Hornby announce TT:120

[rob D2]

12 minutes ago, Porfuera said:

 

I guess it is easy to get a cheap laugh but from watching H:AMW it is interesting to see what an enthusiast SK is.

 

You can debate whether or not some of the scenes are re-created for the cameras (like the one IIRC where he 'announced' TT:120 to a couple of his senior staff members) but his enthusiasm for the job and for the models is difficult to fake in my opinion. And that goes for the other staff members (designers, researchers, the sounds guy, marketing, and so on) as well.

 

I with I'd had half that amount of enthusiasm for my job!

I’d imagine a lot of it, fake jeopardy is required for TV drama. For instance last week , expert modeller Kathy Millatt, seemed surprised when she put a DCC loco without a chip on, er…..a DCC layout and it buzzed “ it’s not happy “.

 

I’m also convinced to colour match a purple steam engine, they don’t just send Montana to hold the model up against it and say “ it’s very close “ ( she said similar , I’m paraphrasing ),

 

TBh, model trains as a TV feature is a bit like watching squash , it’s dull to watch but fun to play 

[MartinRS]

I must admit I was pleased when Peco and Hornby announced TT:120 products, then sat on the fence when other entrants to the market dropped their plans. Having seen some of the sets sell out over the last month, without the promised national newspaper advertising, I decided that I would give TT:120 a try. I recently bought a couple of Peco points and am awaiting delivery of just over £50 worth of Hornby track and the Easterner set. I suspect that many sales have been made to modellers; just the kind of people who will buy more products, as and when they come out. The A4 would not be my preferred loco but the choice is limited (in sets) at the moment. (I intend to model British Railways, transition, Lion on a unicycle and ferret and dartboard periods, just because of the limited amount of rolling stock available now).

 

I'm looking to build a dumbbell shape layout round three sides of a small room. I have decided on a double track main line, with one minimal width baseboard along two walls. I won't have to move my 'office' and the narrow baseboard will enable me to create the appearance of a four track main line.

 

My first job will be to build a test track though and see how the Hornby (and promised Peco) rolling stock run over the respective manufacturers' track, and see how the loco performs on different gradients. I was sat on a small collection of OO until recently, never getting round to building anything because of the disruption it would involve in moving furniture. I'm looking forward to the two projects. It's been about thirty years since I last built a baseboard!

Edited January 31, 2023 by MartinRS
typo

[Porfuera]

8 minutes ago, rob D2 said:

I’d imagine a lot of it, fake jeopardy is required for TV drama. For instance last week , expert modeller Kathy Millatt, seemed surprised when she put a DCC loco without a chip on, er…..a DCC layout and it buzzed “ it’s not happy “.

 

I’m also convinced to colour match a purple steam engine, they don’t just send Montana to hold the model up against it and say “ it’s very close “ ( she said similar , I’m paraphrasing ),

 

TBh, model trains as a TV feature is a bit like watching squash , it’s dull to watch but fun to play 

 

You seem to have missed my point entirely - I was talking about their enthusiasm for the job and for the models.

Edited January 31, 2023 by Porfuera

[bradfordbuffer]

50 minutes ago, MartinRS said:

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Say after me:

Our Simon who art in Margate

Hornby be thy name...

Like or loath the man.....as many do on rm! He stood for 2 days at Warley (and other shows) and talked/listened/preached and marketed the Hornby brand to the great un washed that takes dedication and a lot of earache as public talks a load of tosh some times....Henry Ford only done black cars at first look at all the types and colours you can get now. ....not everyone was perfect....but lots of chose now ...let Hornby breathe a little....too much now now now me me me!

[Ravenser]

40 minutes ago, Revolution Ben said:

 

Hi there,

 

Yes, it is probably an overestimate - the number was given as part of a discussion on pricing and to make the point that the dominant factor on the pricing of any model railway product is the number you expect to make.  If anything a smaller market actually adds to the weight of my remark in that context.

 

cheers

 

Ben A.

 

 

It's worth teasing out... 

 

Most of us, if pushed and using historic measures like magazine circulations , would have said pre-pandemic  that there were 100-125K reasonably active modellers , and maybe 150-200K  involved with the hobby at the widest definition.

