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

[009 micro modeller]

1 hour ago, 1E BoY said:

This one, despite the hole for the lever in the top of the cab this one is definitely electric.

 

Sorry - I should have noticed the subtle differences. I do like the idea of an electric version though.

 

1 hour ago, 1E BoY said:

It runs well but you need to shut of power to allow it to coast to a stop.

 

This sounds interesting - do you know how it works? I presume it is 2-rail DC like other stuff in related ranges and doesn’t have a way of disengaging the gears so I’m struggling to work out how it can have the ability to coast.

 

 

[009 micro modeller]

1 hour ago, RJS1977 said:

 

The other problem with second-hand is that any models bought second hand are inevitably a few years old. So anyone wanting to model the 'current scene' is unlikely to find what they want on the secondhand market.

 

 

Also the combination of limited production runs and recent price increases can mean that someone waiting after a new model is released, for it to turn up on the secondhand market, finds that the secondhand example costs more than it would have cost to buy a new one when it came out!

 

The first problem is dependent on what aspect of the current scene is actually being modelled - some locos or multiple units will be the same or only need a repaint. The class 800 and other brand new stock is obviously an exception to this, although I do notice that a lot of ‘modern image’ layouts are actually set a few years into the past, which I suppose also has advantages in terms of defining the era modelled.

 

The second one is a good point and definitely relevant to this thread as the move to batch rather than continuous production seems to be one of the main issues with any potential ‘cheap beginner/entry level’ range. Also, while there’s loads of model railway material sold on eBay all the time, I don’t know how much and how quickly recent RTR trickles down to the secondhand market.

[1E BoY]

1 hour ago, 009 micro modeller said:

This sounds interesting - do you know how it works? I presume it is 2-rail DC like other stuff in related ranges and doesn’t have a way of disengaging the gears so I’m struggling to work out how it can have the ability to coast

 

I will investigate further. I also have a couple of the Class 21/29 Bo-Bo's so will have a look at them too. 

 

They are standard 2 rail and if I recall correctly they run in both directions.

 

The Class 21/29 Bo-Bo was more expensive at 52/- (roughly £2.60). 

[Firecracker]

OK, I’ll lob another 10p into the pot.  Let us take our ideal starter in the hobby.  They’ve been bought a train set (because, let’s be honest, a set is by far the cheapest way of getting started, rather than buying bits individually).  The bug has bit, so they start saving, Christmas and birthdays roll round, so in the first year they’ve got say a handful of wagons, two locos, a coach or two.  Now, at some point, they’re going to come into the orbit of someone whose going to encourage them, guide them, might be a parent, as mine was, might be relations or friends.  At some stage they’re also going to see other layouts.  Might be their guides, might be at an exhibition.  Hopefully, in this modern day and age, they’re also going to find other sources of information.  Might be this forum (possibly through a parent) might be YouTube, Facebook, whatever.  So hopefully they’re getting ideas, inspiration, encouragement.  They’re also learning the multiple disciplines of this hobby, baseboards, electrics, scenics, research, design.  They (if they don’t have it already, which personally I think is very unlikely) are developing an interest in the 12”-1’ stuff, history, operating, details and so on.

 

Now, bearing sideways, secondhand stuff.  Let’s be honest, there’s some rubbish out there, (personal bugbear coming up) starting with the trays of ancient triang and Hornby that (let’s be honest) wasn’t that brilliant when it was released and hasn’t improved with keeping (why that stuff retains its value, I’ll never know).  Then there’s some of the early Bachman and mainline.  Looks lovely, runs like a sack of you-know-what (luckily for our beginner, where I’ve seen it for sale, most seems to be a long way down the self-disassembly road).  Now (as I did) our beginner is going to encounter this.  Hopefully (as it didn’t for me, following a complete dog of a triang princess and a mainline j72 later) it won’t put them off.  Because hopefully, they’ll learn or be guided and they’ll find the pearls in the dross.  

 

On the subject of secondhand, I should be the manufactures dream.  40-ish, single, debt free.  Bit of a shame I don’t buy much new rolling stock.  In the last three years I think it’s run to a Hornby sentinel, Hornby Ruston, Oxford Janus, Bachman 101DMU (new, but had been in stock for a very long time, so it wasn’t RRP), Heljan railbus, couple of coaches and the big ticket spend,  Bachman R&R crane.  Everything else, couple of dozen wagons, 7 locos, god knows how many mk1’s and Pullman’s has been second hand.  How will the hobby survive?  Well, I think with the three figure spend on DCC decoders alone, scenics, figures, materials and tools I think it’s doing quite nicely out of me, thank you.  It’s the thing that amuses me with the obsession on rolling stock alone in this thread.  That’s the cheap bit of this hobby and the bit I feel when you’re starting off, you don’t buy that much of.

