What made Triang more successful than Hornby Dublo and Trix?

[NCB]

13 hours ago, kevinlms said:

Surely Hornby Dublo's biggest draw back WAS the 3 rail? OK perhaps it worked slightly better (more reliable pick up), but it looked like no railway.

 

You seem to be forgetting that price is a major issue to many potential customers.

 

Some of the later diesels were just dreadful looking, the Deltic and Co-Bo had large stocks left on their demise, I wonder why that could be?

 

Don't think 3-rail was really the problem. It was robust. You get get it out, lay it on the carpet, no complex wiring needed, and it worked reliably. And next time you could do the same and try a different layout into the bargain. The 2-rail track available didn't look any better, even though it had the correct number of rails, and the individually sleepered track which came along had no ballast. Remember a lot of people didn't have room to lay the track down permanently, and if you did you lost the play value of changing the layout. Track only really starts to look good if layed down permanently, properly painted and ballasted. At least the 3-rail track had ballast.

 

Your comment about price is a bit strange. I explicitly mentioned that point.

[NCB]

8 hours ago, GoingUnderground said:

What you say about bad management by Roland Hornby and his top management team is undoubtedly true.

 

But some of what you say isn't. Hornby did produce models with different running numbers as early as 1959 as many of the 3 rail locos had different running numbers to the 2 rail versions. The reason why Hornby had so much unsold stock at the Lines Bros takeover was quite simple - overproduction of product against falling sales. Roland Hornby believed that the brand's declining sales were temporary and wanted to have plenty of stock on hand for when demand picked up again, but it never did as the fall was permanent due to a loss of market share.

 

The big Dublo steam locos did have presence and their valve gear was more realistic, but probably more expensive to produce. Triang and Trix locos had presence too, especially the Trix AL1, and the Triang Britannia and EM2. And small locos without valve gear can have presence too. One only has to think of Nellie/Polly/Connie and their SteepleCab parent, the L1, Jinty, and even the Dock Shunter/Yard Switcher. The Dublo Class 20 was also a good model, leaving aside the pickup problems of the 2 rail version.

 

But once you get away from large steam locos the Deltic and Class 20, their choice of models was strange. The EMU is a fair representation of the Class 501 which at best could only have limited appeal as it only ran on 2 routes in the London area. The Co-Bo was "famous" for the "Condor" overnight freight service, but again it was hardly thick on the ground and was a particularly bland looking loco with minimal trackside appeal. The choice of the AL1 was in my view bizarre, an OHLE loco when you don't have a catenary system, especially when there were so many diesel locos crying out to be modelled? If it was an attempt to get Triang owners to buy it then they should have made provision for fitting Triang couplings.

 

Hornby had started moving towards plastic mouldings for bodies, the R1, Class 20, AL1 and super detail goods wagons were showing their direction of travel and they should have switched to plastic bodies for the coaches as well, as tinplate always, in my opinion, looks like tinplate. Whilst the Class 20 looked good, the diecast Deltic was dimensionally challenged and their AL1 also had problems especially when it was up against the Trix AL1.

 

Hornby Dublo's only advantage over Triang was their range of big steam outline locos but they had their own drawback - cost, and a model railway, even a toy one, needs more than just good big steam outline locos especially when your target market is kids with limited pocket money and their potentially financially challenged parents.

 

Think HD only started to vary the numbers when the 2-rail versions came out.

 

I wasn't knocking Triang. The LMS 3F was a very nice model and I wanted one. It was the sort of thing which Hornby didn't seem interested in. The B12 was another.

[GoingUnderground]

6 minutes ago, NCB said:

Think HD only started to vary the numbers when the 2-rail versions came out.

 

I wasn't knocking Triang. The LMS 3F was a very nice model and I wanted one. It was the sort of thing which Hornby didn't seem interested in. The B12 was another.

I didn't think that you were knocking. We have tried in this topic to avoid knocking, that benefits no one, but be objective and honest about each system's strengths and weaknesses. We've tended to concentrate on Trix, surprisingly, as an opportunity lost. So I was grateful for your input from the Dublo point of view.

[Il Grifone]

I had forgotten the infamous 'Which' test of model railways (it's on the web somewhere), which basically castigated the British makes in favour of the Continental ones, while ignoring the difference in price.