 

(It's frequently recalled that around 1980 the Railway Modeller alone had a circulation of over 100,000. Now it's in the mid thirty thousands)

 

Take your 70,000 , apply 20% market penetration (rounding the 18.3% from Andy's recent RMWeb survey) and you get 350,000 modellers in the hobby. That makes the hobby nearly twice the size we thought  (4mm seems to have 85%-90% market pentration , depending on what overlap you assume between 4mm standard gauge and OO9)

 

Your 40% uplift on the NGS figure is also startling . So much discussion has assumed that the hobby is gradually dying out, and that everything must very slowly wind down

 

There has very clearly been a significant influx of younger folk with families since the start of the pandemic. You see and feel that the demographic at shows has shifted downward, markedly - even though the Mum and Dad with Toddler in Pushchair (chanting "Thomas the Tank!") have vanished almost completely

 

N gauge may have done disproportionately well, but even a 30-35% increase in the hobby is quite staggering to consider

 

The actual gripe from the trade seems to be that Hornby can't supply them with all the stuff they want to order and think they can sell. Bachmann too have severe supply restrictions - hence the moans in N that there's no Farish being made , and the whole EFE initiative

 

If the hobby has really grown by a quarter or a third (or even more) that means a massive uplift in demand for RTR, but restricted supply from Hornby and Bachmann. It's not that others are eating Hornby's lunch - it's that the tables are piled high with food for all.

 

Thios would also put a new perspective on the fears that current hard times will strangle sales. There may be a lot of suppressed demand out there

 

(And if there are a lot of recent entrants in the hobby , they may be relatively uncommitted to a specific gauge and open to moving into  new scale)

Edited January 31, 2023 by Ravenser
typos

[MartinRS]

1 minute ago, bradfordbuffer said:

Like or loath the man.....as many do on rm! He stood for 2 days at Warley (and other shows) and talked/listened/preached and marketed the Hornby brand to the great un washed that takes dedication and a lot of earache as public talks a load of tosh some times....Henry Ford only done black cars at first look at all the types and colours you can get now. ....not everyone was perfect....but lots of chose now ...let Hornby breathe a little....too much now now now me me me!

I've only ever seen him on TV. He comes across as a genuinely enthusiastic individual. I think he has done the British railway modelling scene a great service in creating UK outline models in TT:120. I saw a TT3 layout way back in the 1960s at a railway exhibition in Pig Hill (Swindon) and thought about changing from 00 to TT3 (more railway in the same area), but then TT3 RTR folded.

Now where's my prayer mat ?

[rob D2]

9 minutes ago, Porfuera said:

 

You seem to have missed my point entirely - I was talking about their enthusiasm for the job and for the models.

No, I didn’t , I get it .
 

SK is a salesman, and a collector …in the last series we see him starting his first layout at a mature age.. It’s naive to suggest that they would be anything other than enthusiastic on camera, they are not about to bring on the APT and say “ it’s actually a bit cheap and nasty “, unless they want to be ex Hornby employees.

 

 

[Porfuera]

12 minutes ago, rob D2 said:

No, I didn’t , I get it .
 

SK is a salesman, and a collector …in the last series we see him starting his first layout at a mature age.. It’s naive to suggest that they would be anything other than enthusiastic on camera, they are not about to bring on the APT and say “ it’s actually a bit cheap and nasty “, unless they want to be ex Hornby employees.

 

Again you missed my point - I also said that I felt that their enthusiasm was hard to fake.

 

I don't think they can just switch it on when the camera rolls, they aren't professional actors. Quite the opposite in some cases.

Edited January 31, 2023 by Porfuera

[Jeff Smith]

Let's hope we soon get some more actual stock to talk about.........

[Porfuera]

21 minutes ago, Jeff Smith said:

Let's hope we soon get some more actual stock to talk about.........

 

I'm rather hoping that Track Packs will be available to order (as opposed to pre-order) on the shipment that's supposed to be arriving shortly.

 

I foolishly cancelled my analogue Easterner order in favour of a digital one so I'll need some track on which to run in my Class 08 when it arrives and I was thinking that Packs 2 and 3 will do the job nicely. Plus I'd order a couple of extra points and more straights but there's no use in having the order turn up in more than one shipment if I don't have anytthing to run until March/April. 

 

EDIT: having said that I feel sure I've seen pictures of people with Track Packs on Facebook, yet they're only shown as pre-order in the shop

Edited January 31, 2023 by Porfuera

[Hobby]

I think that if you got a Scotsman set and had pre ordered track packs you also got them. 

[Porfuera]

36 minutes ago, Hobby said:

I think that if you got a Scotsman set and had pre ordered track packs you also got them. 

 

Cheers for that. IIRC SK had said that they were not going to sell track (or Track Packs maybe) to people without trains to run on them and I wondered how they were going to get around that!

 

It still seems a little short-sighted to me but then it is early days so maybe they still don't have huge stocks of them so they're 'reserving' them for people with Scotsman sets (and then Easterners when those arrive), which would be sensible.