 

Anyway, my thoughts.  Flames, comments, hurled bricks?

 

Owain

[009 micro modeller]

47 minutes ago, Firecracker said:

Well, I think with the three figure spend on DCC decoders alone, scenics, figures, materials and tools I think it’s doing quite nicely out of me, thank you.  It’s the thing that amuses me with the obsession on rolling stock alone in this thread.  That’s the cheap bit of this hobby and the bit I feel when you’re starting off, you don’t buy that much of.

 

I think this is true to an extent - when I bought a few bits and pieces for a new layout a few weeks ago (nothing fancy apart from a small quantity of new track - the rest was just plastic sheet and similar) I was slightly shocked at the cost - but it makes sense as it all adds up. By contrast, I don’t really need to buy any stock as I already have it, but even if I was starting from nothing I would only need a loco and a few wagons. It was more expensive than expected as my stocks of various materials were all starting to run out, and of course a beginner will have to buy scenic items, track, baseboard materials AND rolling stock all at the same time. This is partly why I suggested easy kit-built stock earlier on - it would give the beginner a chance to indulge a deeper and possibly more bespoke railway interest and have the skills and sense of achievement from making something fairly early on, even if they don’t yet have the means or ability to build a whole layout. But even then it brings the focus back to stock (which might not be what our beginner particularly wants to build) which misses the point.

Edited August 23, 2020 by 009 micro modeller

[Firecracker]

4 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 

This is partly why I suggested easy kit-built stock earlier on - it would give the beginner a chance to indulge a deeper and possibly more bespoke railway interest and have the skills and sense of achievement from making something fairly early on, even if they don’t yet have the means or ability to build a whole layout.

Absolutely.  100% agree.  I’m assuming our beginner has followed a similar path to me and discovered airfix (and others) kits.  Not just that’s they’ve got a Churchill tank and a spitfire to pose on their layout, but that they’re learning other skills.  How to assemble a kit without leaving fingerprints behind, for a start.  From those it’s an easy leap to the more straightforward building kits, say some of the ratio stable (NOT the provendor store!) and onto rolling stock,  parkside (which now actually come with transfers, rather than when I was first building them) and Dapol.  From there there’s Superquick and Metcalfe buildings as well.  On a kit note, I’ve just stumbled across a thread on here about CDC models, apparently someone else offering 3D printed bodies to fit on RTR chassis.

4 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

But even then it brings the focus back to stock (which might not be what our beginner particularly wants to build) which misses the point.

Hopefully, they want to build a model Railway.  Stock is just a small bit of that, agreed.  But I’d argue there’s plenty of kits within the reach of the pocket of our beginner to get them started.

 

Owain

[phil-b259]

On 21/08/2020 at 20:55, adb968008 said:

There is a more tolerant media interest... the days of Media inciting hatred of minority hobbies has gone.

 

 

Media attitudes may have mostly changed - but that doesn't necessarily mean society at large has!

 

For example, if you believed the media you would assume that racist / homophobic language is a thing of the past - yet I have encountered a lot of otherwise quite decent people only to happy to use the term "coloured" , (or worse) when talking about members of the Black and Ethnic minority community for example. They use such language because its what they have grown up with (family and friends) - while schools and 'media' may give them the official version, in private this is usually dismissed as "political correctness" / "pandering to minorities", etc. The truth is we spend far more of our formative years around our relatives, etc whose views and attitudes are going to be the building blocks of who we are and not what officialdom 'tells us' to think.

 

The relevance of this to railway modelling  (or any hobby which has been dismissed / lampooned in the past) is that a change in attitudes will be slow and to a great extent based on each generation reaching adulthood with a slightly different view of what is acceptable (or not) - the lack of critical media reporting alone is not enough to drive change in people already set in their ways. What we need is a decade more of stuff along the lines of "The Great Model Railway Challenge" principle - making the hobby seem fun and exciting for those up and coming generations who have never contemplated it before to truly open minds over time.

 

As I have said before, cheap / budget model railway ranges are NOT the answer - they will come naturally if the cultural barriers to entry are dismantled such that the demand makes it worthwhile for manufacturers to cater for it.

