A much delayed Deltic

[Hroth]

Back in January 2021 Hornby announced a pair of Railroad Deltics with TTS sound, one in Green livery and one in Blue.

 

Easy to produce, you'd have thought.

 

But Hornby have kicked it on and on into the long grass.

 

Some of the expected delivery dates Hornby have announced:

 

• Due July 2021
• Q4 2021,
• Due December 2021                                       
• Due December 2022
• Expected Spring 2023 !!!

 

Hornby have given no reasons for such a farcical delay for a relatively simple Railroad loco. I can surmise that the hold up "might" be due to problems with getting TTS chips, though they've managed to supply some TTS fitted Class 37s recently.  Then there's the price hikes. The way things are going, its approaching the price of the non-DCC Accurascale Deltic, which is NOT impressive.

 

I'd preordered R30048TTS "Ballymoss" in green back in April 2021 when it was supposed to show up in July. Now its not "promised" for another year. Perhaps I ought to drop it and get an Accurascale one...

 

Has anyone else preordered the poor thing?

 

 

 

[GeoffAlan]

I can understand your frustration. No doubt Hornby will cite lack of available chips, Covid and Brexit.

 

However, this has been going on for years and Hornby are by no means alone in over-promising and under-delivering. I'm referencing promises made long before these problems came along and multiple manufacturers. One took 11 yrs from 'grand announcement' to actually in the shops, two announced a loco then dropped it, in one case a couple of years later and the other some years after that.

 

I now treat announcements as a testing of the waters and if sufficient pre-orders materialise, then the published progress dates are a wish list for the actual production process from CAD to box in shop. Treat them as an over optimistic guess by the manufacturer. 

Edited April 12, 2022 by GeoffAlan
grammar

[JSpencer]

The Railroad Deltic, ex Lima tooling dating from the 70s! It is more toy than model for me. It is not to scale length for a start... Bogies are too small.... simply looks wrong. No amount of work on it will ever bring it up to Bachmann's standard let alone Accurascale.

 

So there really is no comparison between it and the Accurascale model. IF you looking for a faithful replica, Accurascale first. If you are not bothered about it's somewhat basic (being polite) appearance then you can either wait or find a Lima one (there must be 1000s out there).

Given the number out there of these ex lima tools, and with far better things to come, I suspect there are not people worried about the delay of this particular item (I could be wrong). 

[E100]

This is IMO redundant. Why Hornby are even bothering with this is beyond me. You will soon be able to get a good condition Bachmann secondhand deltic with sound for about the same price with a better quality decoder once the Accurascale ones come out.

[Wickham Green too]

Hornby are probably wondering why they're still bothering .........

[The Stationmaster]

Why blame (so it seems to me) Hornby for things which are largely out of their control?  Every brand using Chinese manufacturing is suffering delays of various length although in many cases we simply don't know about them because items are not announced ages in advance or in the annual programme approach beloved by Hornby.  I know of models from other brands that have been over 18 months late in making an appearance and we all - I thought - know that there is a shortage of electronic bits; there are lockdowns going on all the time in various parts of China;  getting hold of a container is allegedly difficult; and once you've got your container booked you have to find a ship to load it on.  Maybe before long a further factor might be slightly extend shipping times to save fuel although as most long distance vessels sail at their economical speed anyway that might not be an area where we need to worry.

 

No doubt it will get here sometime unless Hornby cancel it - which wouldn't be at all nice it if you really want it.  But compared to that 'delay' still means that at least you'll get it one day.

[55020]

Hroth, do yourself a favour and grab a second hand Bachmann.  If funds allow, then an Accurascale 55 has to be the one to go for!!

Limby "Deltics" should be consigned to history.

[Mark Saunders]

19 minutes ago, 55020 said:

Hroth, do yourself a favour and grab a second hand Bachmann.  If funds allow, then an Accurascale 55 has to be the one to go for!!

Limby "Deltics" should be consigned to history.

