Anyone recognise these decoders

[GoingUnderground]

12 hours ago, BernardTPM said:

The owning company has been Hornby Hobbies Ltd. but apparently is now called Hornby plc.

 

If you mean the owner of the Hornby name all the changes since company names and company structures since 1980 are irrelevant as the right to use the Hornby name has remained within the same group of companies with the same ultimate holding company since the management buy out in the early 1980s.

 

There are 3 parts to any business:

1. the trade or activity that it carries out, sometimes called the "undertaking".

2. the legal entity that carries out that trade or activity. This could be: a person (Sole Trader); several people in the form of a partnership; a limited liability partnership; a private company limited by shares or by gurarantee; or a public limited company (plc) with shareholders.

3. the owners of the legal entity. That could be a single person, or a partnership, or in the case of a company with shareholders lots of people or a trust or another company or a mix of any of these.

 

Undertakings can be transferred between different legal entities at will and bought and sold, and such transfers have often been used until the TUPE regulations to degrade employees terms and conditions.

 

Groups of companies often restructure and that frequently means name changes or activity changes, sometimes both and sometimes simultaneously. But the company that has been the the ultimate holding company for the former Rovex undertakings (which included the right to use the Hornby name) since the management buy out of the former Rovex business and called the shots is the same. It started out as Wiltminster Ltd in February 1981, was reregistered as a plc with the new name Hornby Group plc in 1986, and changed its name again to Hornby plc in 1996. If you want to follow the history of a company follow the company number, it never changes unless Companies House impose a new numbering system during the entire life of the company. Wiltminster was company number 1547390, and Hornby plc is 01547390 (the addition of the leading 0 was a Companies House change as companies cannot change their registered number).

 

Wiltminster is a holding company, meaning its activity is to own other companies, its subsidiaries, and provide their finance, not to make products. In the case of Wiltminster/Hornby plc, it seems to have had two main subsidiaries in the UK. Hornby Hobbies and Hornby Industries. These two subsidiaries swapped names in the 1980s. Bot when the swapped names the Roves business activity of designing, making and selling model railways, Scalextric etc was moved as well so that the active company was always the one named Hornby Hobbies.

 

Phoenix Asset Management holds the majority of the shares in Hornby PLC and to that extent it now calls the shots. But owning Hornby PLC does not mean that it owns the Hornby registered trade mark name. Ownership of that name may lie with Hornby PLC or the current Hornby Hobbies or possibly another subsidiary company within the Hornby plc group. It all depends on how the group is structured internally. But provided the company selling the trains is still able to use the name it really doesn't matter which legal entity owns it.

 

And, incidentally according to the 2020 (66th edition) Hornby catalogue, (I don't have the 2021 67th edition to check if there have been any changes but the 2021 Hornby plc accounts suggest that there have been none), Hornby Hobbies Ltd owns not just the Hornby name, but also the following trade mark names:

Hornby Railways

Tri-ang Hornby

Tri-ang

Hornby Dublo

and Minic.

Edited September 5, 2021 by GoingUnderground
Clarification/additional info

[kevinlms]

4 hours ago, GoingUnderground said:

If you mean the owner of the Hornby name all the changes since company names and company structures since 1980 are irrelevant as the right to use the Hornby name has remained within the same group of companies with the same ultimate holding company since the management buy out in the early 1980s.

 

There are 3 parts to any business:

1. the trade or activity that it carries out, sometimes called the "undertaking".

2. the legal entity that carries out that trade or activity. This could be: a person (Sole Trader); several people in the form of a partnership; a limited liability partnership; a private company limited by shares or by gurarantee; or a public limited company (plc) with shareholders.

3. the owners of the legal entity. That could be a single person, or a partnership, or in the case of a company with shareholders lots of people or a trust or another company or a mix of any of these.

 

Undertakings can be transferred between different legal entities at will and bought and sold, and such transfers have often been used until the TUPE regulations to degrade employees terms and conditions.

