Rapido dangles 3mm rolling stock carrot.

[Robert Shrives]

24 minutes ago, luke_stevens said:

Can anyone else hear the sound of Jason running away very fast?

 

Luke

 Jason is lucky to have all this free business advice on this project !! 

[mdvle]

1 hour ago, 009 micro modeller said:

On the other hand, the issue with introducing British 1:120 stuff is that you immediately make 3mm scale TT a 'relic' scale, a bit like American 00 (which is 19mm gauge and lost out to H0 as the commercially supported scale

 

To be clear, I'm not picking on those who have chosen 3mm - but the lack of mainsteam manufacturer support, and limited small company support, means 3mm already is a relic.

 

At this point it is a great choice if you want to scrachbuild/kitbash everything with a small number of kit choices, but for everyone else it doesn't exist.

 

Quote

Evidently Rapido is looking to the existing TT market to establish themselves initially, which means 3mm scale. For unpowered rolling stock, would it not be possible to issue items with either 12 or 14.2mm gauge wheelsets? I think something similar is done in 0 for coarse vs fine wheel profiles, and some garden railway stock is convertible between 32 and 45mm.

 

If 3mm/TT is going to be "yet another" British choice where the models don't match the track, or you need to modify the model to have accurate track with your model, then the market is going to shrug its shoulders and stick with OO or N - where the compromise still exists but the wider choice of RTR makes things easier.

 

27 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

Just a thought. Rapido have raised the possibility of producing two items of British outline rolling stock in TT, no locomotives.

 

For those unfamiliar with the Rapido method of communicating, it is easy to overlook that there is often nuggets of real information in there.

 

What they essentially have done is pointed out the obvious in a polite way - that there are insufficient numbers of people in 3mm to support modern RTR models unless everybody in 3mm buys the released model because of the costs of bringing a modern RTR model to market(*).  Associated with that is a belief that a RTR model is not going to grow the 3mm market, but rather just serve those already in that market.

 

That said, the loco issue can be dealt with using kits - a RTR Mk1 makes it easy to create a train of 8 coaches with only needing to kitbuild 1 item.

 

Quote

If they had anything other than 3mm scale in mind, there would have to be a loco to pull them....

 

True, and the only way anyone would consider the costing of a new loco is if someone came up to them with a nice bundle of money, or if they felt they could create a new market and those the potential made the risk of losing money worth the gamble - or say also be able to sell to existing markets elsewhere outside of the UK.

 

* - many have probably seen this numbers, but for those who haven't - ScaleTrains is a US maker of US HO (primarily) models and in a Q&A they recently gave the following rough numbers for tooling a new item (note tooling up the moulds, this doesn't include research, CAD, or actual production) - loco $200k, freight car (goods wagon) $60k, passenger coach $100k+.  If a Mk1 coach is going to cost say $200k to bring to market that is a lot of coaches to sell...

 

 

 

[mdvle]

4 minutes ago, Robert Shrives said:

 Jason is lucky to have all this free business advice on this project !! 

 

People would be surprised at the amount of free information that is used in this hobby to make decisions (hence the other thread about how to provide feedback to Rapido UK, the periodic wish list threads, and the (appreciated large effort by volunteers) wish list poll.

 

And more so elsewhere, but people even do a great deal of the research (collecting photos and drawings) to give to manufacturers in the hope of getting a model made.

[TravisM]

I know that TT or 3mm scale is still popular in Europe but I struggle to understand why it would be introduced here in the UK.  If a new gauge was going to be introduced, I’d personally I’d like to see a UK HO 3.5mm given the large amount of European stock now seen in the UK but I can’t ever see it happening.

[Steamport Southport]

Maybe I'm reading the email wrong, but I thought it was about them possibly getting together with the 3mm Society to make a few items and was I interested. And if I was then tell them what I want.

 

"We might have made this scale seem like a bit of a joke but we’re serious: if there’s enough demand for a ready-to-run 3mm model to 21st Century standards, then we’ll consider making one.