 

 

Edited August 23, 2020 by phil-b259

[PatB]

5 hours ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 

Sorry - I should have noticed the subtle differences. I do like the idea of an electric version though.

 

 

This sounds interesting - do you know how it works? I presume it is 2-rail DC like other stuff in related ranges and doesn’t have a way of disengaging the gears so I’m struggling to work out how it can have the ability to coast.

 

 

It's nothing magical. Just a fairly hefty armature driving a single axle through, IIRC, a crown wheel and pinion, rather than the more usual worm and wheel. Given the single axle drive and the inevitably high gear ratio I suspect the chassis is less useful than it might at first appear. 

[DavidB-AU]

Depends on your desired scale and prototype. There is certainly a budget range for Japanese N and to some extent for North American HO.

 

Cheers

David

[Pandora]

6 hours ago, DavidB-AU said:

Depends on your desired scale and prototype. There is certainly a budget range for Japanese N and to some extent for North American HO.

 

Cheers

David

Does anyone recall the Lone Star 000 range of track locos wagons coaches?  There was an A4, a Princess, diesel shunter and others which escape memory, ( all rather crude but recognisable) lacking motors simply place the trains  on the plastic track and move by hand.

Is there a market for something similar today, a subset of existing Hornby Railroad with non-motorised yet realistic locos and moulded all-plastic track?

Edited August 24, 2020 by Pandora

['CHARD]

18 hours ago, Pandora said:

 

I assume that companies such as Hornby ... possess  such demographic data, 

 

 

I wonder how they could or would go about acquiring this data?  Even their Collector Club is a self-selecting and unrepresentative cross-section of the demographic.  

 

I would expect that buyers' behaviour judged on past model releases - filtered through retailer experience (sticky models and deep discounts etc) - would be the most effective way of surveying the market.

[Pandora]

22 minutes ago, 'CHARD said:

 

I wonder how they could or would go about acquiring this data?  Even their Collector Club is a self-selecting and unrepresentative cross-section of the demographic.  

 

 

I am sure  marketing research companies  would accept such a paid project,  so many indicators,  sales of railway magazines in the past and present,  discrete surveys of enthusiasts at concentration points such as principal stations,  demographics of railway enthusiasts on specials, I do not think it would be hard work to think of a method.  My prediction, for every youth railway enthusiast today, there were 5 in the 1960s. For every 3 railway enthusiasts today, 1 owns more than 10  loco models

Edited August 24, 2020 by Pandora

[MyRule1]

30 minutes ago, Pandora said:

Does anyone recall the Lone Star 000 range of track locos wagons coaches?  There was an A4, a Princess, diesel shunter and others which escape memory, ( all rather crude but recognisable) lacking motors simply place the trains  on the plastic track and move by hand.

Is there a market for something similar today, a subset of existing Hornby Railroad with non-motorised yet realistic locos and moulded all-plastic track?

This already exists to some extent in the Brio type trains and the Mattel/Fisher Price ranges. So the market is there but now Brio's patent has ran out it seems a crowded market. 

 

I not only remember the Lone Star range, and owned most of the range I also lived near Wood Green in North London where the factory was and recall the display in their window.

 

OT to this thread but Line Star are still the only company who have brought out an n gauge RTR Cl23 Baby Deltic

[Goldhawk]

30 minutes ago, Pandora said:

Does anyone recall the Lone Star 000 range of track locos wagons coaches?  There was an A4, a Princess, diesel shunter and others which escape memory, ( all rather crude but recognisable) lacking motors simply place the trains  on the plastic track and move by hand.

Is there a market for something similar today, a subset of existing Hornby Railroad with non-motorised yet realistic locos and moulded all-plastic track?

The other locos were a Jinty and 3mt tank, the track was die-cast, I don't remember plastic. Did that come later? Good play value and could be bought from a local toy shop from with pocket money.

[009 micro modeller]

1 hour ago, Pandora said:

Does anyone recall the Lone Star 000 range of track locos wagons coaches?  There was an A4, a Princess, diesel shunter and others which escape memory, ( all rather crude but recognisable) lacking motors simply place the trains  on the plastic track and move by hand.

Is there a market for something similar today, a subset of existing Hornby Railroad with non-motorised yet realistic locos and moulded all-plastic track?

