Hornby announce TT:120

[Dix120]

2 hours ago, luke_stevens said:

My brother got an e-mail at 17:45 saying his Scotsman set in now in the Hornby warehouse and will soon be dispatched.

 

Luke

 

PS and his credit card has been charged too! All looking positive :)

I just checked my order on Hornby and I see my C/C has been charged too! So maybe here by Christmas (Orthodox)? Either way looking good!

[luke_stevens]

18 minutes ago, Dix120 said:

<snip>So maybe here by Christmas (Orthodox)? Either way looking good!<snip>

 

I believe that Hornby no longer really have a warehouse. I've been told that items now come in ready-to-dispatch cardboard sleeves (certainly my last 2 Rivarossi item came like this). I would take the charging of credit cards to be be part of the printing of dispatch labels.  Say dispatch tomorrow / Monday for delivery in the middle of the week: 14th perhaps?

 

Luke

[BRTrainz]

My card has also been charged.

Might actually get it before Christmas here in the states!

[SeanTT]

1 hour ago, luke_stevens said:

 

I believe that Hornby no longer really have a warehouse. I've been told that items now come in ready-to-dispatch cardboard sleeves (certainly my last 2 Rivarossi item came like this). I would take the charging of credit cards to be be part of the printing of dispatch labels.  Say dispatch tomorrow / Monday for delivery in the middle of the week: 14th perhaps?

 

Luke

Do we know which shipping merchant they generally use? RM? Dpd? 

[luke_stevens]

24 minutes ago, SeanTT said:

Do we know which shipping merchant they generally use? RM? Dpd? 

 

I know it's not RM.

 

The website says there are tow services "Express" and "Standard" with the former being via DPD. DPD offer a "by 10:30", "by 12:00" and "Next Day" service.

 

Not sure who "Standard" is but in the description below (from the website)

 

Luke

 

++++++++++++++++++

 

"Express shipping: £6.95

Your order will be activated within 1 working day of the order being received. Delivery to England and Wales will be distributed between 1-2 working days while Northern Ireland, Scottish Highlands and Islands are an additional day for delivery. We currently offer a delivery service of DPD.

 

"Standard: £3.95

Your order will be activated within 1 working day of the order being received. Items are dispatched within 4-5 working days from activation. While we always aim for customers to receive their order as quickly as possible, please note at busy times there may be a delay in shipping your order from our warehouse."

[Pacific231G]

On 07/12/2022 at 19:14, Dix120 said:

Thank you for this. Gives me something to start with. Maybe add a bit of freight service in the front right. Extend the platform tracks enough for three cars and locomotive. Of course this will have to be a three piece display. Station tracks on the left module, main yard throat in the middle, and fiddle yard on the right. Much to think about.

In later versions of Minories, (usually eight feet long in 4mm scale) Cyril Freezer added a kickback goods yard in bottom right with a headshunt alongside platform three. 

It's worth looking at Gavin Thrum's Great Moor Street which is 00 on three 1066mm long boards (so slightly more than 3m in total)

https://thrumlington.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-moor-street-minories.html

For another scheme in three pieces it's also worth looking at Geoff Ashdown's Tower Pier which is three metres long on three one metre long boards (platforms, throat, fiddle yard) 

 

 

 

 

though not quite the same track plan as Minories, Tower Pier is operationally equivalent and built on three 1m x 0.5m baseboards. Significantly, Geoff used the overbridge between the platforms and throat modules as on the original Minories and that does work really well to conceal just how short it it- most Minories I've seen ignore this (to their cost)

Geoff's EM trackwork is handbuilt but I did try drawing the same plan out for 00/H0 using Streamline medium points and slips (which are two foot radius) and it did still fit.

Either of these schemes would fit very easily  into three metres in TT:120. 

Both have been discussed in more detail in the General Theory of Minories thread but my photos of Tower Pier were lost from that thread in the great server debacle. I took these at ExpoEM in 2014. 

Edited December 15, 2022 by Pacific231G
tidying up some of the text

[Jeff Smith]

Ever since I enrolled in the TT 120 club and agreed to get Hornby emails I have only seen OO offers - why isn't TT:120 being pushed?

[britishcolumbian]

7 hours ago, Dix120 said:

I just checked my order on Hornby and I see my C/C has been charged too! So maybe here by Christmas (Orthodox)? Either way looking good!

I don't know when I was this excited for someone else to be getting something...

[Moxy]

3 hours ago, Jeff Smith said:

Ever since I enrolled in the TT 120 club and agreed to get Hornby emails I have only seen OO offers - why isn't TT:120 being pushed?