 

We have to be honest though. The 3mm market is so small that if we were to make something, every 3mm modeller would have to dip their hands in their pockets and buy one. The market's just not big enough to produce something that might only appeal to a fraction of it. So we're looking at vehicles that will find a home on all layouts, such as the Mk 1 coach (see above) or the 16t mineral wagon.

 

With that in mind, we’ve had a chat with the 3mm Society and have devised the following plan. The society is to canvass its members over the summer via its newsletter in order to find out if there’s a 3mm model that would satisfy all. It will then report back to us and we can decide if such a project is financially viable.

 

If you’d like to have your say, click here and sign up to the society's newsletter.

We can make no promises but this is probably the best chance to see a 3mm:1ft ready-to-run model to 21st Century standards."

 

Where European TT and H0 has come from is bewildering. They weren't even mentioned.

 

Now it's a market of $100,000s of sales? 

 

Nope. It's a few wagons and coaches. Probably of a similar type of deal like other manufacturers have done with societies like the N Gauge Society. I'm thinking of items such as the Hawksworth Brake Coach, Stove R and Inspection Saloon.

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/62989-n-gauge-society-goes-west-with-its-5th-ready-to-run-model/

 

Another case of people reading what they want to read and twisting it into something totally different. 

Edited April 2, 2021 by Steamport Southport

[mdvle]

22 minutes ago, jools1959 said:

I know that TT or 3mm scale is still popular in Europe but I struggle to understand why it would be introduced here in the UK.  If a new gauge was going to be introduced, I’d personally I’d like to see a UK HO 3.5mm given the large amount of European stock now seen in the UK but I can’t ever see it happening.

 

The answer (at least according to some of us in this thread) is that introducing a new TT allows the creation of a new scale without the historic compromises that OO and British N have with track vs the model.

 

The problem with HO is that it is too close to OO and thus won't be accepted by the market as a whole and it would cause too much confusion among the walk into the store customers - so retailer support would be lacking - the opportunity to attempt British HO likely disappeared 20 or so years ago when the detailed/accurate OO models started to appear.

 

TT, being separate, could (in theory) create it's own market the way Heljan did with O 10+ years ago.

[Pacific231G]

31 minutes ago, jools1959 said:

I know that TT or 3mm scale is still popular in Europe but I struggle to understand why it would be introduced here in the UK.  If a new gauge was going to be introduced, I’d personally I’d like to see a UK HO 3.5mm given the large amount of European stock now seen in the UK but I can’t ever see it happening.

3mm scale is actually as unknown in Europe as is OO but it does have a reasonable following in Britain   It's only in Britain that TT, or TT-3 to be accurate,  was made  (by Tri-ang) to 3mm/ft scale. In the rest of the world it's the same 1:120  (1/10 inch to the foot) "Table Top" scale that  Hal Joyce introduced in the USA in 1946.

RTR models to 3mm scale might though have some following in Britain- especially if made to 13.5 gauge as well as 12mm as the scale can be quite Goldilocks- not too big to get a decent layout into a typical space but not so small that you seem to be seeing your trains from an aircraft.  If European TT had included a decent range of French prototype material I'd have been very tempted to use it but it was only really in Eastern Europe and the German speaking world that it ever took off.

 

TT-3 was the usual scale gauge compromise that British manufacturers have foisted on us since OO gauge became 4mm/ft and seemingly based on the idea that the only purpose of a model railway is to run steam locos with outside valve gear and never mind if that makes everything else wrong . TT-3 is of course worse than OO in that respect as the 12mm gauge scales to 4ft 0ins. As a kid I used to model in TT-3 and to my eyes even then I was very aware of how narrow gauge it looked.

OTOH If you multiply 12mm gauge by 120 you get 1440mm which is very close to being exact to standard gauge. 