 

These were way before my time (in terms of when they were originally produced) but I used to collect a bit of Lone Star 000 (mostly job lots of cheap ones in less good condition, so thinking about conserving/restoring some of them is something I need to get round to). An interesting point in this context is that the original push along range items were 8.25mm gauge, based on Hornby and Triang stock but half the size. I demonstrated this at an 009 Society meeting a few years ago, where it was possible for a finescale 8mm gauge wagon (but not a regular 009 one) to roll along the Lone Star track. Originally the track was diecast metal, like the trains. The electric range used 9mm gauge and was a bit more like modern N gauge, although I have a feeling the nominal scale was still 1:152. But there was a later iteration of the push along range that used plastic track - I’m not absolutely sure what gauge that used as I don’t know much about it and haven’t got any plastic track. Off the top of my head I think it may have been 9mm as I remember looking at getting some a couple of years ago for a project in 009.

 

In terms of doing something similar today, there might be a market for it but I’m not sure whether it would stimulate further interest in “proper” model railways. I can see it appealing more to either the floor train/basic toy market (think Ertl etc.) or the static display model collectors (like GBL). I’m also not sure what you would do with it and whether it would provide much play value - I’m inclined to think that a cheap chassis powered by an ordinary AA battery would be better than push along. It would be like the plastic train sets mentioned earlier but with Hornby compatibility.

Edited August 24, 2020 by 009 micro modeller

[justin1985]

16 hours ago, 009 micro modeller said:

- a kitbashed loco on a Kato chassis (homemade loco on a new but cheap RTR chassis).

 

Only the third loco doesn’t have an obvious equivalent in standard gauge 00 and other scales, although as an aside I am surprised that the idea of selling separate, cheap chassis for kit and scratch builders doesn’t seem to exist that much outside of Japanese N gauge manufacturers. But none of the locos mentioned above is new, full price and fully RTR.

 

The KATO N gauge chassis aren't necessarily intended for kit and scratch builders in the way we think of. They're designed as clip in optional extras for the extensive range of quite cheap unpowered collectable models, usually of trams, EMUs, and some locos, that are widely available in Japan.

 

As well as the finished unpowered models by Tomytec and KATO, there is a whole genre of snap together, ready painted "kits" of trains, just like the collections of 1/144 aircraft kits etc, made by Bandai, and others.

 

A lot of these are the "shorty" range - caricature models of things up to and including Shinkansen, but on a standard very short wheelbase Bo-Bo chassis. 

 

 

Everything in this range is very cheap - about £20 per item, and it's all very easy - easier than an Airfix kit, as everything is clip together and ready painted - no mess. But you still get to feel like you've made something! And the small size and caricature nature makes it explicitly fun, to fit in a small space. I would have loved something like this when I was a teenager!

 

Rokuhan do the same concept in Z gauge. And they have a Hello Kitty license!

 

 

On a related note, I think everyone here is underestimating the impact of YouTube, and how popular rail modeller YouTubers are - especially with unboxing videos and the like, pitched at non expert modellers.

 

It's amazing (if a bit worrying) how kids love watching videos of other kids unboxing and playing with new toys - I think that crosses over very neatly into rail model unboxing videos!

 

J

 

[Firecracker]

33 minutes ago, justin1985 said:

On a related note, I think everyone here is underestimating the impact of YouTube, and how popular rail modeller YouTubers are - especially with unboxing videos and the like, pitched at non expert modellers.

I certainly don’t, Kathy Millatt’s videos are one of the things that got me back into the hobby.  That, and a lot of the techniques videos people like Mig Jimenez are putting up.  Social media’s got a lot of problems, but in this case it’s got a lot to be grateful for.  Personally, I think the availability of information (you want a photo of a particular locomotive in 1983?  Google will usually throw it up) is something we should be celebrating in the hobby.  How often did I as a young teenager read an article in a magazine, to find the reference was either something long out of print or an ancient magazine (usually defunct) article?

Quote

 

It's amazing (if a bit worrying) how kids love watching videos of other kids unboxing and playing with new toys - I think that crosses over very neatly into rail model unboxing videos!

 

Nothing wrong with a good unboxing video!  Those and the online reviews are light years ahead of the magazines (until a magazine manages to show me a video of something running, or how to get the body off to insinuate a chip).  Also there’s a lot more of them, so you get a far wider spread of opinions than one isolated review.