 

I gave up on 'Which' whenthey tested colour TV sets in the seventies and recommended one of the worst pieces of junk ever inflicted on the British public. Their 'engineer' said it would be easy to repair. He/she had obviously never tried! I won't go into it any further. Those in the trade will know the one I mean.

 

Märklin were built in the same style as Dublo - solid and reliable. Fleischmann I can't speak on. I do have a 'Black Anna', but she is in rather a bad way in the motor/drive department. Another of those projects....

Edited June 23, 2021 by Il Grifone

[Joseph_Pestell]

1 hour ago, NCB said:

 

Think HD only started to vary the numbers when the 2-rail versions came out.

 

I wasn't knocking Triang. The LMS 3F was a very nice model and I wanted one. It was the sort of thing which Hornby didn't seem interested in. The B12 was another.

 

The B12, yes. The 3F was pretty poor even for its time.

[Andy Hayter]

3 hours ago, GoingUnderground said:

Maerklin is a 3 conductor system same as Dublo, they call it in German "drei Leiter" or "3L". If you look at Maerklin track in its various incarnations since they changed from rail to studs, the studs are much less visually intrusive than the continuous silver-coloured centre rail Dublo used. That is probably just one of the reasons why they thrived in the face of 2 rail offerings from German Trix from the early 1950s through to the 1990s and from other continental European manufacturers.

But the point is that at the time that Hornby went under and Triang took them over, Maerklin was still very much a three rail system.  K track only started in 1969 - 4 years after the Hornby take over and Maerklin was then as today the market leader.   Maybe Maerklin saw the Hornby demise and decided they had to hide the third solid rail.  

[sncf231e]

1 hour ago, Andy Hayter said:

Maybe Maerklin saw the Hornby demise and decided they had to hide the third solid rail.  

Märklin already hid the solid third rail and changed to studs in the mid fifties!

Regards

Fred

Edited June 23, 2021 by sncf231e

[GoingUnderground]

1 hour ago, Andy Hayter said:

But the point is that at the time that Hornby went under and Triang took them over, Maerklin was still very much a three rail system.  K track only started in 1969 - 4 years after the Hornby take over and Maerklin was then as today the market leader.   Maybe Maerklin saw the Hornby demise and decided they had to hide the third solid rail.  

I think your somewhat mistaken. K track wasn't Maerklin's first stud contact track. It wasn't even their second. it was their third iteration of a stud contact 3 "rail" track system

 

Here is a short history of Maerklin track, courtesty of Marklinstop.com https://marklinstop.com/2018/01/marklins-00ho-track-system-1935-present/

 

Maerklin track between 1935 and 1947 was virtually the same as Dublo 3 trail track of 1938. It is generally thought that Hornby based their design on the Maerklin one. They revised the design in 1947 so that the sleepers were closer together, but the overall look was the same, with a solid centre rail. That design lasted until 1958.

 

In 1953 Maerklin took a 3 rail track design by French firm Vollon et Brun. This had a metal track bed with plastic sleepers embedded in it, but Maerklin replaced the solid centre rail with stud contacts. This new track system, known as "Model-gleiss" looked very good but being stud contact the old spoon type contacts used by Maerklin (and Dublo) needed to be replaced with the pickup skate. The track was expensive to produce and sales were poor, and it was discontinued in 1957.

 

In 1956 Maerklin introduced their M series track. M Series had stud contact. It was not initially known as M Track, that name only came later to distinguish it from K track, see below, and "M".  stood for "Metall" as the track bed was metal with the studs projecting up through holes in the centre of each sleeper. It seems to be derived from track made for use with clockwork locos in 1953. So at this point in 1956, Maerklin had 3 different types of track, one was solid centre rail, and two different type of stud contact, Model-gleiss and M Track. As noted above Model-gleiss was dropped in 1957 and the solid centre rail type in 1958. Leaving stud contact  M Track as their sole track type.

 

K ( for Kunstsoff or Plastic ) track was introduced in 1969. It was similar to the Model-gleiss system from 1953 but without the metal roadbed. It looked very good, but was somewhat delicate if used as loose lay.

 

C Track came in 1988. It was based on a track design for a "toy train", and got its name as when the pieces are connected together there is a "Click" sound. It is said to be best for digital operation.

