Heljan Danish interview on world issues.

[Allegheny1600]

I know I have been away for a while but I was surprised not to see any mention of this quite important news on here.
Anyway, I came across this report about Heljan being “in crisis” over on DSO - which is a well known German forum called Drehscribe online (turntable online).
An interview with Mr Kim Nannestad on Danish TV;
https://www.tv2fyn.dk/nordfyn/se-videoen-nordfynsk-modeltogs-producent-presset-af-krisen

Along with a transcript of the conversation that is translated from German by Google;
“A different reality has occurred in a toy world that should breathe peace and tolerance.
It is no secret that the crisis hits us everywhere. This is partly due to the war in Ukraine.

Heljan develops and distributes model railways that are produced in China. After all, we pay all our things in China in dollars,
and the cost increased by about 25% overnight. And we can't just say that our prices have to rise by 25%.
Yes, you can, but then we don't sell anything at all.

To make matters worse, the absolute best market for model railways, England, is also in crisis.
When we say that we were hit, the English were hit even more, and not only because of the war in Ukraine and everything that goes with it,
It is also because they have decided to leave the EU. Namely Brexit. They've done it before and they know it well.

The company's nine employees are responsible for model railway accessories as well as various railways.
In a good year, more than 50,000 model railways will be sold to both children and highly qualified adults.
Of course, there are also so-called rivet counters, which, if I have done one or the other, say, ho, ho, that's nice, but normally it would have 20 rivets
would have been around the window if, for example, I had only done 19. Says one of the company's designers working on a new model railway.

I am in the process of finishing an English locomotive. A row 153. It costs at least DKK 1.8 million (approx. 245,000 euros), to design a new train,
and the process from the drawing to the finished product can take up to three years. An expensive job in times of crisis. If it continues like this, I will probably say goodbye
from one or maybe two employees, which I will be incredibly sad about because we are a small family here, and we have been the same family for many, many years.

Not because Heljan had no experience with crises. Corona was also true, but in a way that helped to strengthen the liquidity of the company.
With Corona, as I usually say, it doesn't matter if the shutters close again. And that's said with a smile on my face, of course I don't mean it that way,
But Corona did us good. People couldn't travel. They couldn't do what they usually do as a family, so money was spent
to model railways and hobbies in general.

The yields cannot keep up with this move, but small signs of improvement are also welcome. This morning I met with one of our great importers
spoken in England and he watches with confidence. He feels that the market is slowly changing. Not as fast as the rest of us would like,
but that's changing. People go back to the model railway shops to shop.”
(thanks to Gert1 from DSO)

My own opinion of Heljan is not very high! A few years ago, I was very into the Danish railways and bought most of the then available H0 models. It was very noticeable that the Roco Nohab was a far superior model to the Heljan version although their coaches were quite nice. After I went more heavily into German railways, a few years later, I was very excited when Heljan announced their 0-8-0 centre cab diesel loco as it would have been a perfect match for a loco belonging to the OHE company, among others. Firstly, when it came out, the model was very expensive but later, I read so many horror stories on the German fora, I decided not to bother.
Their British 00 models are rather hit and miss, there was the infamous class 17, a pretty centre cab diesel where all the motors had to be replaced, the misshaped class 52 Western (my favourite British diesel), arguably worst of all, the “tubby duff”, an over wide class 47 and many others where they got the shape not quite right - even to the present day with the current class 25 and 45 where the cabs are just not quite right!
Sorry for the perceived ‘rant’ - I’m just setting the scene as I understand it.
To be fair, they have also made some excellent models, the Hymek, the class 128, the smaller Sulzers and so forth.
Cheers,
John

Edited January 25, 2023 by AY Mod
Topic title changed to be less alarming.

[Mallard60022]

Oooof.

Hymek was a goody IMO.  Tough as old Boots etc.

[F-UnitMad]

46 minutes ago, Allegheny1600 said:

I know I have been away for a while but I was surprised not to see any mention of this quite important news on here.

Sure there is a thread somewhere; I've read about this before now. My own opinion was similar in gist - if Heljan continue to make so many "close but not quite right" models, no wonder they will struggle, as people won't buy them!! But then, how a lot of their UK O Scale range sells at all is beyond me, as much of it fits that category!