 

Owain

Edited August 24, 2020 by Firecracker

[Phil Parker]

34 minutes ago, Firecracker said:

Nothing wrong with a good unboxing video!  Those and the online reviews are light years ahead of the magazines

 

Different market. Magazine reviews take hours of research in an effort to tell you how closely the model represents the prototype. None of the YouTube unboxing reviews I've seen have bothered with anything like this - it's all about the model looking nice. One thing you do get in a magazine review is everything in focus though!

 

Horse for courses. It's perfectly possible what works for you doesn't work for others. I'm also bound to tell you that many of the reviews in the digital edition of BRM come with running videos though.

[rob D2]

49 minutes ago, Firecracker said:

I certainly don’t, Kathy Millatt’s videos are one of the things that got me back into the hobby.  That, and a lot of the techniques videos people like Mig Jimenez are putting up.  Social media’s got a lot of problems, but in this case it’s got a lot to be grateful for.  Personally, I think the availability of information (you want a photo of a particular locomotive in 1983?  Google will usually throw it up) is something we should be celebrating in the hobby.  How often did I as a young teenager read an article in a magazine, to find the reference was either something long out of print or an ancient magazine (usually defunct) article?

 

Nothing wrong with a good unboxing video!  Those and the online reviews are light years ahead of the magazines (until a magazine manages to show me a video of something running, or how to get the body off to insinuate a chip).  Also there’s a lot more of them, so you get a far wider spread of opinions than one isolated review.

 

Owain

Except the difference is , online reviews are often the work of attention seekers who know nothing about what they are reviewing or the prototype .

 

I expect magazines to be the opposite .

[kevinlms]

4 minutes ago, rob D2 said:

Except the difference is , online reviews are often the work of attention seekers who know nothing about what they are reviewing or the prototype .

 

I expect magazines to be the opposite .

Some of the video clips certainly know what they're doing. Typically those who fault find/repair. I'm not just talking about model railways here.

Sometimes a magazine has difficulty explaining how to dismantle something, to access the innards.

[PatB]

Something that social media, etc. is doing, is broadening the pool of those publishing material in the field of model (and, I would guess, prototype) railways. 

 

I look at my collection of magazines from the 50s, 60s, 70s and even 80s, and most of the writing pool is made up of surprisingly few names. I haven't done a count, but I would be surprised if the total, over those 4 decades, came close to even 1000 different writers. Gut feeling tells me it's probably nearer 500, most of whom might have submitted only a single article. Even at the upper number, considering the supposed universality of the hobby at the time, that's really not a big sample getting to put forward, to a wide audience, their view on what the hobby should be. 

 

Whether this democratisation of output is a uniform good thing is, perhaps, open to debate, but I think it is inevitable that it will shape the hobby in ways with which we are not yet familiar. 

[Rockalaucher101]

I think the main problems with railroad are the price and availability. Take the schools class, out of stock on Hornby's site, being listed at £95.99... Quite a bit for a 4-4-0 which had it's tooling first introduced I don't know how long ago...

 

I also feel that once a model has new tooling made the old model should shift to railroad.

['CHARD]

3 hours ago, Pandora said:

I am sure  marketing research companies  would accept such a paid project,  so many indicators,  sales of railway magazines in the past and present,  discrete surveys of enthusiasts at concentration points such as principal stations,  demographics of railway enthusiasts on specials, I do not think it would be hard work to think of a method.  My prediction, for every youth railway enthusiast today, there were 5 in the 1960s. For every 3 railway enthusiasts today, 1 owns more than 10  loco models

 

I can guarantee that market research companies would accept a paid project, and therein lies the problem; margins are already a contentious issue in the hobby (hence the title of this topic), so the cost of market research will be passed on to the younger modeller as a percentage of RRP.  

 

Average spend for elements of consumer surveys according to an expert in the field (Source:  Pierre-Nicolas Schwab on 4 Jun, 2019) include:

  

Desk research: £5,400.00 ('Chard's suggested scope: magazine analysis, demographics on specials =£10,800.00)

Qualitative face-to-face interviews: £720.00 per interview with transcription and coding ('Chard's suggested scope: 100 participants = £72,000)

Focus Group (12 people): £4,500.00 ('Chard's suggested scope: 4 regional groups = £18,000)

Online survey: £7,200.00 ('Chard's suggested scope: 3 surveys - retailers/ creative pastime community/ railway enthusiasts = £21,600)

 

TOTAL Bid Value: £122,400.  I'll have some of that, let me set up as a sole trader!

