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The reaction in the modelling community when Lima stopped production


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12 hours ago, tubs01 said:

Strange, any other info available other than the fact that they are of Lima origin? Such as when the models were designed, would have been released ect ect

If you looked closely at the lima class 47 bogie (which was pretty damn good for its age) you will see that on the main springs there are flat plates with 4 holes in, which are on the prototype.....LIMA (until vitrains) were the only manufacturer to model that in the bogies, Heljan didnt (afaik) Hornby...well lets not go there, and Bachmann didnt on the first tooled 47 (which pre-dated the vitrains model) and the second retool.

 

When the vitrains 47 came out they modelled it.... this and if you looked at the construction methods...it followed lima esq procedures very well (such as the paint methods, the glazing also is very lima in its simplicity... the control board is also very similar in its style to the Lima 67...

 

interestingly...close inspection of the 37 body shell shows that the exhaust ports appear to be a separately tooled item....which gives the impression they may have been planning a slug....(37/9)

 

the 47 also...has a separately tooled engine cover which implies possibly plans for a 57??? but only the hobby co really knows the answer to this... on that though...i find it quite difficult to believe that hobby co would finance a new tooling on a model that had already been issued by 2 leading manufacturers (47) and one that feature wise was inferior to the existing bachman 37. So i would be willing to bet the toolings already existed....

 

 

 

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22 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Prime example of that is the very strange roof on the Horsebox.

 

 

L305626-HR_3331282_Qty1_1.jpg

 

Supposed to look like this. Someone definitely read the drawings wrong. Otherwise the body was pretty good for it's time.

 

R6561-LN06_3364590_Qty1_1.jpg

 

 

Photos from Hattons website.

 

 

 

Jason

 

To be fair, the original GWR drawing is not very clear about the roof ventilators, though the less said about the underframe the better. It's far better than Tri-ang's attempt at the same thing!

 

I was living in Italy, at the time of the merger/takeover with Rivarossi in the nineties (I was never sure of the actual details!) but it had followed a revision of both ranges over the previous ten years, greatly improving the quality*, but with a considerable price inflation overload. Despite the merger things staggered on until the final failure in the new century. Luckily they were saved by Hornby, but a more or less immediate removal of duplicate items from the catalogue. Since I had returned to the UK in the meantime, my intended layouts (Danish /Lima and Italian/Rivarossi) were put on hold, while I principally collected Hornby Dublo 3 rail.

I had collected sufficient stock, so really my reaction was "meh" too. An unfortunate by product is that spares prices have gone through the roof. One of my Rivarossi locomotives shed a crank pin. Luckily I found it again, as a search on eBay produced one at something like 5€ + carriage (nearly as much as I paid for the locomotive ignoring inflation).

 

* Rivarossi switching scales from 1:80 to 1:87 didn't help either. The stock will run together, but looks ridiculous doing so.

 

 

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AIUI rightly or wrongly Lima were of the opinion that British modellers wouldn't pay the price for the quality they wanted, so they were alway trying to cut corners, notably using BR Mk1 bogies wherever they could.  However as part of trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear they did produce some models which could be tarted up quite easily and have a chance to try out modelling skills on reasonably priced items. 

 

3 of mine bought cheaply: 

The BR Mk1 CCT which has had a paint job and glazing to look almost ex-works.  Hornby even took this into its range. 

 

Then the ex-LMS 42' GUV which I thought was a great innovation at the time, and no-one since has done it RTR.  This was let down by the BR bogies which need replacing with LMS ones  and also the roof vents, glazing and paint job. 

 

Finally the GW Siphon.  AIUI 'expert modellers' still use the 'box' as the basis for upgraded models and throw away everything from the solebar down.  I've changed the bogies for 3D printed ones and repainted it.  I believe the underframe is a work of fiction but it's beyond my skill set to replace.  I wish someone would do a 3D printed one you could slot in.

 

I'm happy with all of these as part of longer consists.

rev Lima BR CCT.jpg

rev Lima LMS 42ft GUV.jpg

rev Lima GW Siphon.jpg

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4 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

Some of us went the other way & found out what Americans were being offered - for half the price of UK stuff at the time. So Lima going bust was for me as PMP said in the first reply - "meh".