 

Here is a picture, courtesy of Wikimedia, showing the most recent 3 types of Maerklin track, with Left, K; Centre C; and Right M tracks.

 

 

So Maerklin's change to stud contact started in 1953, not 1969, and became final in 1958 when the solid rail type was dropped. Did Hornby look at stud contact, or were they too wedded to what they knew to try something different, or too busy trying to work out how to defend their market share against Triang?

 

Incidentally, there is no real difference between continuous centre rail and stud contact, it's just the mechanics that differ. 

Edited June 23, 2021 by GoingUnderground

[Ruffnut Thorston]

2 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

The B12, yes. The 3F was pretty poor even for its time.

Which 3F....

 

R.52 0-6-0 tank loco, 3F “Jinty”.

 

R.251 0-6-0 Tender loco, 3F “Deeley”.

 

[Il Grifone]

Märklin switched to stud contact around 1955 (beaten to it by sncf231e).

 

https://www.brightontoymuseum.co.uk/index/Category:Märklin_00-gauge

 

Despite what it says in the above link, the original Märklin gauge is 16mm or at least the M-track* I have is. I find Dublo wheels are allergic especially to the curves, though otherwise it is compatible with Dublo, though the rail base is rather higher.

* This was rescued, having been been left by a bin in Turin many years ago - an oval of track with a reversing loop. It's not really M-track as it is 3 rail and it was only named with the introduction of K-track to distinguish it.

 

3 minutes ago, Ruffnut Thorston said:

Which 3F....

 

R.52 0-6-0 tank loco, 3F “Jinty”.

 

R.251 0-6-0 Tender loco, 3F “Deeley”.

 

 

Both of them really!

Edited June 23, 2021 by Il Grifone

[flyingsignalman]

8 hours ago, Tofufi said:

I'd say that one of the reasons Tri-ang won is the sheer play value of the range.

 

Not just railways for serious people, but some of the other items:

 

Battlespace was introduced about 5 years before Dublo ended - the range eventually including rocket firing wagons, turbo fan car, plane launching car, exploding wagon, satellite launcher, helicopter launcher...

 

 

Not to mention other 'normal' wagons such as the giraffe car and mail coach. 

 

 How well battlespace etc actually sold I don't know

 

 

I had the turbo fan car; a bonus was it could be pushed round when the juice was turned off! 

My first train set was a Playcraft one and my brother also had a set too.

The Playcraft range appeared in Woolworths each year in the run up to Christmas and at first was all we had was an 0-4-0 and and 2 mark 1 coaches each. We quickly found that  moving one loco would generate enough power to move the second one. We also found that this would create enough interference on the TV to warrant our Dad coming upstairs to tell us to pack it in....

 

[Peter Kazmierczak]

To my mind, the Trix "Warship" (which weighs a brick with its cast metal body), looked to be to a slightly larger scale that their 3.8mm plastic-bodied "Western" that has much finer detail.

[GoingUnderground]

Just now, Peter Kazmierczak said:

To my mind, the Trix "Warship" (which weighs a brick with its cast metal body), looked to be to a slightly larger scale that their 3.8mm plastic-bodied "Western" that has much finer detail.

The Warship has 2 U shaped lumps of metal inside it for added ballast and adhesion.

 

It was created at about the same time as the EM1 and shares many components, notably the pickups, wheels, bogie chassis, gearbox and motor. I've done a "cut'n'shut" to a Warship chassis to create a new chassis and running gear for use with an EM1 body.  

[Il Grifone]

A thought - the original gauge was possibly measured to the rail centres? - A strange Continental habit. Our local metre gauge is actually 950cm.

[Andy Hayter]

Thanks for the replies.  As a definitively no-expert in Maerklin, I had mistakenly thought K track was their first stud track.

[GoingUnderground]

2 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

Thanks for the replies.  As a definitively no-expert in Maerklin, I had mistakenly thought K track was their first stud track.

No problems, I make plenty of mistakes myself by not fully checking my facts. I only know of the existence of the different types of Maerklin track through having an ESU ECoS and reading the various posts from Maerklin owners. I had to look up the history myself. Like many in the UK, I only realised how important Maerklin and 3 rail is in Continental Europe when I first went to model shops in Switzerland about 15 years ago and saw how many models were labelled 3 rail or AC.