 

Probably because they haven't got any TT product in stock to push yet. (except track, which they do have in stock, but have already said they are waiting for the trains to arrive from China before releasing that.)  The Flying Scotsman set is the first train set to go out.

[RJS1977]

13 hours ago, Dix120 said:

I see this as three boards. The left end is two feet long. That should give tracks long enough for three cars and a locomotive. The middle will be four feet long and have all the track work. The right end fiddle yard will be about two feet long. It needs enough length for the turnouts necessary to give four staging tracks.  It could be made as a fully folding setup but I think transporting it as a four foot piece and two two-foot pieces bolted together would be a better idea. Thinking about the idea of having  a curved section leading to the fiddle yard so the final setup is an L shape, but that is another piece to carry. Much to think about while waiting for equipment arrive.  

 

Your fiddle yard will need to be more than two feet if you are using pointwork, especially with a double track entrance - the pointwork alone will take up most of that.

If you want to get a fiddle yard in two feet, you will need to use a traverser or a cassette system.

[irishmail]

On 07/12/2022 at 21:32, irishmail said:

Amazing that they have got it to Canada.  Joined on 10th October and I am still waiting for mine  and I'm only just across the Irish Sea and not the Atlantic lol... 🙄 Emailed them last week but not had a reply. Time for a phone call I think

Spoke to a helpfull assistant in Hornby customer services yesteday, she told me that they had been overwhelmend by the response of the TT:120 lauch. She said to allow 60 days from joining, but should have recived my membership pack by now, she could not do anything herself but told me it would be passed on the the appropriate person to chase up.

8 hours ago, Jeff Smith said:

Ever since I enrolled in the TT 120 club and agreed to get Hornby emails I have only seen OO offers - why isn't TT:120 being pushed?

 

4 hours ago, Moxy said:

 

Probably because they haven't got any TT product in stock to push yet. (except track, which they do have in stock, but have already said they are waiting for the trains to arrive from China before releasing that.)  The Flying Scotsman set is the first train set to go out.

Hornby have obviously got thier reasons for not releasing the track yet, but would have thougt it better to sell some track now so people could start building layouts ready for when the stock arrives.??

Hopefully in the new year we will see some more promotion of TT:120 whne stock becomes available.

[Hobby]

If they did that we'd be inundated with even more posts moaning that they had nothing to run on it! Damned if they do, damned if they don't... ;)

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, irishmail said:

 

 

Hornby have obviously got thier reasons for not releasing the track yet, but would have thougt it better to sell some track now so people could start building layouts ready for when the stock arrives.??

Hopefully in the new year we will see some more promotion of TT:120 whne stock becomes available.

From most of what I have seen SK chatting about the TT range, he wants the “train set” nostalgia to be a major USP, so releasing the boxed sets first makes perfect sense.

[Hroth]

6 hours ago, Moxy said:

The Flying Scotsman set is the first train set to go out.

 

Strictly speaking, its not a "Flying Scotsman" set, though Hornby do try and link it to the service called "The Flying Scotsman".  The loco inside is "Blink Bonny" and the name on the box is "The Scotsman". 

 

I'm not completely sure that the service called "The Flying Scotsman" consisted of Pullman cars either....

 

 

[luke_stevens]

11 hours ago, Jeff Smith said:

Ever since I enrolled in the TT 120 club and agreed to get Hornby emails I have only seen OO offers - why isn't TT:120 being pushed?

 

I would think the idea WAS to push the TT120 sets in the run-up to Christmas, but when they realised the wheels on the A3 & A4 were wrong and had to be retooled, it threw a major spanner into the works. Originally both sets were intended to be available before Christmas but now it will only be one set (and maybe not the full batch?). There is a suggestion that there is was more interest from existing modellers than they had expected and that they just don't have enough product available to ship in time.

 

There is no point in advertising stuff which isn't available and proceed to disappoint people.

 

As a side note I'be be interested to see the break down of purchases by Existing Modellers / New buyers, against Hornby's expectations. 

 

Luke

[Hobby]

53 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Strictly speaking, its not a "Flying Scotsman" set, though Hornby do try and link it to the service called "The Flying Scotsman".  The loco inside is "Blink Bonny" and the name on the box is "The Scotsman". 

 

I'm not completely sure that the service called "The Flying Scotsman" consisted of Pullman cars either....