My Lima locos were all detailed up & looked good in a display case. But the running was dreadful, especially compared to anything from across The Pond. And don't even mention the "Volvo bumper" tension-lock couplings!! By the time the UK caught up, with all-axle, can motor flywheel drive, it was far too late for me & even now in O Scale my UK outline modelling is minimal.

I do recall seeing the Lima Collectors Stand (probably at Warley NEC) one year. I just wanted to shout "WHY???" but thought better of it.... ;)

Me too! By either 1989 or 1990, I was well into US outline modelling and would remain there for the next fifteen years or so.

 I only mention the European stuff to illustrate that Lima could produce the goods when they really wanted to. Also, when they knew the market could afford it.

My first steps back into European modelling in around 2005 was Danish outline and Lima produced a beautiful model of a DSB (MR?) dmu, again with the (in)famous ringfield motor. I understand that their Australian and South African models were also so fitted.

 

One of the things I really loved about Lima was that they were truly international! ISTR they made a rather good Alco C420 for the US market but I don’t recall what mechanism they fitted.

 

My reaction about the loss of Lima UK was definitely ‘meh’ but I was saddened by the loss of the international range because it was interesting.

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58 minutes ago, Allegheny1600 said:

Me too! By either 1989 or 1990, I was well into US outline modelling and would remain there for the next fifteen years or so.

 I only mention the European stuff to illustrate that Lima could produce the goods when they really wanted to. Also, when they knew the market could afford it.

My first steps back into European modelling in around 2005 was Danish outline and Lima produced a beautiful model of a DSB (MR?) dmu, again with the (in)famous ringfield motor. I understand that their Australian and South African models were also so fitted.

 

One of the things I really loved about Lima was that they were truly international! ISTR they made a rather good Alco C420 for the US market but I don’t recall what mechanism they fitted.

 

My reaction about the loss of Lima UK was definitely ‘meh’ but I was saddened by the loss of the international range because it was interesting.

Lima did a very nice C420 with a cast frame, can motor and all wheel drive for Model Rectifier Corporation, it was only let down by brittle handrails.  They’d previously done a very inferior version where the pilots were fixed to the trucks.

 

The DSB MR is a nice model  (I rather regret selling mine!). I think it came out shortly after the prototype as my one featured toilets in both cars, I’m pretty sure one car in each set had the toilet replaced with a seating bay and larger window.

 

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1 hour ago, Metr0Land said:

AIUI rightly or wrongly Lima were of the opinion that British modellers wouldn't pay the price for the quality they wanted, so they were alway trying to cut corners, notably using BR Mk1 bogies wherever they could.  However as part of trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear they did produce some models which could be tarted up quite easily and have a chance to try out modelling skills on reasonably priced items. 

 

3 of mine bought cheaply: 

The BR Mk1 CCT which has had a paint job and glazing to look almost ex-works.  Hornby even took this into its range. 

 

Then the ex-LMS 42' GUV which I thought was a great innovation at the time, and no-one since has done it RTR.  This was let down by the BR bogies which need replacing with LMS ones  and also the roof vents, glazing and paint job. 

 

Finally the GW Siphon.  AIUI 'expert modellers' still use the 'box' as the basis for upgraded models and throw away everything from the solebar down.  I've changed the bogies for 3D printed ones and repainted it.  I believe the underframe is a work of fiction but it's beyond my skill set to replace.  I wish someone would do a 3D printed one you could slot in.

