Hornby 2023, no not what you think...

[JSpencer]

Hornby are going for odd prototypes in the Steam range which is very good. I have high hopes to see a Licky Banker!

 

Granted they are loosing the little ground that was left to them in the D & E range, but the area that seriously looks obsolete now are their wagons.

This years program spitting out mostly tooling from Triang-Hornby days. And it shows. Rapido just took the VIX.

 

Coach stock still remains strong though.

[BR Blue]

12 hours ago, owentherail said:

I wish someone would make a class 50 then I would have no Hornby mainline locos 

With the 31 now announced, I strongly suspect someone is going to announce a 50 in 2022 and I expect it be from one of the newer manufacturers.

 

[phil gollin]

.

 

There is this ridiculous idea that there is "very little left" to do in "D & E" !   This totally ignores the fact that the majority of passenger journeys since the 50's, at least, have been taken in EMU's and DMU's.  The southern EMU's, in particular, have moved many, many more than the rest of the network.

 

Whilst I am heavily biased towards the Southern, I recognise that other regions produced some interesting looking  "early" EMU's, and a few interesting early DMU's  -  these worked hard and moved many people.

 

.

[Pete the Elaner]

38 minutes ago, phil gollin said:

.

 

There is this ridiculous idea that there is "very little left" to do in "D & E" !   This totally ignores the fact that the majority of passenger journeys since the 50's, at least, have been taken in EMU's and DMU's.  The southern EMU's, in particular, have moved many, many more than the rest of the network.

 

Whilst I am heavily biased towards the Southern, I recognise that other regions produced some interesting looking  "early" EMU's, and a few interesting early DMU's  -  these worked hard and moved many people.

 

.

 

There have been a few DC EMUs though. AC units have been far less well represented.

APT & Pendos may have been made, but wherever these ran, suburban units ran with them. 350s run with Pendo's, which is fine, but there are so many other EMUs which have been ignored.

The PEP series, 313, 314 & 315 had a wide area of operation: GE, Moorgate, WCML & Glasgow. There were differences between the classes, but I am sure these could easily be represented. For DC modellers, the Merseyside 507 & 508s were similar & some of these even made it south.

Mk3 derived EMUs were (& still are) very widespread & have many similarities which should allow some tooling to be used across many classes.

It is impossible to model the GE from c1960 reasonably because at least 2/3 of the trains were EMUs.

As far as Hornby are concerned, pantographs are a major issue. Theirs have gone from robust & ugly on their 86 & 90 to the pretty but fragile 'poseable' pan of the 87 to an equally fragile one on the APT which doesn't even raise manually.

[Dunsignalling]

On 27/02/2022 at 08:08, Pmorgancym said:

Just looking at the raft of announcements from the smaller manufacturers, let alone Dapol and Bachmann.

Seems to be a considerable effort by people to park their tanks on Hornby's lawn, just need someone to announce a new 50 and There seems little left D&E wise for Hornby to release.

Bachmann "lost" a number of items from their established range through being slow (or reluctant) to commit to retooling them to modern standards. The Lord Nelson, Manor and GW mogul were lost altogether, and the B1 and BR4 4-6-0 were duplicated (by Hornby). Several diesels have been targeted too, and there are more models (steam and diesel) that look vulnerable.

 

Hornby now find themselves in a very similar position and further claims of "it's always (?) been in our range" followed by a rushed, half-baked spoiler will only attract the contempt they deserve. I have a little mental list of what I think will be targeted and I'll be fascinated to see if I'm proved right on any of them.

 

The RTR marketplace (OO in particular, though not exclusively) is very much in a state of transition at present. The direction of travel is diversity of supply, and Hornby badly needs to work out where it wants to be in the mix and how to get there. One thing seems certain, it's already too late for them to think about recovering the status quo ante.  

 

John

Edited February 28, 2022 by Dunsignalling

[Michael Hodgson]

16 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Hornby like big steam engines so presumably they sell well even when a high percentage of their customers had never previously heard of the real ones.

 

British Steam doesn't com much bigger than the LNER U1....

[Pmorgancym]

1 hour ago, Dunsignalling said:

Bachmann "lost" a number of items from their established range through being slow (or reluctant) to commit to retooling them to modern standards. The Lord Nelson, Manor and GW mogul were lost altogether, and the B1 and BR4 4-6-0 were duplicated (by Hornby). Several diesels have been targeted too, and there are more models (steam and diesel) that look vulnerable.