Edited January 31, 2023 by Porfuera

[bradfordbuffer]

1 hour ago, Porfuera said:

 

Cheers for that. IIRC SK had said that they were not going to sell track (or Track Packs maybe) to people without trains to run on them and I wondered how they were going to get around that!

 

It still seems a little short-sighted to me but then it is early days so maybe they still don't have huge stocks of them so they're 'reserving' them for people with Scotsman sets (and then Easterners when those arrive), which would be sensible.

Or vetting who bad mouthed Hornby...and you ain't getting any track! Coz you on naughty step!

[britishcolumbian]

4 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

Both our positions are entirely speculative and neither of us will be proven right or wrong for a couple of years yet.

To address your edit: my position is less speculative in that I know that 1:120 is already a well-established scale on a global level. It's not like Hornby is starting an entirely new thing at say 1:92 that nobody else in the world has ever done.

[Pacific231G]

3 hours ago, MartinRS said:

I've only ever seen him on TV. He comes across as a genuinely enthusiastic individual. I think he has done the British railway modelling scene a great service in creating UK outline models in TT:120. I saw a TT3 layout way back in the 1960s at a railway exhibition in Pig Hill (Swindon) and thought about changing from 00 to TT3 (more railway in the same area), but then TT3 RTR folded.

 

I've only met Simon a couple of times, once when he was giving a talk at the High Wycombe show, but I'd agree with your description and I think model making is one of those industries where a real passion for the product is important. Though I have some reservations about the TV series I think the real enthusiasm from many in the company ,including Simon, is genuine. 

In the late 1990s the British Toy and Hobby Association were one of my clients and, amongst other things, I used to produce and direct the testimonial videos  for their  Lifetime Achievement Awards  presented at the formal dinner that followed the Toy Fair. This involved travelling around, filming mostly retired industry leaders, and the one thing I remember about them was their personal enthusiasm for the products they'd been involved with. This seemed to apply particularly to those in the scale model field.

I actually think it a very positive move to finally have a small scale RTR product using an accurate gauge/scale ratio that is internationally accepted. I can't help wondering how much more globally successful the British model railway industry might have been if it hadn't kept lumbering  itself with a false scale for each emerging gauge.  

[Les1952]

11 hours ago, Flying Pig said:

 

And who is the target market for a 12mm gauge segway?

 

So far I've counted about sixty posts on the various Facebook groups from people who are totally new to railway modelling and are asking for information/assistance.   I don't know what proportion of TT:120 sales it represents, but if it is the same proportion as RMWebbers to serious modellers it means Hornby have found a good supply of new modellers to sell to.

 

Les

 

[Les1952]

7 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

Only some of them! 😉

 

Any examples for the rest of us to look at?

 

And what items in 1:120 scale have you actually ordered?

 

Les

[Les1952]

While waiting for Hornby to get enough stuff together for me to buy - I've got all I can on pre-order (an Easterner, an A3, a couple of extra coaches and a rake of freight stuff I can re-livery to 1957-1968) - I've been investing in Continental - largely so the proceeds of Croft Spa's sale and its stock slowly selling don't disappear into non-railway projects.

 

Today's parcel was a Roco BR38 4-6-0.  A spur to get the layout back on its trestles and test the bits I've built so far.  I don't know how long 3SMR had it in stock but it took a lot of persuading to run at all.  I only got chance to run it in for 5 mins each way today - the instructions say 30 mins - and it now runs quite smoothly at 50 speed steps out of 128.  The loco is factory DCC Sound fitted.  Is it money well spent?  £350-odd.  It looks good on the front of the Pullman coaches, though it can't couple until I've swapped the Fleischmann Profi-coupling it came with for a Tillig one from stock.  Not the most expensive loco on the roster- the Arnold 2-10-0 was more, and gained me a pleasing number of Hornby points. 

 

Next loco in should be the A4 from the Scotsman set, which will be off for sound fitting almost as soon as it arrives.  There are 5 locos in the current roster to play with - one each from Hornby, Arnold, Tillig, Piko and Roco.  In the meantime I'm also waiting for Peco to get the small radius points onto market- I need a couple for the yard area.

 

But as I've said before I'm not really Hornby's target market for TT:120, and Simon Kohler agreed when I talked to him about it at Gaydon.  However he also said he would appreciate the sales he got to modellers like me.

 

No pics yet of the BR38, but here's one of Blink Bonny head to head with the 2-10-0.  Shows how much smaller UK stuff is than German, more noticeable when they are the same scale.

