Hornby announce TT:120

[andrewshimmin]

41 minutes ago, Pmorgancym said:

Oh well that's on 08 and some wagons off the upcoming birthday list

 

Am wondering if I can persuade the family I should have a garter blue A4 for, I don't know, Shrove Tuesday? Father's Day is a long way off...

The problem with having my birthday and Christmas in the same week - it's a long time to wait for the wishlist to come good!

[Pmorgancym]

I'm seeing some people.suggest the 08nis in production?  Yet nothing on the Hinrby website seems to suggest that

[Moxy]

When Hornby were at the Warley Show, the two locos they had running on their display layout were the A1 & the 08, so the 08's have been ready for production for some time before Warley. 

 

Not that this is any guarantee, but given there were fully finished models of the 08 on their stand, it makes sense the 08's are already in production.  They may not be here in the UK yet, but I hope we should see them sooner rather than later.

[teletougos]

On 23/01/2023 at 12:18, Pacific231G said:

 

Though I wouldn't go so far as to accuse it of being "advertorial" and I do find parts of it interesting, I'm afraid the series just doesn't have the feeling of being genuinely "fly on the wall". I found it hard, for example, to believe that the meeting in S2E1 where Simon is "revealing" to the design team that they're going to be working on TT:120 was really the first they'd heard of it. I may be being unfair but, to my professional eyes, meetings especially just seem a bit staged for the camera and we're definitely not seeing things "warts and all". (though too many "reality" TV shows go the other way and only show the warts!)

 

 

Tend to agree with that. I think with the long manufacturing lead times and inevitable delays, some media stuff like this is needed to keep the thing looking fresh & folk interested. And it's worked. I don't know Mr Kohler from a bar of soap but he comes across well.

 

It's all a bit orchestrated. But aside from going to China, bringing all the molds back to Kent and training up a generation of toolmakers, there's not much choice. 

 

People now know about TT, who wouldn't know what a model railway scale even was. They've made it 'A Thing'. 

 

 

 

 

 

[teletougos]

20 hours ago, Ravenser said:

It looks like one of the factors that killed TT in Western Europe was that neither the gauge nor the scale were in fact agreed or common ground between the manufacturers.

 

This makes Triang's decision to go with 3mm /12mm rather easier to understand. They weren't being wilfully different, they were picking amongst a spread of existing options

 

 

 There was a series of posts on the old RMWeb that went into this.  The commonality between Hal Joyce, Essar or whoever it was, very early on was the 12mm gauge ,  as it was felt an oval of a track this size would fit on a Table Top. So when people  get all finicky about scale in TT  they aren't fully factoring in what it was intended to be originally. It was equally a gauge. 

[Les1952]

1 hour ago, Pmorgancym said:

I'm seeing some people.suggest the 08nis in production?  Yet nothing on the Hinrby website seems to suggest that

 

The Hornby website also has the NER footbridge in the list of "available soon".  I received mine before Christmas.  I would trust the sorting algorithm on Hornby's site almost as much as I trust the search engine on eBay, which is not a lot.....

 

Les

 

[Les1952]

1 hour ago, teletougos said:

 

 

. I don't know Mr Kohler from a bar of soap but he comes across well.

 

 

 

You have a bar of soap that wears glasses?  Impressive...

 

Les

[Ravenser]

1 hour ago, Moxy said:

When Hornby were at the Warley Show, the two locos they had running on their display layout were the A1 & the 08, so the 08's have been ready for production for some time before Warley. 

 

Not that this is any guarantee, but given there were fully finished models of the 08 on their stand, it makes sense the 08's are already in production.  They may not be here in the UK yet, but I hope we should see them sooner rather than later.

 

It's always easy to be over dramatic, but in some ways the 08 and the wagons are critical items for

the development of the scale.

 

I saw the below comment on the last F\arish announcements thread and it's revealing:

Quote

 I model N because I want longer more prototypical trains. N isn't for shunting or constant loco swapping. [my emphasis] The same could be said for O and space being used as an argument against it as 20+ wagon freights is far too large. 