 

Hornby now find themselves in a very similar position and further claims of "it's always (?) been in our range" followed by a rushed, half-baked spoiler will only attract the contempt they deserve. I have a little mental list of what I think will be targeted and I'll be fascinated to see if I'm proved right on any of them.

 

The RTR marketplace (OO in particular, though not exclusively) is very much in a state of transition at present. The direction of travel is diversity of supply, and Hornby badly needs to work out where it wants to be in the mix and how to get there. One thing seems certain, it's already too late for them to think about recovering the status quo ante.  

 

John

Have they been scuppered, by the fact that people seem to be announcing models that a well beyond vapourware.  Accucrascale's 31s look pretty much ready just need painted samples.

[Dunsignalling]

23 minutes ago, Pmorgancym said:

Have they been scuppered, by the fact that people seem to be announcing models that a well beyond vapourware.  Accucrascale's 31s look pretty much ready just need painted samples.

Quite possibly, but reactive duplication is not a good road to be on even if you really have got the equivalent model under way. 

 

Fair enough if it's almost ready, but hurrying-up development to get it out ahead of a competitor has been demonstrated to risk the product hitting the shops when it's not completed to the standard Hornby or their customers desire.

 

Do that too often, and a reputation for models that aren't quite "up to snuff" is easier gained than lost.

 

John

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, Pmorgancym said:

Have they been scuppered, by the fact that people seem to be announcing models that a well beyond vapourware.  Accucrascale's 31s look pretty much ready just need painted samples.

I think this is an area where they have got themselves ever deeper into problems,  By sticking to their ancient idea of a 'big bang' annual announcement they get a lot of attention for a relatively brief while then interest wanes as someone else announces a single new model.  The opposite of course is getting a succession of announcements mixed into a morass of others - as we saw last week.  But the big bang seems to bring with another problem because there is then a self-inflicted retailer ordering frenzy which must overload the admin and seems to have resulted in overselling (why else would they have to ration retailers by reducing what they had ordered or introduce a tier system?).   And of course, increasingly, albeit mostly for reasons beyond their control, they keep on missing promised delivery dates.

 

Bachmann were in what was in some respects a similar situation - not with the overselling problem - but with increasingly harsh criticism of the ever lengthening gaps between announcement and delivery; They have taken that to heart and addressed the problem and gradually they will wholly transfer to a new system where you can receive a model within days of them announcing it.  Plus they keep up a stream of fresh interest arising from announcements spaced out across the year.  And the admin load of dealing with orders must be a lot simpler if, for example, you only have to deal with taking orders for half a dozen livery variants of one new main model plus the rest of the range is there to order as it is available.

 

The others basically announce when they have something tangible to show but they are of course offering much smaller  ranges than either Hornby or Bachmann - but their software or whatever seems to work efficiently and they don't appear to oversell.  

 

There's a very simple management philosophy involved here.  If you conduct your business or work processes in a way which has to deal with a large peak, or even a series of peaks, one of your most critical management targets has to be to somehow tackle that peaking in order to manage things more continuously and thus more efficiently rather than having the peaks.  In some processes you can't completely avoid peaks but  that should not dissuade you from managing them down and making them easier to handle, and you can often save money when you do so.    I had over a decade of managing some unavoidably peaky work processes defined by the calendar so that could not be altered.  But the way we did the work to meet those repeating deadlines could be changed.  And I changed it - by throwing out some of the traditional ways of doing things and bringing new ideas and making more effective use of something else we weren't really exploiting.  Result staff less harassed with unwelcome peaks of work, more effective and rapid response to our internal customers, better service to those to whom we supplied information with less work for them to do, and overall savings in cost,

 

So Hornby could, I think, partially solve some of their problems by a very simple change - in just the same sort of way that Bachmann tackled their own problem.

[Pmorgancym]

10 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

I think this is an area where they have got themselves ever deeper into problems,  By sticking to their ancient idea of a 'big bang' annual announcement they get a lot of attention for a relatively brief while then interest wanes as someone else announces a single new model.  The opposite of course is getting a succession of announcements mixed into a morass of others - as we saw last week.  But the big bang seems to bring with another problem because there is then a self-inflicted retailer ordering frenzy which must overload the admin and seems to have resulted in overselling (why else would they have to ration retailers by reducing what they had ordered or introduce a tier system?).   And of course, increasingly, albeit mostly for reasons beyond their control, they keep on missing promised delivery dates.