I remember when I thought £5 new at Beatties was overpriced for them

[55020]

8 minutes ago, Mark Saunders said:

I remember when I thought £5 new at Beatties was overpriced for them

 

Yeah, me too.  Beatties, now there's some great memories.

 

I do have a couple of paint-stripped Lima ones in a bag somewhere.  I was going to do the "make them better" modelling thing, but never really made much progress.  It was all we had back then, but the world has moved on.  Hornby have milked the cow, they now need to put it out to pasture.

 

 

Steve

[RedgateModels]

Now you see, as a kid I went to Gee Dees with my holiday money all set for a Hornby Western. Came out with a Lima one and a Deltic

[55020]

11 minutes ago, RedgateModels said:

Now you see, as a kid I went to Gee Dees with my holiday money all set for a Hornby Western. Came out with a Lima one and a Deltic

 

Yup, I've a Lima Western in maroon as well - somewhere!!

 

[andyman7]

So, if I've followed the themes in this thread correctly, people are unhappy because a Hornby loco that they don't like and won't buy is delayed....

[55020]

7 minutes ago, andyman7 said:

So, if I've followed the themes in this thread correctly, people are unhappy because a Hornby loco that they don't like and won't buy is delayed....

 

I'm not unhappy.  In fact I am very happy.  The rest is correct 😉

[adb968008]

I kind of suspect some big delays are coming from all manufacturers, not just Hornby.

 

Hattons coaches just went from 2 deliveries in 3 months, to 3 deliveries in 6 month, and thats just batch one.

KR models Fell was an outside chance of last christmas, but today they just pushed it an indetermate amount of time.

 

China is in a very big lockdown, like we were in 2020, and when it comes to model railways they cannot work from home, nor can their suppliers of parts.

Take Accurascales Deltic.. we saw boxes of unpainted mouldings last September, and they got out of China just days before the lockdown… so 9-10 months for assembly.

How much has been made since March’s lockdown started ? and theres no end in sight to that lockdown.

 

i’m not really expecting too much more to arrive before autumn and not much more to follow. (considering the backlog size is over 30 new toolings across the oo spectrum).

Edited May 12, 2022 by adb968008

[kernowtim]

8 hours ago, 55020 said:

 

Yup, I've a Lima Western in maroon as well - somewhere!!

 

I visited the local bike/model shop, Charlie Cole's in dunstable, many years ago and came out with a blue western and also the warship that was behind it in the cabinet, cost £8 each, to go with the maroon Western I already had, think that was £5 from a toyfair!

Still have them

I recall seeing the first release of the Deltic on the Hornby stand at Warley, still with Wipac lights, and marvelling at the £99 retail price! 

 

Which reminds me that I have a Lima porterbrook Deltic with a Hornby chassis somewhere.. 

[97406]

I remember when taking 2 Lima Deltics and a class 37 and creating a Deltic of the correct length was a thing. I’d argue the Lima noses looked better than the Bachmann droop snoot.

[The Stationmaster]

12 hours ago, RedgateModels said:

Now you see, as a kid I went to Gee Dees with my holiday money all set for a Hornby Western. Came out with a Lima one and a Deltic

I always thought that the Lima 1000 'caught' the look of the real thing far better than Hornby's effort - so no need to guess which way my money went (although I also had a Trix one with a rake of Trix coaches to make it look a bit more in scale with its train.

[MikeParkin65]

6 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

I always thought that the Lima 1000 'caught' the look of the real thing far better than Hornby's effort - so no need to guess which way my money went (although I also had a Trix one with a rake of Trix coaches to make it look a bit more in scale with its train.

Both Hornby and Lima Westerns had their strengths, all outweighed by their weaknesses I think. Lima had better bogies, Hornby was (much) smoother running. Neither really got the 'face; right, Hornby with the one dimensional painted on windscreen surround and moulded on outline of the warning panel, Lima with the huge 'shelf' beneath the windscreen and that moulded on oil lamp :)

[Michael Hodgson]

15 hours ago, Mark Saunders said:

I remember when I thought £5 new at Beatties was overpriced for them

 

Don't tell me you remember white fivers!