 

I'm happy with all of these as part of longer consists.

rev Lima BR CCT.jpg

rev Lima LMS 42ft GUV.jpg

rev Lima GW Siphon.jpg

Worth replacing the silly little mushroom buffers as well, which 'lifts' the end on view of the models.  Lima were good at plastic moulding, and the ringfield was powerful and indestructible, but far too highly geared.  It came from an era of ringfields, Mainline, Airfix, and Hornby using them as well, and they were not the hobby's finest hour.  The rationale behind this was that the market in the late 70s and early 80s demanded steam loco with no skirts beneath the boilers and daylight visible where it should be, something we take for granted now but rare even on kits in those days.  So the motor and gear train had to be hidden, and the motors were small, needing to run at high speed in order to develop suffiicient power (they still didn't produce enough power, as proved by the traction tyres used in conjunction with them, though not exculsively with them).  That in turn meant that there were reduction spur gears, which again usually failed to tame the 'stabbed rat' performance and were prone to splitting. 

 

It was classic cost cutting; the gears would have been more effective and reliable had they not been plastic, and it was usually still possible to see the gears on one side of the loco (or tender in the case of tender drive).  Lima Warships and Western, with their open inside framed bogies, were especially obvious.  Lima's mechs were not worse than anyone elses', but the use of a brass alloy for the wheel rims that picked up dirt easily, the traction tyres that interfered with pickup performance, and the gear ratio all impaired good slow running and smooth stops and starts.  You could achieve good slow performance with them if the wheels and track were clean and you were restrained with the control knob. 

 

Lima's steam chassis were dire.  The best were the 4575 and the Crab, which had the mech in the tender.  The 08 wasn't the worst ever, either, at least it was an improvement over the ridiculous Hornby Jinty type.  It was mainly let down by the overscale coupling rods, as was the Hornby Dublo/Wrenn which was the only alternative in those days.  The J50, a reasonable body moulding, was frankly a toy at best below the running plate, solid wheels, no balance weights, no crankpin to the centre drivers, no brake or other detail.  This same monstrosity was used under the 94xx, another acceptable body moulding but with the splashers in the wrong place to go with the J50 wheel spacing.  The Crab suffered from not being heavy enough to ensure good running of the unpowered loco chassis, and none of them had any brake detail.  The geared driving wheel was obvious even on the 4575, which had the boiler and cab pitched about a scale foot too high so that the loco could accommodate the ringfield in the cab.  It was pretty obvious that nobody was going to pollute their layouts with these once better RTR was available, from Bachmann in the case of the 94xx and the 4575, and Hornby in the case of the J50. 

 

Diesels, the WR hydraulics with their exposed spur gears aside, were better, because Lima's skill with plastic mouldings sat well with outside framed bogies.  The ringfields still intruded into cab space, though, and those hideous couplings disfigured the ends of the locos.  Pickup was better than the steam models, being 'collection one bogie return the other', enabling the power bogie to pick up on one side and still have traction tyrers opposite.  This system was used on the dmus and railcars as well.

 

Coaches (and dmus & railcars) were pretty good, the main objection being the overscale thickness of the body sides leading to deeply recessed windows.  Again, this was a common feature of those days and could be worked around with Southeastern flush window kits.  Other companies used thicker clear plastic mouldings for their window peices with relief to achieve the appearance of flush windows, but these suffered from a prism effect in certain lighting conditions.  It seemed to me that the obvious answer was to make the main bodyshell moulding of clear plastic and use thin plastic overlays for the body sides, but this was clearly less obvious to the RTR manufacturers of the day.  A problem with the GW railcars, a difficult one to solve in RTR to be fair, is the exposed drive shafts, which are simple plastic stubs ending in mid air on the Lima railcars.

 

Wagons were a repetition of the 'good body tooling, rubbish chassis' theme.  Finish on private owners (often ficticious, and Lima were not the only ones guilty of this) was often overbright, but they were better than Hornby's concurrent overhigh offerings.  Silly little mushroom pinhead buffes, the hideous couplings that held the wagons a scale 6 feet apart, moulded brake levers (again, Lima not the only one guilty) and brake blocos moulded to the axleboxes clawing uselessly at fresh air.  Airfix were the only RTR firm producing stock with brake blocks in line in those days, and had the best t/l coupling, similar in profile to the current NEM.