 

The chronic housing shortage has now reached a point where for many people a branch line terminus or a shunting plank isn't possible in 4mm without severe compromises.

 

The appearance of "micros" and Boxfiles shows how severe the problem has become

 

I am well aware of the issues: I live in a 2 bedroom flat , and there are serious restrictions on what I can do in 4mm. I'm single, though - many folk are more restricted than me

 

But one way or another N does not seem to be catering for those  kind of layouts . Whether it is the standard n gauge coupler , which is said not to be very suitable for shunting, whether it's mechanical concerns/limitations lingering from the old days of Poole-era Farish twenty years ago (when N gauge mechanisms seem to have been quite rubbish), or the small size of steam era wagons in N, or limited availability of RTR N steam in recent times , or whatever ... That kind of layout doesn't seem to happen much in N. N is not challenging OO in this area.

 

Meanwhile space is harder to find than it was in the 1950s, and 15" radius curves are no longer tolerable in OO. The sort of small layouts Cyril Freezer was designing in the 1950s and 60s for those with restricted space are off the table. The classic BLT formula for a small layout has become a struggle in 4mm for many

 

So , if the 08 runs well, and the coupling works well, and the wagons are ok - TT:120 could give many people the chance to create an effective "small layout" in a modest space without crippling compromises. Something which isn't really possible in OO or N for a lot of people at present.

 

The 08 will be the first small loco we see in TT:120. If a sweetly-running Inglenook is possible as "proof of concept" using that , the first wagons , and the standard coupling , then it is "game on" for shunting planks and BLTs in TT:120

 

(For the sake of clarity, I'm not specifically suggesting Inglenooks in TT. That would simply be a "proof of concept" that shunting puzzle layouts will work nicely in the new scale. Carl Arendt defined a "micro" as 4 square feet or less - say 4' x 1' or 6' x 8". Two boxfiles are 29" x 9". I'm wondering what can be done in TT:120 in such spaces. People don't use N gauge in them. For whatever reason.)

[Porfuera]

4 hours ago, Pmorgancym said:

Oh well that's on 08 and some wagons off the upcoming birthday list

 

3 hours ago, Pmorgancym said:

I'm seeing some people.suggest the 08nis in production?  Yet nothing on the Hinrby website seems to suggest that

 

The latest TT Talk Q&A has a lot of answers - start at 43 minutes where they hold up samples of the plank wagon, Toad E  and the Fisons(?) early green tank wagon and they says they're past the decoration stage and in production now and should be here 'very shortly'. Possibly their definition of 'very shortly' is a bit longer than mine because I think it will be March/April (see below).

 

They're expecting decoration samples of the HST 'in two weeks time' (from the date of the video, which was a week ago I think).

 

The Class 66 has just started tooling after some delays because they had missed some details of European examples.

 

They then hold up various Class 08s and Carl says the Class 08 is already in production and will be received 'very shortly' - then SK says 'I think that's March... March/April'. Presumably the plank wagon(s?), Toad E and the early tank wagon(s?) will arrive at the same time.

 

Then they talk a little about various coaches (Mark 1s, lit Pullmans, which are in boxes although these might just be pre-production examples of the coaches plus the packaging) and a boxed Flying Scotsman.

 

As I mentioned previously, I believe the latest shipment (arriving end Jan) only contains the Scotsman and Easterner sets that should have arrived before Christmas but were delayed while they sorted out the wheels and so are only arriving now. I think those are already pre-sold (because I think the website went from 'order now' to 'pre-order' at some point earlier this month) and the next shipment of analogue sets will presumably arrive with the Class 08s and the wagons in March/April (but that's a guess).

 

In fact I've just checked and The Scotman sets are now marked as 'unavailable' and you can only create a stock alert for them so possibly the following shipment has also pre-sold all its allocation of Scotsman sets. The Easterner sets are still available for pre-order.

