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The mysterious disappearing catalogue numbers and the Mainline 'Peak'


andyman7
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3 minutes ago, Ruffnut Thorston said:

Thanks…:)

 

So obvious that is, that I forgot about that one! :o

So had I. But when it's only 6" long, sold as a toy not a model, most likely banana shaped (mine are) and as Bernard has pointed out predates the acquisition of Rovex by Lines Bros in October 1951, it's easy to overlook.

 

And one forgets that the first Rovex sets went on sale in time for Christmas 1950, just under 2 years after Nationalisation. The LMS Princess loco that the coaches accompanied was BR liveried complete with the "cycling lion" and correct BR running number 46201. To me it looks like Rovex were basing it on what people saw around them in 1948-1950 when the Rovex train set was conceived. BR's own standard coaches were not introduced until 1950.

 

The Triang Railways brand didn't exist until May 1952, and the first new coach produced after the acquisition, and the first true Triang ones were the 7" "Blood & Custard" Composite from 1952 and hence the first in a BR livery.

 

But back on topic, just, the LMS liveried coach R.20 catalogue number was applied to two versions, one as 1st class the other as 3rd class. And they did stay in the catalogue until 1956 - another example of a shared catalogue number.

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On 15/06/2021 at 09:13, GoingUnderground said:

Andyman is only partly right when he says that it was rare to have multiple liveries of a model on sale at the same time back in the 1950s and '60s. I don't have any HD catalogues from the period, and I only have some of the Trix catalogues. But a look at the Triang catalogues up to the mid/late 1960s shows a fair number of examples of alternate liveries with unique catalogue numbers in the same catalogues:

 

I should have clarified that I meant locos. Moulding tools were used to their maximum so coaches and rolling stock were issued in multiple colours to expand the range. Other distinctions were for example UK and Transcontinental items that used the same tools were in the range in parallel.

The Princess was unique because the first few years it was the only 'big' UK outline steam loco so was available in multiple colours. For most of the 60s and early 70s it was one version only at a time in the range, and then at the retirement of the tool in 1974 black and green versions were run again.

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7 hours ago, GoingUnderground said:

Price, because it made the loco look less expensive, and when you're new into the market you do what the opposition does as Ruffnut has pointed out. That is why retailers used to price things as, say 19/11 (19 shillings and 11 (old) pence) or post 1971 decimalisation as 99p, because pricing it at £1/0/0 or £1.00 made it sound so much more expensive even though it was only a penny dearer. It struck me as strange at the time that tenders were priced and packaged separately, and putting the tender in the same box was a sensible move.

 

I don't think there would have been many disappointed kids, as any retailer worth their salt, even in toy shops, would have explained to the purchaser that they needed the matching tender. Otherwise the retailer would have missed an easy sale and been left with a potentially hard to sell item.

 

In those days in the UK no electrical appliance came with a plug. Apart from electric kettles, the mains lead was permanently fixed to the item and you had to buy and fit your own plug. So selling an item without an essential extra to make it work wasn't unknown, and retailers always asked if you wanted a plug. I don't know the reason, but it might have been because older properties had 15 amp round pin sockets and the plugs were unfused whilst newer properties had the 13 amp rectangular pin sockets and fused plugs that we use today. So getting customers to supply and fit their own plug was the easy way out. 

I don't think writing as x number of shillings fools anyone, it's exactly the same thing. Certainly doesn't con me! Nor does selling as separate items when you need both - at least 99 times out of 100 or more!

 

It isn't like say in the US, where they display prices as x amount plus state tax (as applicable). That practice is outlawed in most civilised countries. The law insists that you must advertise the full price.

 

Yes, I remember when in the UK, there was no plugs on most items. Even when the vast majority of premises had 13 Amp plugs & sockets. As an 11 year old, I had to fit them, as Dad had no idea!

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1 hour ago, kevinlms said:

I don't think writing as x number of shillings fools anyone, it's exactly the same thing. Certainly doesn't con me! Nor does selling as separate items when you need both - at least 99 times out of 100 or more!

 

It isn't like say in the US, where they display prices as x amount plus state tax (as applicable). That practice is outlawed in most civilised countries. The law insists that you must advertise the full price.

 

Yes, I remember when in the UK, there was no plugs on most items. Even when the vast majority of premises had 13 Amp plugs & sockets. As an 11 year old, I had to fit them, as Dad had no idea!