 

The watchword seemed to be 'cheap and cheerful', competing with Hornby, with Airfix and Mainline having a more hi-fi image; Mainline's split chassis were good in theory but poorly designed with materials not up to the job, which affected long term liability and gave them a poisonous reputation.  By and large this was borne out with the levels of detail and better performance, but the ringfields were used in tender drives by Airfix, while Mainline used them in steam outline loco drives which blocked the cabs.  The 70s and 80s RTR scene undoubtely laid the foundation for current standards in UK RTR, but were not without their problems (or were the advance they claimed to be), and it should be recognised that Lima played their part in this.  The ringfields, spur gears, and tender drives proved to be a dead end, but only when very cheap, powerful, and high quality Chinese mass produced can motors allowed a return to something like traditional motor fitting and worm/gear drive, usually with the motor horizontally in the firebox and an idler gear between the worm and the final drive. 

 

My view is that Lima were the only game in town back in the days for 08s, 64' chassis dmus, and GW raicars, but by the time of their demise were well behind the times and doomed by producers who were providing high quality cheap Chinese made product.  Why buy a Lima 4575 or 37 when the Bachmann versions are better detailed, run better, and don't cost much more?  Lima tried their best to counter this with a plethora of liveries for diesels, but the steam market was pretty much played out so far as they were concerned.  A similar thing happened to Hornby, who weathered the storm (just) and are fighting back, but are not out of the woods yet and IMHO have a QC question mark over them.  They are still producing the old Lima GW railcars, but with their own motors...

 

Lima's demise was bad for the hobby; the demise of any RTR or kit company is, but they were a busted flush by the end.  I understand Tubs01, the OP, asking the question, as he is a teenager on a restricted budget who would perhaps appreciate a cheap and cheerful range of the sort that Lima provided for the last couple of decades of the 20th century, but such a thing would be difficult to achieve in the current market.  We are talking about single piece body mouldings on basic chassis, which would be ridiculed by most modellers unless they were at the pocket money pricing level that Tubs would like to see; the catch is that, while assembly costs will be reduced (and they are probably the biggest single overhead cost in RTR production) you still have to factor in raw materials, factory rental, shipping, marketing, and distribution.  My guess is that it would be difficult to produce a single moulding body 6-coupled tank locomotive at much less than about £80 or 90, still a bit salty for Tubs even if he wanted one with such a crude level of detail.  

 

That said, Hornby can put out 4-coupled basic locos at less than £40, though they are not of much use to 'serious' (whatever they are) modellers.  These are probably loss leaders and are certainly not up to current RTR standards.   Sorry, tubs, now what you want to hear; the hobby, whatever it would like to be, is not teenager friendly.  I feel your pain, mate; it is not particularly OAP friendly either...

 

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A few people have mentioned the Crab as being good, but not mentioned the fact it was the wrong width!  :prankster:

 

They even made the tender the same width as the locomotive when it was very noticeably narrower. Another case of not reading the drawings properly I expect?

 

Can't remember the widths off hand. But they had Fowler tenders built to the MR loading gauge whereas the Crabs were built to the wider LNWR/L&Y loading gauge. ISTR they were originally meant to have received L&Y style tenders instead.

 

Very noticeably in real life.

 

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Photo John Griffiths via Wiki

 

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Hugh Llewellyn via Wiki

 

 

Jason

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Cheap, basic loco's like those described above (J50/94XX/Crab) at sub- £30/40, I would buy. I would buy a few. A lot of people would buy a few, all the time. Because they would be AFFORDABLE! Loco's at £150+ and then some, I cannot justify the expense. Pile it high, sell it cheap. Not another 0-4-0 in a different colour or a silly Paddington set. The Hornby Railroad range was a great idea but now way, way  too dear for their target market. How about,Hornby, trying a CKD kit range? A Lima Deltic in a Kitmaster style box? Screwdriver not included! :read:

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The large amount of second hand Lima still out there is probably one reason why a truly budget 00 range isn't available. People who want budget just go secondhand Lima. However secondhand Lima prices have been rising slightly. You used to be able to pick up almost any diesel for £25-£30 - now most are in the £35-£40 range.