 

If I had a vote on Maerklin track, I'd go for K track as for me the C track shows too much of its "toy train" origins, and the M track looks too much like tinplate. But M still looks much better than Dublo's solid centre rail version.

 

Trix showed another way to do 3 rail with their fibre track as the much slimmer blackened centre rail reduced its prominence significantly.   

[PatB]

6 hours ago, NCB said:

 

Think HD only started to vary the numbers when the 2-rail versions came out.

 

I wasn't knocking Triang. The LMS 3F was a very nice model and I wanted one. It was the sort of thing which Hornby didn't seem interested in. The B12 was another.

I wonder if Triang's better provision of intermediate sized tender locos (3F, B12, L1 etc) was a small factor in their success. Perhaps not so much in the pure toy market, but for those building a 6x4 main line, as depicted in 60 Plans, they'd fit the space (and, probably, the budget) rather better than a Pacific. 

[Joseph_Pestell]

7 hours ago, Ruffnut Thorston said:

Which 3F....

 

R.52 0-6-0 tank loco, 3F “Jinty”.

 

R.251 0-6-0 Tender loco, 3F “Deeley”.

 

 

A Jinty is a 3FT.

 

That was revised in the early 1960s and good for its time.

[Pandora]

Dublo were middle class products for middle class wallets, Triang was priced at blue collar incomes, incomes which were expanding rapidly, the near monopoly held by Dublo was being broken down.

Poor Dublo were being attacked from both sides, their Dinky toy cars were in the firing line by Matchbox, Spot-On  and Corgi.

On the railway side, Triang had mastered  similar quality and durability  to Dublo products at a lower seling cost, both ranges had issues such as undersized wheels.

Dublo wagons in the SD range are far nicer than Triang products,  Triang had more detail on their plastic coaches, but the printed tinplate coaches by Dublo still held appeal, especially the Restaurant carriage.

Dublo produced a couple of stinkers, the atrociously "free lance"  Deltic and the plain green version, what exactly were they thinking when they signed off the Deltic?

The EE type 1 had running problems over diamonds and production ceased,  the CoBo was a very poor seller. the 25kV electric was made in small quantities as Dublo funds ran dry. All 4 of those locos must have lost Dublo a great deal of money

I do not recall Dublo being sold in any outlets other than high street toyshops, I think I can recall Triang being sold in a wider retail arena ,including mail order catalogues, Woolworths, my local  bicycle shop sold Triang railways as a sideline, the local newsagent sold Corgi and Matchbox cars, but not Dinky cars.

Edited June 24, 2021 by Pandora

[Ruffnut Thorston]

@Joseph_Pestell

 

That is the first time that I have heard of a T suffix being used.

The actual locos carried 3F markings.

 

The only T that I was previously aware of was as part of MT, for Mixed Traffic.

Such as the B.R. Standard 3MT 2-6-2 Tank loco, R.59.

 

@Pandora
 

One of the problems with the HD “Deltic” was that it was designed before the design of the production Deltics had been finalised.

 

There are a few features on the model, including what was meant to be a sort of destination blind for train names, etc., that were dropped from the full size locos.

 

The plain green livery, and lack of names on the first batch, also stemmed from this.

 

Being too short was a common failing of RTR models at that time.

 

Later, Hornby Railways ran into similar problems when they released the Class 58 locos. Also, the livery changes on the APT-P.

[Butler Henderson]

The power classification was simply that and covered both tender and tank locos so quite where 3FT comes from is plainly unofficial.

[Il Grifone]

The T in MT stands for (mixed) Traffic (as opposed to P (Passenger) and F (Freight) (an LMS idea). Done properly there is a coloured disc (for route availability) with a letter (for power class).

 

Lima got the bogie wheelbase wrong on their Deltic too, but at least the length was right. Dublo's looks too high to me, as well as being too short or is this an optical illusion?

 

They didn't stand a chance with their model of the APT. The real thing was killed off by political incompetence (I'll say no more here).

 

Meccano Ltd. tried to be fair to their dealers, giving each one a monopoly in their area. Other makes were not so scrupulous. This wouldn't work today, but back then retail prices were fixed by the manufacturer (plus purchase tax set by the government and based on wholesale price. (Toys were considered a luxury (???) and taxed (typically) at 35%. This seems high, but, since the wholesale price was about half the retail price, less than today's VAT @ 20% of the retail price (22% in Italy!). (Strangely, no-one has advanced the idea of scrapping this EU imposition post Brexit.... Lots of things were exempt or taxed at a lower rate.)