The chain store Marks & Spencer's was the best known example of this sort of pricing. It must have had some benefit as they did it for years. It still happens today, with rival supermarket petrol stations striving to undercut each other by fractions of a penny, such as 122.9p vs 122.7p per litre, so that they can claim to be the chesapest in the area. It is the psychological percecption that matters not the reality. It wou't work with everyone, but does on enough to make it worthwhile.

 

Another example, in the UK almost all supermarkets put the fruit & veg at the store entrance because of the "feel good" factor that it gives customers seeing all the bright primary colours as they walk in. At the start of the change to supermarkets our local chain grocer opened one if its first large supermarkets in our suburb of London on the site of a former cinema. and closed its counter service store just around the corner, literally. The new store was laid out logically with the tinned goods first = heavy items at the borrom of the trolley, and the fruit and veg in the opposite corner = delicate items at the top. When you walked in it gave you a dead/boring feeling seeing the ranks of tin cans. Retailers put a lot of effort into subtly influencing customers, and all talk about "generating excitement". I know, I used to work for one of the major UK supermarkets.

 

The US practice of retailers showing prices excluding the local sales tax is again part of that perception of value. It has some justification as out of state purchasers do not pay the state sales tax. But I'm told that the purchaser has to declare such purchases to their own home state authorities so that their state can apply its own sales tax to the item. Not being a US citizen or resident, thank goodness, I don't know the actual mechanics. I'm afraid that I don't believe in self regulation, it doesn't work unless there is a fair chance of being caught. A an ex-policeman who used to work for me once said:

10% of us will always be honest and do the right thing;

10% of us will look for every opportinuty to 'do' the system, be it a loophole or actual illegality; and,.

The rest of us are kept honest by the fear of being caught and punished.

 

There was a debate in the UK back when VAT was introduced over whether prices should be quoted VE (Vat exclusive) or VI (VAT inclusive. Thank goodness the VI argument won, but many retailers wanted VE because of the perception of low prices.

 

  

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8 hours ago, GoingUnderground said:

The chain store Marks & Spencer's was the best known example of this sort of pricing. It must have had some benefit as they did it for years. It still happens today, with rival supermarket petrol stations striving to undercut each other by fractions of a penny, such as 122.9p vs 122.7p per litre, so that they can claim to be the chesapest in the area. It is the psychological percecption that matters not the reality. It wou't work with everyone, but does on enough to make it worthwhile.

 

Another example, in the UK almost all supermarkets put the fruit & veg at the store entrance because of the "feel good" factor that it gives customers seeing all the bright primary colours as they walk in. At the start of the change to supermarkets our local chain grocer opened one if its first large supermarkets in our suburb of London on the site of a former cinema. and closed its counter service store just around the corner, literally. The new store was laid out logically with the tinned goods first = heavy items at the borrom of the trolley, and the fruit and veg in the opposite corner = delicate items at the top. When you walked in it gave you a dead/boring feeling seeing the ranks of tin cans. Retailers put a lot of effort into subtly influencing customers, and all talk about "generating excitement". I know, I used to work for one of the major UK supermarkets.

 

The US practice of retailers showing prices excluding the local sales tax is again part of that perception of value. It has some justification as out of state purchasers do not pay the state sales tax. But I'm told that the purchaser has to declare such purchases to their own home state authorities so that their state can apply its own sales tax to the item. Not being a US citizen or resident, thank goodness, I don't know the actual mechanics. I'm afraid that I don't believe in self regulation, it doesn't work unless there is a fair chance of being caught. A an ex-policeman who used to work for me once said:

10% of us will always be honest and do the right thing;

10% of us will look for every opportinuty to 'do' the system, be it a loophole or actual illegality; and,.

The rest of us are kept honest by the fear of being caught and punished.

 

There was a debate in the UK back when VAT was introduced over whether prices should be quoted VE (Vat exclusive) or VI (VAT inclusive. Thank goodness the VI argument won, but many retailers wanted VE because of the perception of low prices.

 

  

If you put heavy tins in trolleys first, that means that you make it harder for yourself at the checkout, in that the tins and heavy items will come out last and so at the top of shopping bags.

 

I thought the idea of the modern layout was to put the items, virtually everyone buys, bread, milk etc at the rear, so everyone walks the length to pick them up, hence passing by everything else to tempt them.