 

Somewhere on the 135 pages we discussed this before, Hornby would have to pay (the NRM?) some monies if they used the Flying Scotsman name, hence the name the "Scotsman", nearly there, but not quite! The Harrogate Pullman (later Queen of Scots) would be the closest, at least on the lower half of the ECML... Bit of modeller's imagination in use by Hornby to sell the set! Perhaps inspired by this, though not in BR colours, though the Harrogate Pullman does go back to 1923, so could have been hauled by Blink Bonny at some point in the 1930s! 

[Legend]

3 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

From most of what I have seen SK chatting about the TT range, he wants the “train set” nostalgia to be a major USP, so releasing the boxed sets first makes perfect sense.

That’s  all very well , but the reality is that he  has probably missed the important Christmas market for the bulk of his deliveries . Meanwhile he is sitting on inventory which ties up cash . Much better converting that to profit and cash in bank than holding it as inventory at cost .  

[luke_stevens]

36 minutes ago, Legend said:

That’s  all very well , but the reality is that he  has probably missed the important Christmas market for the bulk of his deliveries . Meanwhile he is sitting on inventory which ties up cash . Much better converting that to profit and cash in bank than holding it as inventory at cost .  

 

I think it is a disappointment that there couldn't have been more sets available before Christmas. For something that has been in the works for years it might have been an idea to have made sure the sets were in the UK in the summer so that there was no way that the could be delayed.

 

I worry that their "nostalgia" view may be distracting them from the way that online markets work: incredibly time and price sensitive with lots of returns. Being the only supplier the time element isn't so great in any month apart form December. 

 

In terms of inventory I'm not sure what is actually "in stock" at the moment, beyond the limited selection of track pieces. There may be the resin building but I don't think there is anything like rolling stock.

 

One thing that is important to business and sometimes overlooked outside business is liquidity: in a regular revenue stream. It is better to have £1000 coming in each month rather than £6000 in month 3 but with nothing before or after.  This is where having long delivery lines to China can be effected by global events: lack of containers, lack of computer chips, Covid lock-downs, ships getting stuck in the Suez canal...

 

Luke

[boxbrownie]

2 hours ago, Legend said:

That’s  all very well , but the reality is that he  has probably missed the important Christmas market for the bulk of his deliveries . Meanwhile he is sitting on inventory which ties up cash . Much better converting that to profit and cash in bank than holding it as inventory at cost .  

Fine but, the plans had been in place for the Christmas launch of the trains sets (both) for probably months and the logistics all planned, changing those plans and delivery/ordering just four weeks before Christmas just won’t happen.

[luke_stevens]

1 hour ago, boxbrownie said:

Fine but, the plans had been in place for the Christmas launch of the trains sets (both) for probably months and the logistics all planned, changing those plans and delivery/ordering just four weeks before Christmas just won’t happen.

 

From what i can gather all was on course for both trainset to be freely available before Christmas with other stuff (extra track) available from that point on.

 

Then someone pointed out the balance weight problem...

 

and everything stopped until the factory could tool a new wheel mould. That meant the A3&A4 missed their production slot, which means they missed their shipping slot, etc. The factory was obviously pretty quick to get the replacement mould designed, manufactured, tested and into production but it was always going to be playing frantic catch-up from that point on.  My guess is that they are now only about 2 weeks behind schedule but that may have involved airfreighting the sets over.

 

I suspect that some of the 00 advertising we have seen was bought as space for TT120 but had to be reallocated :)

 

As long as they get some sets into some people hands before Christmas then things should be alright. And it will be several years before a model is again made without preproduction images being available. I'm just relieved that someone spotted the wheel balance weight problem it in time for it to be corrected.

 

Luke

 

 

Edited December 9, 2022 by luke_stevens

[Hroth]

It would have been nice for the initial Easterner/Scotsman boxed sets to have gone through without alteration. Most people wouldn't notice the balance weight problem and they would be instant collectors items!

 

There would be enough time to rectify the problem for future production...

 

[Johan DC]

And we would reach Page 200 a lot faster if they did 😜

 

[Jeff Smith]

24 minutes ago, Hroth said:

It would have been nice for the initial Easterner/Scotsman boxed sets to have gone through without alteration. Most people wouldn't notice the balance weight problem and they would be instant collectors items!

 

There would be enough time to rectify the problem for future production...

 

Can't say I agree.  It could have got very messy with expectations that individual models would be corrected by sending back to Hornby.  I think it made the right decision to nip it in the bud as it were!

[meatloaf]

Not showing as in stock on the website unless theyve come in and gone straight out.

 

Im still on the fence but if i couldve got one before i head to butlins on the 19th i might have had a dabble. 

[Jeff Smith]

Being super lazy (to trawl through relevant threads) and not really being an operator, can someone explain what the operational attraction is in Minories?