[009 micro modeller]

2 hours ago, justin1985 said:

The KATO N gauge chassis aren't necessarily intended for kit and scratch builders in the way we think of. They're designed as clip in optional extras for the extensive range of quite cheap unpowered collectable models, usually of trams, EMUs, and some locos, that are widely available in Japan.

 

As well as the finished unpowered models by Tomytec and KATO, there is a whole genre of snap together, ready painted "kits" of trains, just like the collections of 1/144 aircraft kits etc, made by Bandai, and others.

 

A lot of these are the "shorty" range - caricature models of things up to and including Shinkansen, but on a standard very short wheelbase Bo-Bo chassis. 

 

I realise they aren’t exactly intended for kit builders, although perhaps something along the lines of the clip-on bodies would work in the UK market as well.

 

In 009, they are used for a vast range of (often freelance) designs, especially since the advent of 3D printing. Lots of people seem happy to accept compromises to use the Kato tram chassis, even for steam locos which are over scale length and have to have tram skirts fitted. I wonder if this would also work for standard gauge 00 (using an appropriate motor bogie).

[cypherman]

16 hours ago, Firecracker said:

OK, I’ll lob another 10p into the pot.  Let us take our ideal starter in the hobby.  They’ve been bought a train set (because, let’s be honest, a set is by far the cheapest way of getting started, rather than buying bits individually).  The bug has bit, so they start saving, Christmas and birthdays roll round, so in the first year they’ve got say a handful of wagons, two locos, a coach or two.  Now, at some point, they’re going to come into the orbit of someone whose going to encourage them, guide them, might be a parent, as mine was, might be relations or friends.  At some stage they’re also going to see other layouts.  Might be their guides, might be at an exhibition.  Hopefully, in this modern day and age, they’re also going to find other sources of information.  Might be this forum (possibly through a parent) might be YouTube, Facebook, whatever.  So hopefully they’re getting ideas, inspiration, encouragement.  They’re also learning the multiple disciplines of this hobby, baseboards, electrics, scenics, research, design.  They (if they don’t have it already, which personally I think is very unlikely) are developing an interest in the 12”-1’ stuff, history, operating, details and so on.

 

Now, bearing sideways, secondhand stuff.  Let’s be honest, there’s some rubbish out there, (personal bugbear coming up) starting with the trays of ancient triang and Hornby that (let’s be honest) wasn’t that brilliant when it was released and hasn’t improved with keeping (why that stuff retains its value, I’ll never know).  Then there’s some of the early Bachman and mainline.  Looks lovely, runs like a sack of you-know-what (luckily for our beginner, where I’ve seen it for sale, most seems to be a long way down the self-disassembly road).  Now (as I did) our beginner is going to encounter this.  Hopefully (as it didn’t for me, following a complete dog of a triang princess and a mainline j72 later) it won’t put them off.  Because hopefully, they’ll learn or be guided and they’ll find the pearls in the dross.  

 

On the subject of secondhand, I should be the manufactures dream.  40-ish, single, debt free.  Bit of a shame I don’t buy much new rolling stock.  In the last three years I think it’s run to a Hornby sentinel, Hornby Ruston, Oxford Janus, Bachman 101DMU (new, but had been in stock for a very long time, so it wasn’t RRP), Heljan railbus, couple of coaches and the big ticket spend,  Bachman R&R crane.  Everything else, couple of dozen wagons, 7 locos, god knows how many mk1’s and Pullman’s has been second hand.  How will the hobby survive?  Well, I think with the three figure spend on DCC decoders alone, scenics, figures, materials and tools I think it’s doing quite nicely out of me, thank you.  It’s the thing that amuses me with the obsession on rolling stock alone in this thread.  That’s the cheap bit of this hobby and the bit I feel when you’re starting off, you don’t buy that much of.

 

Anyway, my thoughts.  Flames, comments, hurled bricks?

 

Owain

Hi all,

Owain I cannot tell you how much I disagree with you about the older engines. If maintained properly many of them run just as well as newer engines. As for newer engines may I point out to you this video from Sams Trains about the vast range of rubbish made recently and some still in production. These engine are more likely to put of new modellers as they are full price and full of faults. I spend most of my time working on older engines as they are much easier to work on. That is something that newer modellers find a great help. They can buy cheap and then have half a chance getting the engines to work. Plus you only have to look at any of the Oscar Paisley videos on Youtube to show how well they can run.

 

Edited August 24, 2020 by cypherman