 

 

Les

 

Edited January 31, 2023 by Les1952
typos...

[Porfuera]

47 minutes ago, Les1952 said:

So far I've counted about sixty posts on the various Facebook groups from people who are totally new to railway modelling and are asking for information/assistance.

 

And therein lies a bit of a problem with people new to model railways. People are buying all the track packs for their Scotman sets and making the full layout as shown by Hornby with the two loops and not understanding why the train won't run on the inner loop. Obviously it is because there is only one controller and only one power connector which is connected to the outer loop but they're new and they don't realise that the points are isolating the inner loop.

 

As you say some are asking for help on the socials (and I think I saw you answering at least one of them on FB) but maybe there are others that aren't and I hope that these buyers aren't going to give up in frustration.

 

It is difficult to know what Hornby could have done but maybe more information could have been provided in the sets. I would hope there is information on the website although I haven't checked.

 

Edited February 1, 2023 by Porfuera
Punctuation

[britishcolumbian]

23 minutes ago, Porfuera said:

It is difficult to know what Hornby could have done but maybe more information could have been provided in the sets. I would hope there is information on the website although I haven't checked.

Do we know what documentation is contained in the Track Packs? There may be something in those explaining the situation.

[HExpressD]

8 hours ago, britishcolumbian said:

Do we know what documentation is contained in the Track Packs? There may be something in those explaining the situation.

There certainly is in 00, Pack C contains link wires and a guide for their use, not sure about TT though 

[SeanTT]

12 hours ago, Les1952 said:

While waiting for Hornby to get enough stuff together for me to buy - I've got all I can on pre-order (an Easterner, an A3, a couple of extra coaches and a rake of freight stuff I can re-livery to 1957-1968) - I've been investing in Continental - largely so the proceeds of Croft Spa's sale and its stock slowly selling don't disappear into non-railway projects.

 

Today's parcel was a Roco BR38 4-6-0.  A spur to get the layout back on its trestles and test the bits I've built so far.  I don't know how long 3SMR had it in stock but it took a lot of persuading to run at all.  I only got chance to run it in for 5 mins each way today - the instructions say 30 mins - and it now runs quite smoothly at 50 speed steps out of 128.  The loco is factory DCC Sound fitted.  Is it money well spent?  £350-odd.  It looks good on the front of the Pullman coaches, though it can't couple until I've swapped the Fleischmann Profi-coupling it came with for a Tillig one from stock.  Not the most expensive loco on the roster- the Arnold 2-10-0 was more, and gained me a pleasing number of Hornby points. 

 

Next loco in should be the A4 from the Scotsman set, which will be off for sound fitting almost as soon as it arrives.  There are 5 locos in the current roster to play with - one each from Hornby, Arnold, Tillig, Piko and Roco.  In the meantime I'm also waiting for Peco to get the small radius points onto market- I need a couple for the yard area.

 

But as I've said before I'm not really Hornby's target market for TT:120, and Simon Kohler agreed when I talked to him about it at Gaydon.  However he also said he would appreciate the sales he got to modellers like me.

 

No pics yet of the BR38, but here's one of Blink Bonny head to head with the 2-10-0.  Shows how much smaller UK stuff is than German, more noticeable when they are the same scale.

 

 

Les

 

Great post, I really want an 0-4-0 or 0-6-0 but nothing from Hornby yet other then the 08s which i have one on preorder

 

if you see an 0-4-0 or 0-6-0 anywhere give me a shout, i had a quick look but most are sold out. 

 

I have the easterner set on pre-order and already have the scotsman set so looking to add to my locos as they release as well as track packs in April.

[Jeff Smith]

I have the Easterner on order but until I see which serial number coaches come with it I cannot order any more.....  This is of course assuming that the ones in the set are from the current range......

[PeterStiles]

16 minutes ago, Jeff Smith said:

serial number coaches come with

/normally/ coaches in Hornby Train Packs are different numbers to those in the main range. so you can happily buy buy buy buy!

 

With the railroad coaches in OO Train Sets its not as clear-cut, but as we don't have any "railroad" quality stock in TT you should be ok.. Should be...

[SeanTT]

22 minutes ago, PeterStiles said:

/normally/ coaches in Hornby Train Packs are different numbers to those in the main range. so you can happily buy buy buy buy!

 

With the railroad coaches in OO Train Sets its not as clear-cut, but as we don't have any "railroad" quality stock in TT you should be ok.. Should be...

Indeed the coaches in the sets are not the same as the individual rolling stock you can buy, the sets will not have lights in the carriages whilst the ones you can buy will..