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5 hours ago, kevinlms said:

If you put heavy tins in trolleys first, that means that you make it harder for yourself at the checkout, in that the tins and heavy items will come out last and so at the top of shopping bags.

 

I thought the idea of the modern layout was to put the items, virtually everyone buys, bread, milk etc at the rear, so everyone walks the length to pick them up, hence passing by everything else to tempt them.

That is very true. But, I can only quote my wife's example. She tries to put heavy items at the bottom of the trolley and the more delicate stuff on top of them. Then at the checkout she "streams" the shopping, making sure that she (or rather I as I get given the unpacking job) puts all the heavy stuff on the belt first, tins, jars, all the chilled stuff together for the "cold" bag(s) with the heavy cold items like milk, juice, butter first so they go in the bottom of the cold bag. Delicate or crushable is last, fruit, veg, bread, cakes. She also has several bags which also helps her make sure that the heavy stuff ends up in the bottom of the shopping bags. That is why we now use "scan as you shop" so that the heavy stuff goes in the bottom of the bags as we shop.

 

Store layout is not a complete science, and what you say is true, but there are physical constraints. Meat, deli, cheese, fish etc. counters go at the sides or back as they need access to the chilled part of the warehouse. Bakery goes at the back as you don't want the oven on the sales floor, and if the fresh bread is at the back then it makes sense to put the rest of the bread, cakes etc there also. This also lets the smell of freshly baked bread or roasting chicken from the deli counter waft through the store making shoppers feel hungry.

 

Apologies everyone for dragging us so far off topic.

Edited by GoingUnderground
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I have a question for Andy which is on-topic. Your original post was to try to find the underlying unique part numbers for the two Mainline locos. Now that we seem to have revealed the extent of shared and reused catalogue numbers before the days of computerisation and barcodes how do/will you deal with the shared and reused numbers when recording your collection?

 

For what it's worth, for my small collection I use a spreadsheet with an additional column for a new description when the model changes, e.g. new livery of an existing model, or new model when the number is reused - a bit messy, but it seems to work for me. For example, R.351 (again) had 3 liveries, Green, Electric Blue, and Rail Blue, hence 3 columns. For the 3 named variants of the EM2 CKD kits I add my own suffix, So the base model 27000 Electra stays as R.388, Aurora becomes R.388AU (because "A" would be "Ariadne", and Pandora becomes R.388P. 

 

What does everyone else use, or do you just rely on your memory?

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On 17/06/2021 at 09:09, GoingUnderground said:

I have a question for Andy which is on-topic. Your original post was to try to find the underlying unique part numbers for the two Mainline locos. Now that we seem to have revealed the extent of shared and reused catalogue numbers before the days of computerisation and barcodes how do/will you deal with the shared and reused numbers when recording your collection?

 

For what it's worth, for my small collection I use a spreadsheet with an additional column for a new description when the model changes, e.g. new livery of an existing model, or new model when the number is reused - a bit messy, but it seems to work for me. For example, R.351 (again) had 3 liveries, Green, Electric Blue, and Rail Blue, hence 3 columns. For the 3 named variants of the EM2 CKD kits I add my own suffix, So the base model 27000 Electra stays as R.388, Aurora becomes R.388AU (because "A" would be "Ariadne", and Pandora becomes R.388P. 

 

What does everyone else use, or do you just rely on your memory?

Reused Triang/Hornby catalogue numbers aren't really an issue as they normally relate to entirely different items, and also they are split in my spreadsheet between Rovex/Triang/Triang-Hornby/Hornby Railways/Post-1976 Margate Hornby/Hornby (China) so, for example, the Triang R122 Cattle Wagon won't get mistaken for the Post-1976 Margate Hornby R122 Hymek. The issue with the Peaks was they were right next to each other which made the use of the same number look like an error until (thanks to this thread) it was established that the number actually applied to the dealer multi-pack assortment which included both versions. So my system can cope without a catalogue number but I do like to include it. One challenge can be identifying Hornby items included in sets which nevertheless had their own 'R' numbers; for example, the main range Class 37 from 1980 to 1982 was 37 073 as R369; but there were also blue and green train set versions as 37 071 and 37 072 produced too, and these are R359 and R365 even though they were only ever sold in train sets with different R numbers.