 

Groups of companies often restructure and that frequently means name changes or activity changes, sometimes both and sometimes simultaneously. But the company that has been the the ultimate holding company for the former Rovex undertakings (which included the right to use the Hornby name) since the management buy out of the former Rovex business and called the shots is the same. It started out as Wiltminster Ltd in February 1981, was reregistered as a plc with the new name Hornby Group plc in 1986, and changed its name again to Hornby plc in 1996. If you want to follow the history of a company follow the company number, it never changes unless Companies House impose a new numbering system during the entire life of the company. Wiltminster was company number 1547390, and Hornby plc is 01547390 (the addition of the leading 0 was a Companies House change as companies cannot change their registered number).

 

Wiltminster is a holding company, meaning its activity is to own other companies, its subsidiaries, and provide their finance, not to make products. In the case of Wiltminster/Hornby plc, it seems to have had two main subsidiaries in the UK. Hornby Hobbies and Hornby Industries. These two subsidiaries swapped names in the 1980s. Bot when the swapped names the Roves business activity of designing, making and selling model railways, Scalextric etc was moved as well so that the active company was always the one named Hornby Hobbies.

 

Phoenix Asset Management holds the majority of the shares in Hornby PLC and to that extent it now calls the shots. But owning Hornby PLC does not mean that it owns the Hornby registered trade mark name. Ownership of that name may lie with Hornby PLC or the current Hornby Hobbies or possibly another subsidiary company within the Hornby plc group. It all depends on how the group is structured internally. But provided the company selling the trains is still able to use the name it really doesn't matter which legal entity owns it.

 

And, incidentally according to the 2020 (66th edition) Hornby catalogue, (I don't have the 2021 67th edition to check if there have been any changes but the 2021 Hornby plc accounts suggest that there have been none), Hornby Hobbies Ltd owns not just the Hornby name, but also the following trade mark names:

Hornby Railways

Tri-ang Hornby

Tri-ang

Hornby Dublo

and Minic.

The shortened version is:- Go for the red and yellow boxes! Something that has been the same, seemingly forever.

[BernardTPM]

Actually the red was, for a while, more a brownish russet colour for a while. Perhaps not one of their best moves.

 

Edited March 31, 2022 by BernardTPM

[GoingUnderground]

The brown box dates to the DCM era, when the company was called Rovex Limited. Catalogues from that era refer to the "company" as "Hornby Hobbies, Rovex Limited", which would be consistent with DCM buying Rovex Ltd from the Lines Bros liquidator as a going concern company.

 

Rovex itself went through several name changes, and possibly company changes as well.

 

Added: The Rovex business was founded in 1946, and when it launched its toy train set for Marks and Spencer in 1950 it was trading as a limited company under the name Rovex Plastics Limited. The name remained unchanged after its acquistion by Lines Bros. in 1951, and it wasn't until September 1953 that the company name was changed to Rovex Scale Models Limited. (Taken from Pat Hammod's "Story of Rovex Vol. 1)

 

Using the Triang Railways catalogues as a guide from 1955 onwards, the company name changed over the years:

1946 - 1953 (Sept) Rovex Plastics Limited

1953 (Sept)  -1967 Rovex Scale Models Limited

1968 - 1969 Rovex Industries Limited

1970 - 1972* Rovex Tri-ang Limited 

1973 - 1980 Rovex Limited

 

* The name would probably have been changed sometime in 1971 or early 1972 by DCM to Rovex Limited after the connection with the rest of the Lines Bros group was severed. The catalogue was already printed and overstickering the 1972 catalogues with the new name would have been an expensive task with no immediate benefit.

 

During the DCM era the company seems to refer to itself as Hornby Hobbies, Rovex Limited, as shown on the brown box, but the legal entity seems to have been Rovex Limited as the legal notice in the catalogues about the right to change designs and specs refers to "Rovex Limited".

 

I don't have any of the 1981-89 (27th-35th editions) catalogues, but the 1990, '91 and '92 (36th-38th editions) catalogues show the name of the company as Hornby Hobbies Ltd, as does the 2011 (57th) and the 2020 (66th) catalogues.

 

And I for one will keep buying the red and yellow boxes, but I do fear for the future as they do seem to be being outmanoeuvered by Kader/Bachmann.

Edited September 6, 2021 by GoingUnderground
Updated for name changes pre-1955