 

Mine always ran well. I still have thoughts of doing a nostalgic tailchaser project just using just models available in the 1980s and 1990s - if I ever do this Lima will be first choice for most things diesel. With coaches around a tenner and locos still cheap you could do a lot with a small budget of £350 (the price of a single modern sound fitted DMU). With care I reckon you could get five locos, a DMU and all the coaches and you'd need for a small layout. Makes you think...

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33C, would you really buy a new Lima 94xx with the cab full of motor, a one piece plastic moulding bodyshell, and a frankly risible chassis, that was near impossible to work up to sacle because the splashers were in the wrong place, or a Crab where the entire body was too narrow, and both with ridiculously high gearing?  Would you even buy a J50, right size and wheel spacing but still with a toylike chassis and a cab blocked by the motor,  Probably not, I'd contend, you'd expect it to at least be the right shape and size, and capable of being worked up into something more detailed and realistic after you've filed off the moulded detail and replaced it with brass, lostwax, or whitemetal retrofit.  How much would you pay for this new low-fi basic loco?  £30-40 for a 6-coupled tank loco might be doable secondhand, but the cost of producing, shipping, storing, marketing, and distributing the new model, not relevant to the 2h market, is going to push the price level to double that.  You can get a full fat current production equivalent for about 25% more if you look out for discounts,  Look at such items in the Hornby Railroad range that have appeared over the last few years; the price of them as new items was at a level consistent with such locos costing about £70-90 to produce nowadays.

 

New locos to 'basic' standards at the sort of price you are touting as affordable would be so basic as to be barely acceptable as toys, at which point you start being in competition with cheapo Chinese battery sets.  Sorry, prices have gone up since we started exploiting the Chinese for cheap labour 20 odd years ago, and what could be done then can't be done for the same 'affordable' price now!  Be nice if it could, but it can't...

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Just now, rob D2 said:

The only Lima I got running sweetly was a awkward 37 where I sprayed half a can of WD40 into the motor and they say never ever do that .

 

The other alternative was to set fire to it .

I found the oldest Lima 37 I had was the best runner by far, I seem to recall they changed the armature material on later ones and they were much worse runners.

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Just now, 37114 said:

I found the oldest Lima 37 I had was the best runner by far, I seem to recall they changed the armature material on later ones and they were much worse runners.

This was a fairly newish one . Brought at the 1998 legendary toton open day and my first loco purchase since 1985 !it then sat under my bed until I started a layout in 2001

B8754541-803E-4FB2-BDB6-272293E74704.png

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Just now, rob D2 said:

This was a fairly newish one . Brought at the 1998 legendary toton open day and my first loco purchase since 1985 !it then sat under my bed until I started a layout in 2001

B8754541-803E-4FB2-BDB6-272293E74704.png

Excellent. I bought the similar 37114 (unsurprisingly), it was the only EWS liveried loco I ever owned. 

 

It does go to show the core reason that Lima went pop, that model was unmodified since the 1980s, could you imagine Ford trying to sell the 1991 Escort these days....

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1 minute ago, 37114 said:

Excellent. I bought the similar 37114 (unsurprisingly), it was the only EWS liveried loco I ever owned. 

 

It does go to show the core reason that Lima went pop, that model was unmodified since the 1980s, could you imagine Ford trying to sell the 1991 Escort these days....

 

Yes. But at the same time Hornby were still selling their one from the 1960s!

 

http://www.hornbyguide.com/item_details.asp?itemid=1404

 

 

 

Jason

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On 06/10/2021 at 18:22, tubs01 said:

......Out of curiosity, does anyone know if there is any truth to the rumour of the vitrains locos having Lima origins?

 

23 hours ago, 37114 said:

 

It is generally accepted that was the case, yes. Vi Trains even released a replacement class37 chassis that was a direct fit for the Lima class 37.

 

There's no rumour or generally accepted about it.

It's established fact.

 

ViTrains  ( the "i" in Vi is pronounced like the short "i" in "ink" or "bit".....not ""vye as in "eye" ) .... was set up by 12 former Lima and Rivarossi managers and staff, following the group's collapse.

They opened a  production facility, not far from the closed Lima factory in their home city of Vicenza.