[adb968008]

11 hours ago, MikeParkin65 said:

Both Hornby and Lima Westerns had their strengths, all outweighed by their weaknesses I think. Lima had better bogies, Hornby was (much) smoother running. Neither really got the 'face; right, Hornby with the one dimensional painted on windscreen surround and moulded on outline of the warning panel, Lima with the huge 'shelf' beneath the windscreen and that moulded on oil lamp :)

I much preferred the Lima one myself, the bogies looked like a western, and the front steps were part of the body not the bogie.

 

Never understood why they moulded a lamp on it though, and the cab windows sat on a big shelf. Performance, I’ll take a Lima pod over a Hornby pod any day.. at the time D 1016 was one of my favourite models. The Hornby one just didnt do it for it just seemed a bit too blunt brutalish is in areas like moulding lines, their class 25 was much better imo, at least when it was painted rather than coloured plastic.

[andyman7]

11 hours ago, MikeParkin65 said:

Both Hornby and Lima Westerns had their strengths, all outweighed by their weaknesses I think. Lima had better bogies, Hornby was (much) smoother running. Neither really got the 'face; right, Hornby with the one dimensional painted on windscreen surround and moulded on outline of the warning panel, Lima with the huge 'shelf' beneath the windscreen and that moulded on oil lamp :)

 

14 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

I much preferred the Lima one myself, the bogies looked like a western, and the front steps were part of the body not the bogie.

 

Never understood why they moulded a lamp on it though, and the cab windows sat on a big shelf. Performance, I’ll take a Lima pod over a Hornby pod any day.. at the time D 1016 was one of my favourite models. The Hornby one just didnt do it for it just seemed a bit too blunt brutalish is in areas like moulding lines, their class 25 was much better imo, at least when it was painted rather than coloured plastic.

The lamp was deleted from later Lima versions, which were better finished too, for example the yellow front on the blue ones was correctly continued behind the cab windows and under the roof lip.

[adb968008]

1 hour ago, andyman7 said:

 

The lamp was deleted from later Lima versions, which were better finished too, for example the yellow front on the blue ones was correctly continued behind the cab windows and under the roof lip.

“Deleted”…. arrived on a keyboard Post 1986, prior to this it was Back-spaced.

 

Anyways, for the class 52, It was removed in 1992 for Cheltenhams model of D1015 Western Champion, which arguably opened the door for model shops commissioning their own runs of models en-masse based on small runs… 1 ad on the back of Rail is all it took to sell out… within months, everyone was at it.

Edited May 13, 2022 by adb968008

[Bucoops]

2 hours ago, adb968008 said:

“Deleted”…. arrived on a keyboard Post 1986, prior to this it was Back-spaced.

 

Anyways, for the class 52, It was removed in 1992 for Cheltenhams model of D1015 Western Champion, which arguably opened the door for model shops commissioning their own runs of models en-masse based on small runs… 1 ad on the back of Rail is all it took to sell out… within months, everyone was at it.

 

Depends if you had a proper computer of not, IIRC BBC Micros had a Delete key from day 1 so c1981 :)

[griffgriff]

8 hours ago, adb968008 said:

“Deleted”…. arrived on a keyboard Post 1986, prior to this it was Back-spaced.

 

Anyways, for the class 52, It was removed in 1992 for Cheltenhams model of D1015 Western Champion, which arguably opened the door for model shops commissioning their own runs of models en-masse based on small runs… 1 ad on the back of Rail is all it took to sell out… within months, everyone was at it.

So what did Cybermen say, back in the day, when their teddy fell out the pram? ;)

 

Griff

[No Decorum]

On 13/05/2022 at 13:16, Michael Hodgson said:

 

Don't tell me you remember white fivers!

Erm …