 

Edited April 2, 2021 by Pacific231G

[NCB]

There's some nonsense being talked here about TT-3 versus 1:120. There is a very good reason why TT-3 uses (underscale) 12mm track. British steam prototypes often had very restricted clearances outside the wheels, re splashers, outside valve-gear, and other things. The only way a scale solution is possible is by using things like dead scale thickness wheels. Good luck with that one. I model in 3mm/ft using the scale track gauge of 14.2mm; I manage it by using the reasonably thin 3mm Society fine scale wheels and by cheating, such as drifting cylinders outwards, likewise splashers where necessary. Better to my mind that manufacturers stick to accurate bodies and use 12mm track to accommodate them.

 

Some more realities. TT-3 isn't a "new scale". It's been around for over 60 years and while Triang got out early other manufacturers like GEM kept up support. The 3mm Society has a healthy and active membership and there have been numerous Society projects supporting that membership. For example it has one of the best ranges of quality plastic wagon kits of any scale, it offers a wide range of wheels for locos, wagons and coaches, and there's likewise a wide range of kits for locos, wagons and coaches. And it attracts new members. It's halfway between OO and N, offering something different to either. The current advances in things like 3D printing and laser cutting are a boon; many outfits are now prepared to produce 3mm versions of things they've done for other scales.

 

The attractions of the Rapido idea, to me, is that building good coaches is time consuming, so providing a common prototype gives existing 3mm modellers a helping hand, and it also makes the scale more accessible to those wanting to give it a go. I'm pretty sure a Mk.1 coach would be successful. And if that's successful, then somebody might start looking at an RTR loco or two, which would really make a big difference to new entrants.

 

 

 

[whart57]

48 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

As a kid I used to model in TT-3 and to my eyes even then I was very aware of how narrow gauge it looked.

 

 

The first time I was in Kuala Lumpur I went to check out the rail scene and made my way to KL station (the original that looks like a huge mosque, not the modern KL Sentral which is underneath a shopping centre). As I stood on the bridge looking at the metre gauge tracks I thought, this is pretty close to TT-3's 12mm gauge .........

[ColinK]

From a different viewpoint. I’ve a reasonable size railway room (about 13’ x 8’).  It is just big enough to build an interesting layout in 00 - that means to me a continuous double track, high level terminus and low level fiddle yard.  But - it is a squeeze and train lengths will have to be much shorter than I would like.

 

i could fit far more in if I modelled in N gauge, but that is too small for me (yes, I’ve tried if).

 

But if the scale was somewhere between OO and N, it would be perfect, decent length trains that I could see.

[Robert Shrives]

https://lincoln-loco.co.uk/   for interest of what the scale is currently into for some of us who have more than happily been wrong for 40 years ! 

 

Agree wholeheartedly with NCB  but can understand the 1:120 fresh start line of thought - how to make a fortune in the hobby ,start of with a big fortune. 

Two pictures of doing it wrong for 40 years ! 

 

 

[Roadrails]

Well there are  12mm=4ft8 and a bit. at 1:120, or some daft scale with the wrong track gauge.And there are Continental stuff.in this scale.

The obvious solution for traccuracy in the smaller scales might be P4 readily available track and  00 stuff sold in P4.

[Ravenser]

3 hours ago, adb968008 said:

You are wrong here by at leasy 277 former TOPS registered locomotives 20,37,47,56,58,86,87,92 , since 1999..

Plus 200 class 66’s that never landed on our shores.

 

Going back in history, theres more than 2000+ locomotives easily either of British extraction or of designs that have run in the UK... WD,8f, S100,s160,J94, Jinty, class 03,06,07,08,14,76,77 even an 89, 90,91 and 156 have made it...plus Taurus, Kestrel and 18000... ive ridden at 56mph behind a GWR prairie on Polish stock on the mainline not that long ago. 
 

 

Sure in the big world of Europe 2000+ Locos it is nothing, but its a big nothing.

The 66 is the most viable modern candidate for TT, after all its been modelled 4 times in HO scale already.. Mehano, Heljan, Trix and ESU... thats 1x more than we have in OO...so our European friends clearly appreciate it.