 

Bachmann were in what was in some respects a similar situation - not with the overselling problem - but with increasingly harsh criticism of the ever lengthening gaps between announcement and delivery; They have taken that to heart and addressed the problem and gradually they will wholly transfer to a new system where you can receive a model within days of them announcing it.  Plus they keep up a stream of fresh interest arising from announcements spaced out across the year.  And the admin load of dealing with orders must be a lot simpler if, for example, you only have to deal with taking orders for half a dozen livery variants of one new main model plus the rest of the range is there to order as it is available.

 

The others basically announce when they have something tangible to show but they are of course offering much smaller  ranges than either Hornby or Bachmann - but their software or whatever seems to work efficiently and they don't appear to oversell.  

 

There's a very simple management philosophy involved here.  If you conduct your business or work processes in a way which has to deal with a large peak, or even a series of peaks, one of your most critical management targets has to be to somehow tackle that peaking in order to manage things more continuously and thus more efficiently rather than having the peaks.  In some processes you can't completely avoid peaks but  that should not dissuade you from managing them down and making them easier to handle, and you can often save money when you do so.    I had over a decade of managing some unavoidably peaky work processes defined by the calendar so that could not be altered.  But the way we did the work to meet those repeating deadlines could be changed.  And I changed it - by throwing out some of the traditional ways of doing things and bringing new ideas and making more effective use of something else we weren't really exploiting.  Result staff less harassed with unwelcome peaks of work, more effective and rapid response to our internal customers, better service to those to whom we supplied information with less work for them to do, and overall savings in cost,

 

So Hornby could, I think, partially solve some of their problems by a very simple change - in just the same sort of way that Bachmann tackled their own problem.

Being tied to having a traditional catalogue, pretty much forces them down this path aswell.  Perhaps they could make more use of their Key Publishing license with 'exclusive' release details and switch the catalogue to a retrospective annual, that teases the year ahead.

[Michael Hodgson]

4 hours ago, Pmorgancym said:

Have they been scuppered, by the fact that people seem to be announcing models that a well beyond vapourware.

 

... like Hattons did with thweir GPC crane.

[H2O]

It's not the big that eat up the small, its the quick that beat the slow. From what I understand Hornby are saddled with debt which means they have to be frugal on the investment side and maximise profit from sales.  This allows more agile competitors to move in as Hornby offerings seem increasingly less attractive.

 

As others have said it is curtains for Hornby's 'full fat' 31 unless the price halves 

[shunny]

Hornby are in a unique position where its brand awareness and availability support it, for every person on here delighted with say the new accurrascale 31 and getting the version with correct body and finish for their choose modelling era. There are many more who walk into a shop or go online and look for Hornby models and buy what they like the look of, many don't know if the 31 has the correct body, roof grills, boiler ports etc but like the look of the model and know Hornby brand and will buy it.

[Dunsignalling]

1 hour ago, shunny said:

Hornby are in a unique position where its brand awareness and availability support it, for every person on here delighted with say the new accurrascale 31 and getting the version with correct body and finish for their choose modelling era. There are many more who walk into a shop or go online and look for Hornby models and buy what they like the look of, many don't know if the 31 has the correct body, roof grills, boiler ports etc but like the look of the model and know Hornby brand and will buy it.

Hornby as the automatic go-to is becoming less and less true as the RTR market moves ever further away from the train set and into highly detailed (and much more expensive) scale models.

 

It really is a fallacy, nowadays, that beginners know nothing about any other brand than Hornby. As soon as they start looking, they will see much more. This is not a hobby into which people get on a whim and the vast majority will do some research before buying. Folk have become accustomed to checking out the market for everything they buy and most will inevitably look for outlets offering lower prices. OK a few might go to Hornby's own website and look no further, but most will approach buying model trains in exactly the same way as everything else in their lives.

 

You can't go into a model shop (most won't have one within an hour's drive anyway) open a magazine, or go to an online retail site without becoming aware that there's much more available. Also, of course, anybody searching for Thomas-The-Tank-Engine today, will immediately discover a brand called Bachmann...

 

John 

Edited March 1, 2022 by Dunsignalling

[CUCKOO LINE]

And if you search the Web for model shops and look at their site you will now find the others, not only Bachmann, Heljan and Dapol but much more widely Rapido and Accurascale. If Hornby keep messing their stockists around it shouldn,t be a surprise if they start promoting the other brands a bit more prominently.