Edited June 24, 2021 by Il Grifone

[GoingUnderground]

1 hour ago, Il Grifone said:

The T in MT stands for (mixed) Traffic (as opposed to P (Passenger) and F (Freight) (an LMS idea). Done properly there is a coloured disc (for route availability) with a letter (for power class).

 

Lima got the bogie wheelbase wrong on their Deltic too, but at least the length was right. Dublo's looks too high to me, as well as being too short or is this an optical illusion?

 

They didn't stand a chance with their model of the APT. The real thing was killed off by political incompetence (I'll say no more here).

 

Meccano Ltd. tried to be fair to their dealers, giving each one a monopoly in their area. Other makes were not so scrupulous. This wouldn't work today, but back then retail prices were fixed by the manufacturer (plus purchase tax set by the government and based on wholesale price. (Toys were considered a luxury (???) and taxed (typically) at 35%. This seems high, but, since the wholesale price was about half the retail price, less than today's VAT @ 20% of the retail price (22% in Italy!). (Strangely, no-one has advanced the idea of scrapping this EU imposition post Brexit.... Lots of things were exempt or taxed at a lower rate.)

Meccano were patrician, believing that they knew best, and giving one dealer a monopoly might have been fine when there was no serious competition. But that broke down when faced with a competitor who recognised the need to get product into as many outlets as possible and who already had access to more outlets than Meccano. Prices were set by the manufacturer through clauses in sale agreements that penalised the buyer if they resold the item at less than the selling price stipulated by the manufacturer. This was seen as anti-competitive and holding prices artificially high, and the practice, known as resale price maintenance was made illegal in the UK in 1964. 

 

Have you seen just how much the UK Government collects through VAT? Scrap that and you'd have to shut the NHS, or reintroduce another form of sales tax like the Purchase Tax we had before VAT, or increase the income tax collected by 2/3rds, or triple the amount collected through corporation tax to make up the shortfall. Contrary to urban myth, VAT is a very easy tax for businesses to administer in this era of computerised accounting records and electronic data transfer. It wasn't that hard back in the 1970s when I had to prepare several VAT returns myself. It only gets messy because of the exempted items. Scrapping VAT is very easy to say and do, but businesses would have to contend with the cost of implementing whatever came after it, unless you really would prefer jacking up the income tax take by increasing the rates and dropping the thresholds.

 

It is also a myth that Purchase Tax rates were lower than VAT. When it was introduced in 1973 the VAT rate was only 10%, and in 1974 was reduced to 8% but with the introduction of a "luxury items" rate of 25% (the luxury rate was abolished in 1979). So the prices of items where the Purchase Tax was 35% may have fallen (it depends on the retailers profit margin), in 1973 as you'll see if you do the maths. The rate of VAT in the UK has varied and now stands at 20% because it was a less obvious way to raise the tax take as it left untouched Income Tax and National Insurance rates which would have changed what folks received in their bank accounts, or took home in their wage packets.

 

But let's not get bogged down in taxation, it's too political, just like unnecessary references to Brexit.

Edited June 24, 2021 by GoingUnderground

[Ruffnut Thorston]

The Lima Deltic was originally going to be a continuation of the HO range.

 

The bogies remained HO, but the body was tooled to the new (to Lima) 4mm-1 foot OO scale.

 

As the Class 50 used the same type of bogies as the Class 55 Deltics, the Lima model 50s also have HO bogies...

 

Yes, proper route restrictions and power classification is in coloured spots! 

 

 

 

 

[GoingUnderground]

10 hours ago, PatB said:

I wonder if Triang's better provision of intermediate sized tender locos (3F, B12, L1 etc) was a small factor in their success. Perhaps not so much in the pure toy market, but for those building a 6x4 main line, as depicted in 60 Plans, they'd fit the space (and, probably, the budget) rather better than a Pacific. 

I'm sure that it was a factor in both the toy market, being a bit cheaper to make translating to a lower selling price, and fitting into the available layout space more easily than a Pacific.

 

Big locos look good in a boxed set on a retailer's shelf, but somewhat out of place on a branch line or smaller main line layout.