 

however if British TT isnt European TT.. then imho its a dead duck, unless done to European TT scale... if there is an opportunity here, imho it should be done accurately.

 

The big problem here is that TT is not in fact a Europe wide scale. 

 

to quote Pacific231G :

Quote

If European TT had included a decent range of French prototype material I'd have been very tempted to use it but it was only really in Eastern Europe and the German speaking world that it ever took off.

Put simply - unless it ran in Germany, Czechoslavakia, Hungary, Poland, or possibly Russia , it's irrelevant

 

Western European use doesn't count because TT isn't used there , and there is no 1:120 support for Western European prototypes

 

So CFD 20s, SNCF 92s, NS use of Tommy and 77s, and 08 derivitives, 37s on FrenchSpanish infrastructure, 03s on the Trieste waterfront, Dean Goods, 8Fs, WDs, S160s (which onl.y worked very briefly in Britain) , Austerities - all completely irrelevant . Czech ,German, and Polish modellers won't be interested. Not many others on the Continent work in TT

 

I'm honestly not sure there's much support even in cottage-industry form for TT in Bulgaria, so I don't see a RTR TT class 87 as viable.

 

For what it's worth, there seems to be something of a convention that people in France who want to model WW1 military railways  do so in OO9, because it's more convenient....

 

Occasional exotic visits do not make RTR viable. Nobody has done a streamlined Duchess or a King in HO even though one of each toured the States. There was for some years a Norwegien 2-6-0 running on a couple of British preserved lines, and it may still be here  - nobody is going to make a RTR 4mm model of it

Edited April 2, 2021 by Ravenser

[Martin_R]

For me with my cynical glasses on the first question to answer in all this before I even get to the scale / track gauge discussion is......... WHAT TYPE OF COUPLING WOULD BE USED? 
 

Hat and coat on and running - very fast!

Edited April 2, 2021 by Martin_R
Spelling error!

[009 micro modeller]

3 hours ago, mdvle said:

To be clear, I'm not picking on those who have chosen 3mm - but the lack of mainsteam manufacturer support, and limited small company support, means 3mm already is a relic.

 

I know - what I was trying to get at was that, if 1:120 is chosen as the new scale for British RTR, it makes it even less likely that 3mm RTR will be re-established. At one point British 0 gauge (7mm scale) went through a phase of not having much RTR support (though admittedly not to the extent of TT) - more recently it’s been revived, but perhaps it wouldn’t have come back in the same way if someone had started making British models to 1:45 0 gauge in the interim.

 

3 hours ago, mdvle said:

If 3mm/TT is going to be "yet another" British choice where the models don't match the track, or you need to modify the model to have accurate track with your model, then the market is going to shrug its shoulders and stick with OO or N - where the compromise still exists but the wider choice of RTR makes things easier.

 

Yes - which is why I wondered whether you could design RTR stock to be easily convertible between 12 and 14.2mm gauge, or available in either (I’m not sure many people particularly use the 13.5mm standard). As others have pointed out though, this might cause issues with getting a reasonable curve radius when using the finescale standard (unless the 13.5mm gauge one would work better for that). So I don’t know how you’d get an RTR standard for an accurate gauge without defining it from scratch.

[luke_stevens]

1 hour ago, Ravenser said:

 

Nobody has done a streamlined Duchess or a King in HO even though one of each toured the States. 

 

HO Japan Brass Fulgurex GWR 4-6-0 King...

 

 

[MyRule1]

Fifty years ago I was a TT modeller - at that time it was dirt cheap to pick up Triang track and stock and it fitted the room I had available for a small layout. Then Farish launched their N gauge range and I was hooked, the TT was sold off (or practically given away) and I even had a couple of small layouts in N.  As time passed I built up my N collection but the lack of loco's for my chosen period / area meant I also invested in OO.

