can remember as an influence was in a Hornby track plan book. This might have been because it had a 2721 open cab pannier on it and I wanted one at the time, and having laid out a curtailed plan with setrack on the dining room table, the first comment I had from my superiors was "what are you going to do with those spare curves..?" It seems the indoctrination that a trainset has to be an oval and you have to utilise every thing that you've spent your hard earned pocket money on runs deep.

[009 micro modeller]

24 minutes ago, Binky said:

On a similar note I'd been wondering that if a UK standard module system was adopted (and train sets produced that allowed them to be built)...

 

An excellent idea - nobody would be able to argue about the module standards if a manufacturer had already designed and built them in...

[grahame]

It'd be interesting to hear why the OP thinks a "budget range for the younger modeller" would help/encourage them "to get into this hobby?" And if he has any supporting evidence.

 

I get the impression that youngsters aren't attracted by price to be interested in pastimes/hobbies. It seems to me that many current popular 'toys' and 'hobby items' that they like to have and play with are comparatively expensive. Are lower prices really the best way to encourage interest?

 

 

 

 

[Dunsignalling]

1 hour ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

A good point. Someone mentioned a cheap HST + oval of track earlier. But how does that generate much interest? No play value at all when you are competing with computer games.

Agreed, Smokey Joe, ten wagons, a run-round loop and a couple of sidings would beat it hands down for play value. Maybe the answer has been staring us in the face from the beginning....

 

Problem is, we're all in different generations from the kids we allegedly wish to inspire, some of whom will get into (or return to) railway modelling in later life (as most of us did) although they may ignore it for now.

 

'Course, that'll be thirty years down the road and most of us won't be around to worry whether or not the hobby still exists by then. High quality second hand stuff should be plentiful, though.  

 

Perhaps we shouldn't be getting too concerned about a future over which we have no control and in which we'll have no place? Que Sera Sera....

 

John

Edited August 19, 2020 by Dunsignalling

[009 micro modeller]

13 minutes ago, grahame said:

It'd be interesting to hear why the OP thinks a "budget range for the younger modeller" would help/encourage them "to get into this hobby?" And if he has any supporting evidence.

 

I get the impression that youngsters aren't attracted by price to be interested in pastimes/hobbies. It seems to me that many current popular 'toys' and 'hobby items' that they like to have and play with are comparatively expensive. Are lower prices really the best way to encourage interest?

 

I’m not sure what the OP’s rationale was, although obviously younger modellers are less likely to have the spare cash to spend on some of the current expensive RTR. This actually applies to other age groups as well, but as a beginner who has to buy some quite big things just to get started (like a controller and some track to build a layout, perhaps) you might be put off if you find that everything else is also very expensive before you’ve definitely decided you like the hobby. Getting people into the hobby is almost a separate issue - depending on the exact definition I fall into the ‘younger’ category and would appreciate some things being a bit cheaper, but I’m already here so the supposed “problem” of ‘getting people into the hobby’ doesn’t apply in that case. Where the two issues intersect is in the question of how to give beginners more entertainment for their money than is provided by a conventional train set.

Edited August 19, 2020 by 009 micro modeller

[Binky]

8 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 

An excellent idea - nobody would be able to argue about the module standards if a manufacturer had already designed and built them in...

 

Imagine if Hornby produed a standard size baseboard that could fit in the back of the average car, perhaps sold in pieces to make the packaging smaller (the way board game boards are twice the size of the box) or to allow more than one to be added together. They already have a forum and community so meets could be arranged (post covid, fingers crossed), either at exhibitions or as seperate modular meetings. Though it would depend on critical mass being achieved for it to take off.

[grahame]

19 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 

I’m not sure what the OP’s rationale was, although obviously younger modellers are less likely to have the spare cash to spend on some of the current expensive RTR. This actually applies to other age groups as well, but as a beginner who has to buy some quite big things just to get started (like a controller and some track to build a layout, perhaps) you might be put off if you find that everything else is also very expensive before you’ve definitely decided you like the hobby. 

 

Yet an X-Box is considerably dearer than an introductory train set that includes controller, track, loco and coaches/wagons. And further wagons/coaches and track seems to be on a par with x-box games.

 

 

[009 micro modeller]

1 hour ago, Binky said:

 

Imagine if Hornby produed a standard size baseboard that could fit in the back of the average car, perhaps sold in pieces to make the packaging smaller (the way board game boards are twice the size of the box) or to allow more than one to be added together. They already have a forum and community so meets could be arranged (post covid, fingers crossed), either at exhibitions or as seperate modular meetings. Though it would depend on critical mass being achieved for it to take off.

 

And this would also allow it to be a ‘social’ hobby, which was mentioned earlier. The main issue for younger modellers in this particular suggestion is the requirement for independent transport though. Perhaps it could fold to fit into a case that would go on public transport.