Note, ViTrains is short for Vicenza Trains.

 

 

22 hours ago, tubs01 said:

Strange, any other info available other than the fact that they are of Lima origin? Such as when the models were designed, would have been released ect ect

 

ViTrains started operation very shortly after the Lima group collapsed , in May 2004, initially with 12 staff, consisting of managers, designers, engineers and other staff from Lima Spa, with Silvano Spiller as the company's  President.

They were already planning to bail out from Lima when the company was going t**s up, prior to bankruptcy.

They showcased their first models -The Minuetto and the 464 locomotive - very shortly afterwards in December, with production models being delivered early in 2005.

 

The first model for the UK, the Class 37, commissioned by the former UK distributor, Hobby Company, was released not that long afterwards.

 

There was plenty of conjecture around that time about how quickly ViTrains were able to get their first designs in production and out into the shops, in such a short time period.

The unsubstantiated rumours, were that they managed to "acquire" the designs and possibly the moulds of new models that were already in development when Lima collapsed.

 

Hornby salvaged what was left or useable from the closed Lima Group factories and transported the moulds to China for assessment and storage.

IIRC, it was said that the Lima factory was a disorganised mess.

 

ViTrains are still going strong today.

https://www-vitrains-it.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=it&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=nui,sc

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Ron Ron Ron
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1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

33C, would you really buy a new Lima 94xx with the cab full of motor, a one piece plastic moulding bodyshell, and a frankly risible chassis, that was near impossible to work up to sacle because the splashers were in the wrong place, or a Crab where the entire body was too narrow, and both with ridiculously high gearing?  Would you even buy a J50, right size and wheel spacing but still with a toylike chassis and a cab blocked by the motor,  Probably not, I'd contend, you'd expect it to at least be the right shape and size, and capable of being worked up into something more detailed and realistic after you've filed off the moulded detail and replaced it with brass, lostwax, or whitemetal retrofit.  How much would you pay for this new low-fi basic loco?  £30-40 for a 6-coupled tank loco might be doable secondhand, but the cost of producing, shipping, storing, marketing, and distributing the new model, not relevant to the 2h market, is going to push the price level to double that.  You can get a full fat current production equivalent for about 25% more if you look out for discounts,  Look at such items in the Hornby Railroad range that have appeared over the last few years; the price of them as new items was at a level consistent with such locos costing about £70-90 to produce nowadays.

 

New locos to 'basic' standards at the sort of price you are touting as affordable would be so basic as to be barely acceptable as toys, at which point you start being in competition with cheapo Chinese battery sets.  Sorry, prices have gone up since we started exploiting the Chinese for cheap labour 20 odd years ago, and what could be done then can't be done for the same 'affordable' price now!  Be nice if it could, but it can't...

Put it this way. I buy a cheap Airfix kit, usually 3 months of fun until it's finished. I buy a cheap, new Lima loco, same result. I like the faults. Gives me a challenge. Kids parents look at price point first. (especially now!) It's a train. Later, hopefully the child turns into a modeller and first, improves it then replaces it. Now we have Brexit, british firms are going to have to up their game and strike the right balance. Quality,quantity and price. Model trains are no longer the draw they once were and Hornby's steampunk offerings missed the boat by 2 years. Forget China, they are becoming wise to the fact that if they are not paid more, they take their labour elsewhere. We have got to become more self sufficient and start selling more abroad, but it has to compete. Hornby has too much stuff in it's range and should completely rethink what it is trying to be. We can all be "railway buyers" but can everybody be "railway afforders"? If we don't buy, bye bye....Pass the step ladder, I'll get off my high horse!

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50 minutes ago, 33C said:

Put it this way. I buy a cheap Airfix kit, usually 3 months of fun until it's finished. I buy a cheap, new Lima loco, same result. I like the faults. Gives me a challenge. Kids parents look at price point first. (especially now!) It's a train. Later, hopefully the child turns into a modeller and first, improves it then replaces it. Now we have Brexit, british firms are going to have to up their game and strike the right balance. Quality,quantity and price. Model trains are no longer the draw they once were and Hornby's steampunk offerings missed the boat by 2 years. Forget China, they are becoming wise to the fact that if they are not paid more, they take their labour elsewhere. We have got to become more self sufficient and start selling more abroad, but it has to compete. Hornby has too much stuff in it's range and should completely rethink what it is trying to be. We can all be "railway buyers" but can everybody be "railway afforders"? If we don't buy, bye bye....Pass the step ladder, I'll get off my high horse!