[Dunsignalling]

40 minutes ago, CUCKOO LINE said:

And if you search the Web for model shops and look at their site you will now find the others, not only Bachmann, Heljan and Dapol but much more widely Rapido and Accurascale. If Hornby keep messing their stockists around it shouldn,t be a surprise if they start promoting the other brands a bit more prominently.

Correct, and, IMHO the Tier System represents Hornby shooting itself in the foot with a large calibre weapon. If you are a Tier 3 retailer, why won't you want to treat Hornby as a Tier 3 brand?

 

The positions of a couple of our biggest on-line retailers are telling. One now has no connection at all with Hornby, and another (one which has dug Hornby out of the mire in the past) has been pushed to the back of the queue for supplies. They will naturally promote what they have to sell rather than that which they don't.

 

John 

Edited March 1, 2022 by Dunsignalling

[The Stationmaster]

15 hours ago, H2O said:

It's not the big that eat up the small, its the quick that beat the slow. From what I understand Hornby are saddled with debt which means they have to be frugal on the investment side and maximise profit from sales.  This allows more agile competitors to move in as Hornby offerings seem increasingly less attractive.

 

As others have said it is curtains for Hornby's 'full fat' 31 unless the price halves 

Actually Hornby - albeit using more recent loan facilities - have been investing large sums in new tooling and the amount of true debt that they are carrying is not massive (albeit far too much in my view and they are paying for the facility to borrow that money even if they don't actually get round to borrowing it).  So currently I don't see them as having an investment problem because they fully recognise the need to invest in new tooling.

 

The real question is, or ought to be, what they invest in and how it contributes to the bottom line and how quickly it makes that contribution.  And that will always come back to marketing - understanding the market,  where I think their railway side is still a lot weaker than it should be particularly in the face of ever increasing competition for our money.  Secondly - as outlined above - I believe they have real problems in the way they bring their model railway products both to the attention of the market and in terms of delivery of those products to end customers by any of their sales routes.  If they can't get those things right for today's market they'll always have more tears than tiers.

[Dunsignalling]

One worrying (for Hornby) trend may be that newer, leaner entrants seem to be demonstrating an ability to launch duplicating (or comparable) locomotive models to existing/projected Hornby ones at prices around 20% lower.

 

It is possible, of course, that Hornby has decided to match Bachmann pricing levels to aid the process of rebuilding its finances and they might be able to dial them back a bit if necessary.

 

If not, is the evolving new OO r-t-r environment perhaps beginning to expose Hornby's structure as "too corporate to compete"?

 

John

Edited March 1, 2022 by Dunsignalling

[scottrains29]

I thought it would feel strange not having Hornby present at the large Model Rail Scotland exhibition last weekend, but in reality I hardly noticed they weren't there this year. I was far more excited by the competitors products, esp Accurascale, Bachmann, Heljan and Cavalex.

 

The Hornby 2022 range was rather unexciting with very little for those who model the popular late 90s/00s period. I was surprised not to see a single EWS (or even Transrail, Mainline, Loadhaul) loco in their entire 2022 range. The wagon range was very poor too, just loads of expensive MGRs and MHAs. Who is actually going to buy these with the far superior (and possibly cheaper) Accurascale and Cavalex ones arriving soon?

 

I really hope someone else produces an HST class 43. The Hornby one is ridiculously expensive. Their latest model (43013) now has even less features than before (no opening cab doors), dodgy front light fittings and a shoddy paint job, especially around the cab.  Until the demise of Lima we've always had a choice of HST. If Hornby think they can easily charge these inflated prices for their (now dated) HST then there is clearly room for another manufacturer to procuce one.

 

Hornby has really got to up their game for 2023. Instead of removing features (working roof fans, opening doors etc) and producing models with rubbish cab interiors (67, 87 etc) they've got to start making significant improvements, especially if they want to charge such high prices for their models. The competitors are picking off the Hornby range one by one, producing vastly superior models at often lower prices than the current Hornby offering.

[woodenhead]

In terms of Hornby missing Model Rail Scotland,  apart from the retailers there was very little that would represent the types of models they produce - certainly would not expect many Railroad items on exhibitors rails, then there are the scale modellers N, 009, P4 and O who would have little(P4) or no use for Hornby products.