 

I believe that earlier in the video SK said that the digital sets are due at the end of May. I'm a bit miffed (with myself!) because I cancelled my analogue Easterner and re-ordered as a digital set without realising how far away they are - I'd already waited three(?) months for the analogue Easterner and it looks like I'll have to wait another four months before the digital sets arrive. I think the sound chips will be available before the digital sets arrive so it would have been quicker to stick with my analogue version and chip it myself.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Porfuera

[Porfuera]

3 hours ago, Moxy said:

When Hornby were at the Warley Show, the two locos they had running on their display layout were the A1 & the 08, so the 08's have been ready for production for some time before Warley. 

 

Not that this is any guarantee, but given there were fully finished models of the 08 on their stand, it makes sense the 08's are already in production.  They may not be here in the UK yet, but I hope we should see them sooner rather than later.

 

I think these were all pre-production samples / livery samples because at the time many people were complaining about the ladders so they were unlikely to be actual production-ready examples.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Porfuera

[britishcolumbian]

2 hours ago, teletougos said:

So when people  get all finicky about scale in TT  they aren't fully factoring in what it was intended to be originally.

Well the notion of using inch to ten feet scale was part of the rationale behind the 12 mm gauge to begin with - easy calculations for the scratchbuilder!

[Phil Parker]

21 minutes ago, Ravenser said:

The appearance of "micros" and Boxfiles shows how severe the problem has become

 

Does it? Or are these layout just a lot more fashionable, and also appearing in the press a lot more.

 

If you want to keep your followers on social media happy, then regular new layouts works better than plugging away at a single large project*. 20 posts on ballasting won't enthuse anyone, but for a large layout with two updates a week, that's probably what you are faced with. Build a series of micros, where there will be quick progress, and the material to post is easier to generate, and a lot more exciting. The result is a higher profile of the micro layout, and then the extrapolation that it's all down to smaller houses. If that were the case, I'd have expected N gauge to be more popular than OO, even allowing for the ugly coupling, because most people want to watch the trains go by.

 

*I appreicate that my constant building and exhibiting micro layouts has probably contributed to this in a small way.

[Nile]

Perhaps we need another pole, about the size of layouts people build. Or the space available for them?

[Ravenser]

34 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

 

Does it? Or are these layout just a lot more fashionable, and also appearing in the press a lot more.

 

If you want to keep your followers on social media happy, then regular new layouts works better than plugging away at a single large project*. 20 posts on ballasting won't enthuse anyone, but for a large layout with two updates a week, that's probably what you are faced with. Build a series of micros, where there will be quick progress, and the material to post is easier to generate, and a lot more exciting. The result is a higher profile of the micro layout, and then the extrapolation that it's all down to smaller houses. If that were the case, I'd have expected N gauge to be more popular than OO, even allowing for the ugly coupling, because most people want to watch the trains go by.

 

*I appreicate that my constant building and exhibiting micro layouts has probably contributed to this in a small way.

 

 

The magazines had become very focused on the exhibition scene where layouts were concerned. The fact that Hornby Magazine could run an "innovative" feature called "Layouts that Never Leave Home" points to how far the selection of layouts appearing in the magazines was aligned to layouts appearing at shows. I know that Blacklade would not have appeared in a magazine if it hadn't gone to a particular show

 

Once the pandemic struck, all that switched quite rapidly. Suddenly there were no shows, and after a few months the mags started featuring lockdown projects , which are invariably quite modest- sized home layouts

 

To a degree , that's fashion in publishing, but the fashion is more about switching coverage from "the circuit" to what's happening at home, and we are seeing a different style of layout because that's what is possible at home and exhibition layouts have been more or less off the table for over 2 years...

 

Watching the trains go by may be very popular amongst the exhibition spectators, but I'm not so sure it's what people want when they are building something at home . The branch line became a cliche for a reason

 

This is someone's lockdown project - a small urban terminus in N , very nicely done, seen at Shenfield in September. I think the whole thing including FY is no more than 7' long, and it may be only slightly larger than Carl Arendt's canonical 4 square feet

I

 

It isn't about "shunting or constant loco swapping" - which would certainly cover a Minories-style operation, but I'm thinking about the potential for steam age subjects, which are, in this kind of space and to this kind of standard in TT:120

 