Unfortunately @33C, the imminent death of model railways (because they are too expensive), has been predicted since Hornby-Dublo were unaffordable except to the affluent middle-classes but it stubbornly refuses to come true.  The fact that model trains are a niche hobby is not because they are expensive (interest in railways in general is a niche hobby); that model trains are expensive reflects the market they are now in, which is dominated by later middle-aged men with healthy disposable incomes, many of whom are more collectors than modellers.  The high prices are a symptom of the market, not the cause of it.  Hornby is, arguably, only in existence because early this century, it finally realised that this was where the market was heading, not still trying to sell train sets and accessories to children.

 

I have an unjustifiably large collection of model trains because throughout my life I have sought out bargains and bought a lot of secondhand items (at least half of all my stock wasn't new).  If you don't have the budget for what you want, adjust your expectations.

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1 hour ago, 33C said:

Put it this way. I buy a cheap Airfix kit, usually 3 months of fun until it's finished. I buy a cheap, new Lima loco, same result. I like the faults. Gives me a challenge. Kids parents look at price point first. (especially now!) It's a train. Later, hopefully the child turns into a modeller and first, improves it then replaces it. Now we have Brexit, british firms are going to have to up their game and strike the right balance. Quality,quantity and price. Model trains are no longer the draw they once were and Hornby's steampunk offerings missed the boat by 2 years. Forget China, they are becoming wise to the fact that if they are not paid more, they take their labour elsewhere. We have got to become more self sufficient and start selling more abroad, but it has to compete. Hornby has too much stuff in it's range and should completely rethink what it is trying to be. We can all be "railway buyers" but can everybody be "railway afforders"? If we don't buy, bye bye....Pass the step ladder, I'll get off my high horse!

 

Three months!  

 

Crickey, I used to build them on a Sunday afternoon after buying them on the Saturday. Started after Sunday lunch. They had been finished and painted before bath time. Then I applied to decals the next day. 

 

Next week did another one. Then switched to wagon kits which was the same, until I slowed down with those as I had enough and started saving to buy more expensive things so the frequency of purchases went down.

 

 

:D

 

 

Jason

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12 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

Unfortunately @33C, the imminent death of model railways (because they are too expensive), has been predicted since Hornby-Dublo were unaffordable except to the affluent middle-classes but it stubbornly refuses to come true.  The fact that model trains are a niche hobby is not because they are expensive (interest in railways in general is a niche hobby); that model trains are expensive reflects the market they are now in, which is dominated by later middle-aged men with healthy disposable incomes, many of whom are more collectors than modellers.  The high prices are a symptom of the market, not the cause of it.  Hornby is, arguably, only in existence because early this century, it finally realised that this was where the market was heading, not still trying to sell train sets and accessories to children.

 

I have an unjustifiably large collection of model trains because throughout my life I have sought out bargains and bought a lot of secondhand items (at least half of all my stock wasn't new).  If you don't have the budget for what you want, adjust your expectations.

You need a lot of middle aged men with disposable incomes to keep afloat and as they disappear, who replaces them? Hornby have many strings to their bow because the wider they cast the net, the longer they will survive. Young(er) blood has/must be encouraged to take up the hobby or for that matter, any hobby, and for that they will need disposable income. As you say, adjust your expectations but also "future proof". I too have had so many loco's etc but have sold so many and now prefer to make my own out of any old sh*te so, I've passed the middle aged man with disposable income and therefore am not Hornby's demographic, so they need a customer to replace me! :D Someone HAS to buy new for it to become second hand. :locomotive:

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34 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

Unfortunately @33C, the imminent death of model railways (because they are too expensive), has been predicted since Hornby-Dublo were unaffordable except to the affluent middle-classes but it stubbornly refuses to come true.  The fact that model trains are a niche hobby is not because they are expensive (interest in railways in general is a niche hobby); that model trains are expensive reflects the market they are now in, which is dominated by later middle-aged men with healthy disposable incomes, many of whom are more collectors than modellers.  The high prices are a symptom of the market, not the cause of it.  Hornby is, arguably, only in existence because early this century, it finally realised that this was where the market was heading, not still trying to sell train sets and accessories to children.