[The Stationmaster]

On 01/03/2022 at 11:02, Dunsignalling said:

One worrying (for Hornby) trend may be that newer, leaner entrants seem to be demonstrating an ability to launch duplicating (or comparable) locomotive models to existing/projected Hornby ones at prices around 20% lower.

 

It is possible, of course, that Hornby has decided to match Bachmann pricing levels to aid the process of rebuilding its finances and they might be able to dial them back a bit if necessary.

 

If not, is the evolving new OO r-t-r environment perhaps beginning to expose Hornby's structure as "too corporate to compete"?

 

John

The thing we need to bear in mind when comparing Hornby with all the others (including the likes of Bachmann, Dapol and Heljan's British arm) is that they are carrying a lot more overhead and in many cases that overhead is a lot further from the end customers.  In fact the only time they really got near their end customers was at shows but even then the real top end of the company is not there unlike the situation with almost all the smaller companies so it is possible that the ultimate decision makers don't have direct contact with that market.  And higher overhead means each model sold has got to add more to their income, despite the fact that they have done a lot to trim cost especially at director level. 

 

Obviously all sorts of media allow them closer customer contact than was once the case but again does that give them an understanding of what their various markets want (one of their problems is the fact that they have to operate in a number of different markets - not a bad thing per se but it maybe adds to their 'thinking load').  The other thing that seems to partly be a consequence of their structure, and other factors, is that they simply cannot move fast enough in what is an increasingly diverse and fast moving model railway market - Titgate being a very real, and embarrassing, example of that.

[CUCKOO LINE]

22 hours ago, scottrains29 said:

I thought it would feel strange not having Hornby present at the large Model Rail Scotland exhibition last weekend, but in reality I hardly noticed they weren't there this year. I was far more excited by the competitors products, esp Accurascale, Bachmann, Heljan and Cavalex.

 

The Hornby 2022 range was rather unexciting with very little for those who model the popular late 90s/00s period. I was surprised not to see a single EWS (or even Transrail, Mainline, Loadhaul) loco in their entire 2022 range. The wagon range was very poor too, just loads of expensive MGRs and MHAs. Who is actually going to buy these with the far superior (and possibly cheaper) Accurascale and Cavalex ones arriving soon?

 

I really hope someone else produces an HST class 43. The Hornby one is ridiculously expensive. Their latest model (43013) now has even less features than before (no opening cab doors), dodgy front light fittings and a shoddy paint job, especially around the cab.  Until the demise of Lima we've always had a choice of HST. If Hornby think they can easily charge these inflated prices for their (now dated) HST then there is clearly room for another manufacturer to procuce one.

 

Hornby has really got to up their game for 2023. Instead of removing features (working roof fans, opening doors etc) and producing models with rubbish cab interiors (67, 87 etc) they've got to start making significant improvements, especially if they want to charge such high prices for their models. The competitors are picking off the Hornby range one by one, producing vastly superior models at often lower prices than the current Hornby offering.

If you want to stay in the market you have to keep the public aware, normally through exciting new launches, making the public aware you still exist , maintain quality, keep dealers happy so they promote your goods. Numerous examples of companies in the past fallen either by the wayside or down the ranking by ignoring that. Hoover, Nokia, Blackberry for starters. The top ones seem to manage selling direct and keeping retailers happy also giving the punter a choice.

[rob D2]

I find it all a bit sad. I still love my 60s and they are smoother than anyhting Bachmann has thrown at me, but there never seems to be much urgency to get many liveries out, or even get them right,

 

Did they make a profit during covid ? When like literally everyone who’d ever thought of modelling was ?

[Neil]

Given that Hornby have released singles in the past (Lord of the Isles and Caledonian 123) then I suppose that there's hope for a FR 2-2-2 well tank, arguably the prettiest loco of all time.

[The Stationmaster]

7 minutes ago, rob D2 said:

I find it all a bit sad. I still love my 60s and they are smoother than anyhting Bachmann has thrown at me, but there never seems to be much urgency to get many liveries out, or even get them right,

 

Did they make a profit during covid ? When like literally everyone who’d ever thought of modelling was ?

Yes they did - not a lot but they did make a small profit in 2020 so an excellent turnround for the company.  Whether they be able to repeat that for 2021 is another question although from what i've heard retailers did keep up their improved level of sales so the improved market would still seem to have been there.