 

Now retired and a largish model room on the horizon, I am ready to install my N gauge layout (post 1970's theme) and built the OO layout to run my collection of world war two themed items.

 

Why the pre-amble? Well I have invested a couple of £1,000's in these two collections. So I would only start modelling in TT if at least 75% of the items I have in either OO or N were available (including people, buildings, vehicles) and the cost of change was minimal - say trade in OO or N for at least 80% of the cost of chnage.

 

I am probably not alone in this. There are not enough new entrants to the hobby to make TT viable and others will be in the same situation as me. So Rapido's marketing strategy is correct - ensure there are enough current 3mm modellers who will buy the item to make it viable. As others have pointed out the N gauge Society has been doing this for years and have just got around to their first RtR loco.

[luke_stevens]

1 hour ago, Ravenser said:

 

 

Put simply - unless it ran in Germany, Czechoslavakia, Hungary, Poland, or possibly Russia , it's irrelevant

 

Western European use doesn't count because TT isn't used there , and there is no 1:120 support for Western European prototypes

 

 

Not especially correct.

 

Kuehn and Tillig do many number of (West) German prototypes including Br110.3, Br 111, Br 103, Br 218, Br 220, Br 260, Br 38 including in Italian and Belgian liveries. Nohab in Danish, Norwegian and Luxemburg liveries. They also do post 1990 German prototypes Br185, including in various Swiss liveries, ER20 Hercules (Austrian), Traxx diesels including in French liveries, Vectron diesels, Desiro Classic DMU, Vectron's in many, national and privatised liveries. 

 

There is a lot more pan-European items available than the above suggests.

 

It would be quite possible to a basic Italian passenger, or French freight themed layout with the TT stuff currently available.

 

Luke

[mdvle]

33 minutes ago, MyRule1 said:

Why the pre-amble? Well I have invested a couple of £1,000's in these two collections. So I would only start modelling in TT if at least 75% of the items I have in either OO or N were available (including people, buildings, vehicles) and the cost of change was minimal - say trade in OO or N for at least 80% of the cost of chnage.

 

It just means that you aren't necessarily the target market.

 

33 minutes ago, MyRule1 said:

I am probably not alone in this. There are not enough new entrants to the hobby to make TT viable and others will be in the same situation as me.

 

I can imagine 10+ years ago somebody saying the same thing to Heljan as they were planning their first RTR O item - the hobby is dying, why are you going to do this?

 

History tells us the rest of that story.

 

Despite what some think they hobby is not dying, as they saying goes they are creating more old people by the day.

 

There are always people entering the hobby, and there are a lot of people in the hobby working on small plank layouts who don't have £1,000's invested in rolling stock.

 

 

 

 

[adb968008]

11 hours ago, Ravenser said:

 

The big problem here is that TT is not in fact a Europe wide scale. 

 

Put simply - unless it ran in Germany, Czechoslavakia, Hungary, Poland, or possibly Russia , it's irrelevant

 

Western European use doesn't count because TT isn't used there , and there is no 1:120 support for Western European prototypes

 

So CFD 20s, SNCF 92s, NS use of Tommy and 77s, and 08 derivitives, 37s on FrenchSpanish infrastructure, 03s on the Trieste waterfront, Dean Goods, 8Fs, WDs, S160s (which onl.y worked very briefly in Britain) , Austerities - all completely irrelevant . Czech ,German, and Polish modellers won't be interested. Not many others on the Continent work in TT

 

I'm honestly not sure there's much support even in cottage-industry form for TT in Bulgaria, so I don't see a RTR TT class 87 as viable.

 

For what it's worth, there seems to be something of a convention that people in France who want to model WW1 military railways  do so in OO9, because it's more convenient....

 

Occasional exotic visits do not make RTR viable. Nobody has done a streamlined Duchess or a King in HO even though one of each toured the States. There was for some years a Norwegien 2-6-0 running on a couple of British preserved lines, and it may still be here  - nobody is going to make a RTR 4mm model of it

Still demonstrating your total disregard of the 66.. its worked East and West... its the only one I reckon would have commercial legs.