 

I have an unjustifiably large collection of model trains because throughout my life I have sought out bargains and bought a lot of secondhand items (at least half of all my stock wasn't new).  If you don't have the budget for what you want, adjust 

 

Edited by 33C
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35 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Three months!  

 

Crickey, I used to build them on a Sunday afternoon after buying them on the Saturday. Started after Sunday lunch. They had been finished and painted before bath time. Then I applied to decals the next day. 

 

Next week did another one. Then switched to wagon kits which was the same, until I slowed down with those as I had enough and started saving to buy more expensive things so the frequency of purchases went down.

 

 

:D

 

 

Jason

Airfix are my "go to" when I want to tinker with something other than trains on work days. That's why they take so long! 5 mins here, 20 mins there and you've never got the right reference book or paint........:D

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The “fanciness”, and hence cost, of model (as opposed to toy) trains has gone up, and down, over time with disposable income available to the men who like to own them.

 

Within a few years of model railways becoming a distinct hobby, so from c1900 to WW1, things got distinctly fancy, with very good models becoming available. That largely stopped with WW1, and took a decade or more to really get into its stride again, with Gauges 2 and 1 never really resurfacing, through really tough economic times, before being stopped again by WW2.

 

After WW2, it again took time for things to get going, r-t-r Gauge 0 struggled and then fizzled out before 1960 (The G0G was founded to try and save the scale as it’s natural feed from r-t-r expired), and it wasn’t really until the boys of the 1950s had grown-up and reached disposable income age that “fancy” r-t-r re-emerged. It has since got very fancy indeed, with a deluge of 00, and the reemergence of 0.

 

But, even in the lean times, when very few people could afford fancy r-t-r, the hobby kept going on the basis of up-cycling things sold primarily as toys, kit-building, and scratch-building.

 

So, my forecast is that, if we have lean times to come, and as the number of adults who have a strong enough affinity to railways to want to fill there homes with models of them declines, fancy r-t-r will retrench, there will be fewer new products than during the recent bonanza, but I would confidently expect some people people to catch the railway modelling bug, and still to be hunched over workbenches, building things from old cereal packets and coffee stirrers if they can’t afford the fancy stuff.

 

I honestly don’t think it needs a buoyant toy train market to sustain railway modelling, either in terms of products or recruits - the latter will come from things like exposure to heritage railways and exposure to the current railway scene, which will always excite a few. Not as many as now, but enough to sustain the hobby.

 

Back to Lima.

 

I barely noticed, because I was heavily into narrow gauge at the time, and then had a US H0 period*, and I have no recollection of any of my hobby pals caring all that much either, because if you wanted a Lima product to improve the place was still awash with them.
 

*As others have said, US H0 was very good value at the time, partly as a result of favourable exchange rates, and worked beautifully, whereas none of the U.K. market diesel outline models were much cop when it came to smooth, controllable running, with Lima being very iffy on that front.

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
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57 minutes ago, 33C said:

Airfix are my "go to" when I want to tinker with something other than trains on work days. That's why they take so long! 5 mins here, 20 mins there and you've never got the right reference book or paint........:D

 

I think my record from start to finish is something like over 35 years.  :prankster:

 

That's Ratio MR Suburban coaches that I started and then changed interests. Found them a few months ago. Need finishing.

 

Also proper wheels, but I can't get any....

 

 

I've also been picking up the cheap Airfix kits. Not done anything with them yet. But many of those Vintage Classics weren't always available when I was growing up so it'll be the first time I've built them.

 

 

Jason

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