P.S. You may actually be responsible for the whole Boxfile concept in Britain. Certainly I'd never heard of the idea until you floated it as a DOGA competition in 2003 (  😲) , and I was initially very sceptical that it could be done. Your Melbridge Box Company might be the first practical British Boxfile

[britishcolumbian]

For my part I like the portable/modular approach even for home use, since I have a variety of interests. I can build for whatever space I have available to set up in, and knowing that it can be taken down again like at a show, I can have a variety of layouts, be it a scene located in Hungary, or BC, or California, or Somerset... in this sense my only restriction is my storage space. Eventually I'll settle down in one place "for the rest of my years", where I can build with permanence in mind. But until then, and perhaps even after, the modular approach suits - maybe one day I'll be bitten by a bug to build a Korean scene, too.

[Phil Parker]

2 hours ago, Ravenser said:

The magazines had become very focused on the exhibition scene where layouts were concerned. The fact that Hornby Magazine could run an "innovative" feature called "Layouts that Never Leave Home" points to how far the selection of layouts appearing in the magazines was aligned to layouts appearing at shows. I know that Blacklade would not have appeared in a magazine if it hadn't gone to a particular show

 

Finding layouts at shows is just easier than ones at home. Post-pandemic, I've photographed several that are home based and have more in the pipeline. Calling a feature "Layouts that never leave home" is just an attempt to make the feature appear a bit more special. It's marketing, nothing more. As for Blackade - if it's any good, someone would have tripped over it at another show. Most quality layouts appear in the all the mags eventually.

 

2 hours ago, Ravenser said:

Once the pandemic struck, all that switched quite rapidly. Suddenly there were no shows, and after a few months the mags started featuring lockdown projects , which are invariably quite modest- sized home layouts

 

Nope. Some of the mags just ran out of layout shoots in the bag and had to rely on the owners own photos. There was a lot more modelling carried out, but that still took quite some time to come through.

 

3 hours ago, Ravenser said:

To a degree , that's fashion in publishing, but the fashion is more about switching coverage from "the circuit" to what's happening at home, and we are seeing a different style of layout because that's what is possible at home and exhibition layouts have been more or less off the table for over 2 years...

 

I've been on plenty of exhibition layout shoots last year, and so has every other mag photographer I know. And exhibition layouts didn't vanish during lockdown, they were still in peoples houses and clubrooms. Since most shoots don't happen at shows anyway, it's easier because the model has to be stopped, not popular with the paying public, we normally go to houses or clubrooms anyway. BRM certainly developed a protocol to allow us to do this for most of the period if required.

 

3 hours ago, Ravenser said:

Watching the trains go by may be very popular amongst the exhibition spectators, but I'm not so sure it's what people want when they are building something at home . The branch line became a cliche for a reason

 

That one IMHO is about space, or lack of it. The BLT can be fitted into a modest area, roundy-roundy's less so.

 

3 hours ago, Ravenser said:

This is someone's lockdown project - a small urban terminus in N , very nicely done, seen at Shenfield in September. I think the whole thing including FY is no more than 7' long, and it may be only slightly larger than Carl Arendt's canonical 4 square feet

 

That would be Ryecroft Arena. Which appeared in February's edition of BRM. That WAS an exhibition shoot, I spotted it at DEMU and liked the novel idea. It's an outlyer amoung layout shoots though. 39" by 10" plus fiddle yard according to the article.

[AY Mod]

3 hours ago, Ravenser said:

The fact that Hornby Magazine could run an "innovative" feature called "Layouts that Never Leave Home"

 

It's not a 'fact' as it wasn't Hornby mag, it has been used by Model Rail since long before Hornby mag was born.

 

Yes, I do keep looking at your posts because there are so many errors and opinions portrayed as facts - a serious bugbear of mine.

[meatloaf]

The signal box and quater straight are now in stock. Signal box ordered as its the only one i was missing of the buildings.

[Robin Brasher]

I am pleased the signal box is back in stock. 

 

The livery of the 08 diesel would be an interesting challenge for Hornby to reproduce in TT:120 scale. I am not sure how many people would buy one as it is unique and restricted to one geographical area but so is the Rocket and the Deltic diesel yet they have sold well.