Incidentally I've noticed that the end label for my Mainline 'Diesel Sound and Klaxon' Warship (a green 'Highflyer') reads 'Diesel Feature Asstd. - Warship Diesel with Diesel Sound & Klaxon Cat.No.37094'. Back in the 90s I picked a blue one up as old shop stock which I stupidly sold - the feature is ridiculously toy like but these models are incredibly hard to find; the green one is missing the track ramp and the electronic sound seems to have given up the ghost but I suspect that both blue and green ones were, like the 37068 Peak pack, sold in a single assortment to dealers under the 37094 number.

IMG_20210618_105829 (2).jpg

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45 minutes ago, andyman7 said:

Reused Triang/Hornby catalogue numbers aren't really an issue as they normally relate to entirely different items, and also they are split in my spreadsheet between Rovex/Triang/Triang-Hornby/Hornby Railways/Post-1976 Margate Hornby/Hornby (China) so, for example, the Triang R122 Cattle Wagon won't get mistaken for the Post-1976 Margate Hornby R122 Hymek. The issue with the Peaks was they were right next to each other which made the use of the same number look like an error until (thanks to this thread) it was established that the number actually applied to the dealer multi-pack assortment which included both versions. So my system can cope without a catalogue number but I do like to include it. One challenge can be identifying Hornby items included in sets which nevertheless had their own 'R' numbers; for example, the main range Class 37 from 1980 to 1982 was 37 073 as R369; but there were also blue and green train set versions as 37 071 and 37 072 produced too, and these are R359 and R365 even though they were only ever sold in train sets with different R numbers.

Incidentally I've noticed that the end label for my Mainline 'Diesel Sound and Klaxon' Warship (a green 'Highflyer') reads 'Diesel Feature Asstd. - Warship Diesel with Diesel Sound & Klaxon Cat.No.37094'. Back in the 90s I picked a blue one up as old shop stock which I stupidly sold - the feature is ridiculously toy like but these models are incredibly hard to find; the green one is missing the track ramp and the electronic sound seems to have given up the ghost but I suspect that both blue and green ones were, like the 37068 Peak pack, sold in a single assortment to dealers under the 37094 number.

IMG_20210618_105829 (2).jpg

I think many of the diesel sound Warships were sold without accessories even though they were shown on the box. Many of the later steam sound models that had both chuff and whistle were also sold without accessories and in a polystyrene tray only.

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On 16/06/2021 at 09:24, GoingUnderground said:

 That is why retailers used to price things as, say 19/11 (19 shillings and 11 (old) pence) or post 1971 decimalisation as 99p, because pricing it at £1/0/0 or £1.00 made it sound so much more expensive even though it was only a penny dearer.

Has everyone forgotten the upmarket  "Guinea"?  Items such as furniture  would be priced in "Guineas"   a Sofa bearing  a price label of 99 Guineas is psychologically advantageous  for a sum of £104,  The Solicitor would charge a fee in Guineas, the Plumber would charge  in pounds

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1 hour ago, Pandora said:

Has everyone forgotten the upmarket  "Guinea"?  Items such as furniture  would be priced in "Guineas"   a Sofa bearing  a price label of 99 Guineas is psychologically advantageous  for a sum of £104,  The Solicitor would charge a fee in Guineas, the Plumber would charge  in pounds

Possibly they have, unless they follow horseracing. A Guinea used to be an actual gold coin worth 1 Pound. But the value varied because of changes in the price of gold and was fixed at 21 shillings. The last gold guinea coin was minted in 1814. I suspect that folks have forgotten Guineas much as they've forgotten Farthings, Three-Penny bits, Sixpences, Half-Crowns, Crowns and the most recent to go Half-Pennies , all gone in my lifetime.

 

But thank you, Guineas were another example of making things sound cheaper than they actually were.

 

Auction houses also used to use Guineas before decimalisation, and I think they continued to do so afterwards for a time, but I couldn't tell you when they stopped as the only auctions that I've attended were in recent years, and the bids were all in Pounds.

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2 hours ago, Pandora said:

Has everyone forgotten the upmarket  "Guinea"?  Items such as furniture  would be priced in "Guineas"   a Sofa bearing  a price label of 99 Guineas is psychologically advantageous  for a sum of £104,  The Solicitor would charge a fee in Guineas, the Plumber would charge  in pounds

 

Actually £103 .19s. 0.  ;) 

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