 

But  as we both agree.. TT is a dead duck, using a stretched scale, so lets move on.

 

I think I could have been interested to see if it matched Europe, but not as another out of scale UK model.. I mix HO [Europe, US, APAC and ZA] with  OO, but it would be nice if I didn't have to pretend they weren't different scales, even if some look close enough... I wouldnt willing dive in to do it all over again just because.
 

 

Edited April 3, 2021 by adb968008

[009 micro modeller]

14 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

Still demonstrating your total disregard of the 66.. its worked East and West...

 

I think there’s already a 1:120 66 isn’t there?

[adb968008]

5 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 

I think there’s already a 1:120 66 isn’t there?

Thanks I didn't know, but its validated my point... its the one... if British modellers have shunned it, i’m not sure i’d be convinced there is another avenue to turn

Edited April 2, 2021 by adb968008

[mdvle]

3 hours ago, NCB said:

There's some nonsense being talked here about TT-3 versus 1:120. There is a very good reason why TT-3 uses (underscale) 12mm track. British steam prototypes often had very restricted clearances outside the wheels, re splashers, outside valve-gear, and other things.

 

Perhaps, 60 or so years since the demise of steam as the primary form of motive power, it is time to stop having steam used as a reason why UK modellers can't have correct models and track.

 

I mean, I like steam and may even make a steam layout in the future but if anyone is going to invest in trying to take TT mainstream perhaps they should be looking to the future instead of focusing on the past.

[Pacific231G]

55 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

Still demonstrating your total disregard of the 66.. its worked East and West...

 

But  as we both agree.. TT is a dead duck.

 

so lets move on.

Please be careful when you edit quotes.  You quoted Ravenser's post thus.  

to quote Pacific231G :

Put simply - unless it ran in Germany, Czechoslavakia, Hungary, Poland, or possibly Russia , it's irrelevant

 

But those are his words not mine. 

Ravenser's actual post was

To quote Pacific231G :

"If European TT had included a decent range of French prototype material I'd have been very tempted to use it but it was only really in Eastern Europe and the German speaking world that it ever took off."

Put simply - unless it ran in Germany, Czechoslavakia, Hungary, Poland, or possibly Russia , it's irrelevant. Western European use doesn't count because TT isn't used there , and there is no 1:120 support for Western European prototypes.

 

You've ascribed Ravenser's words to me and that's not what I said or think. I don't actually believe  that TT is irrelevant. Since the fall of the iron curtain and German reuniification, TT does seem to have spread more into Western Europe- just not far enough west yet for my own needs- and I think it does have a future.

 

Having used Tri-ang TT-3 in my early teens  I came across the likes of BerlinerBahn again because I was modelling metre gauge prototypes  in 1:87 scale and TT was a good source of 12mm gauge mechs. and wheels (just as it was and is for those building 3ft gauge models in 4mm/ft scale - OOn3) 

 

French modellers' use of 009 for WW1 prototypes isn't a convention, it's down to the models they can (or could) buy from UK suppliers such as Dundas. The hobby is much smaller there so such niches are less likely to be viable for local trade support.  9mm gauge is also far less overscale for 600mm/2ft gauge track in 1:76 scale than it is in 1:87.

 

 

Edited April 2, 2021 by Pacific231G

[luke_stevens]

1 hour ago, adb968008 said:

Thanks I didn't know, but its validated my point... its the one... if British modellers have shunned it, i’m not sure i’d be convinced there is another avenue to turn

The Mehano 66 hasn't been produced for many years, mainly because the original Mehano went out of business (restructuring in 2008, closed Slovenian factory, some production moved to China) . I doubt many UK modellers even know of its existence. If it had been released in UK liveries and "avaliable" then it might be better known. I don't think it is fair to say it was "Shunned": more that it was only produced for a short period of time and not well-known.

 

Luke