 

I regard the 08 diesel as much more of a Margate Hornby product than the 'Flying Scotsman' or the terrier tank as the 08 model has been in production since 1956.

[Pacific231G]

11 hours ago, britishcolumbian said:

Well the notion of using inch to ten feet scale was part of the rationale behind the 12 mm gauge to begin with - easy calculations for the scratchbuilder!

And an established and widely used engineering scale in the USA, maning that scale rulers for it were easily available. The fact that 12mm gauge was then spot on for standard gauge was a useful bonus (as it was for 3.5mm/ft with 16.5mm gauge)

[britishcolumbian]

6 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

And an established and widely used engineering scale in the USA, maning that scale rulers for it were easily available. The fact that 12mm gauge was then spot on for standard gauge was a useful bonus (as it was for 3.5mm/ft with 16.5mm gauge)

I've been under the impression that the gauge was chosen to fit the scale, not the other way round; after it was determined that 1:120 would fit around the dimensions of the smallest motors available, the track gauge of 12 mm/0.470" just fell into place; could just as well have been 13 mm or 11 mm, had the 1:1 gauge been 1560 mm or 1320 mm.

[Revolution Ben]

23 hours ago, Ravenser said:

But one way or another N does not seem to be catering for those  kind of layouts . Whether it is the standard n gauge coupler , which is said not to be very suitable for shunting, whether it's mechanical concerns/limitations lingering from the old days of Poole-era Farish twenty years ago (when N gauge mechanisms seem to have been quite rubbish), or the small size of steam era wagons in N, or limited availability of RTR N steam in recent times , or whatever ... That kind of layout doesn't seem to happen much in N. N is not challenging OO in this area.

 

Hi there,

 

Apologies for drifting OT, but in answer to the specific points above...

 

You're right that traditionally N has not suited small shunting operations.

 

The Dapol 'Easi-shunts' (a NEM compatible version of the Microtrains buck-eye type design) work well in my experience, and offer shunting possibilities in N.   For modern modellers, where increasingly mainline locomotives are used to shunt, this has been straightforward and we've done plenty of shunting on three N-gauge exhibition layouts I have been involved with or operated (Horseley Fields, Tormouth and Ketton) however I agree that you don't see many 'shunting puzzle' type layouts with smaller locos and stock. 

 

The NGS Hunslet shunter, which began to be released about a year or so ago, has an on-board DCC decoder and capacitor to offer stay-alive capability to all users and under all my tests offered superb slow-running, especially on DCC.

 

I am hoping that, allowing time for building, we may begin to see more 'shunting' orientated N gauge layouts at exhibitions in the coming year.

 

cheers

 

Ben A.

[Revolution Ben]

21 hours ago, Ravenser said:

This is someone's lockdown project - a small urban terminus in N , very nicely done, seen at Shenfield in September. I think the whole thing including FY is no more than 7' long, and it may be only slightly larger than Carl Arendt's canonical 4 square feet

I

 

Hi there,

 

Ryecroft Arena was built by Steve Farmer, and has its own thread here: 

 

Strictly speaking it wasn't a 'lockdown project', just a project, since Steve tends to build smaller layouts and all the ones I have seen have been excellent.

 

cheers

 

Ben A.

[NCB]

On 25/01/2023 at 17:08, Phil Parker said:

 

The 3mm Society already has a range of wheels. I'd be inclinded to the ones aimed at 14.2mm gauge modellers, fitted with shorter axles.

So would I. With the qualification not these thinner wheels might not work well with current TT track standards.

[bradfordbuffer]

20 hours ago, AY Mod said:

 

It's not a 'fact' as it wasn't Hornby mag, it has been used by Model Rail since long before Hornby mag was born.

 

Yes, I do keep looking at your posts because there are so many errors and opinions portrayed as facts - a serious bugbear of mine.

Never let a speculative thought get in the way of a true fact post!!

 

When us Hornby's tt120 08 due??🙊 oh no hear we go again......do you know children...... when the postie has your set or loco and taps on your door that's when it's due!