[AY Mod]

I've changed the title as, in conversation with Ben, there's no imminent crisis and many things are flowing through the process. Some of the content will be fact checked and addressed if necessary.

[cctransuk]

2 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

I've changed the title as, in conversation with Ben, there's no imminent crisis and many things are flowing through the process. Some of the content will be fact checked and addressed if necessary.

 

I read nothing in that interview that cannot be said of all model railway producers at present.

 

I also suspect that most of the more radical wording is down to the translation software!

 

CJI.

[AY Mod]

Ben's had chance to find out where this originated and what's behind it and come back to me.

 

The channel appears to be a local town news station/website and after lengthy filming and conversations have managed to edit it into something which has lost the context of the interviews. After Heljan ceased production on site and with models being produced in China part of the site was converted into a radio control retail business and it is this that has suffered most with reduced opening and staff levels. Ben was very informative on projects in process and clearly stated "We are not in crisis and the model railways side is very robust".

[Bobby]

On 25/01/2023 at 15:58, F-UnitMad said:

Sure there is a thread somewhere; I've read about this before now. My own opinion was similar in gist - if Heljan continue to make so many "close but not quite right" models, no wonder they will struggle, as people won't buy them!! But then, how a lot of their UK O Scale range sells at all is beyond me, as much of it fits that category!

For peoples info. We st The Gauge O Guild have been in touch with Heljan. It stems from a local TV station that did a number of interviews with Kim and his staff very well edited into a political carve up. You can reply to this and  I will answer any questions you may have. I don’t use Heljan as I’m a kit basher and scratch builder but as the Trade Liaison Officer for the GOG seeing this originally on WT made us look into it. 
Cheers

Bob Lawrence

[adb968008]

Theres a CAD drawing of a class 153 in that video, looks like O gauge.

Edited January 31, 2023 by adb968008

[SRman]

I have to agree with some of the comments above about the rather hit-and-miss quality of some Heljan products, both in their British and in their Continental ranges.

I have several of their Danish IC3 DMUs, which have a known problem with their mechanisms, as well as rudimentary detailing and no interiors. They can be made to run well with some modifications to the shared bogie retaining system (there is none on the originals!), but these are things the customer should not have to do. Miniatur Wunderland in Germany were not running the Heljan Danish locos and units because they found them too unreliable to be left running for long periods. I did send them details of my modifications to the IC3 units but heard nothing back.

I wanted models of the IC3 units because I have ridden in quite a few of them, with Heljan being the only manufacturer to offer models of them at all (McK have advertised a more recent model but it has yet to appear), meaning I had the choice: buy models with known but fixable (with effort) problems, or do without.

Apart from the motor problems on the class 17s, the British diesel and electric mechanisms are generally good, although there have been many reports of running problems with the British steam models.

Shape issues have applied to the previously mentioned Westerns and class 47s, and also to the first 33/0 locomotives (since revised), plus the too-high cab on the class 15 (easily fixed with a file, but again, why?). I do like my Hymeks and the 33/1 and 33/2 models, among others, with all being excellent runners.

I think the biggest problem is that Heljan don't seem to listen to feedback from customers. When they get it right, they are very good, but they continue to release models with the "let's suck it and see" approach.

[jjb1970]

I had the Heljan IC3, I knew when I bought it that it was an extremely basic model but I also wanted a model of the prototype. It was a 1990's HO model which would have been considered very basic by 1980's Lima OO standards. What I didn't expect was the fact that it could not run. They used a Tenshodo motor bogie which because of the arrangement just lifted up and slipped. And the model was as lightweight as it got.

 

They did the same with the X2. I foolishly bought both from a model shop in Denmark at the same time. As with the IC3 I knew the X2 was extremely basic but it was the only X2 available and I loved the prototype (I'm never quite sure whether it is X2 or X2000, most enthusiast sites and marketing use X2000, but SJ seem to use X2). The Tenshodo motor bogie struggled to move the power car never mind the full train.

 

The motor bogie wasn't a high end or exotic mechanism, cheap and simple, but they're reliable and work well enough when properly fitted. The experience really put me off Heljan for a long time.

 

That said, I have to say my Heljan OO models are all superb runners, smooth, quiet and powerful. No complaints at all, quite the opposite in fact. While they have a habit of releasing 'curates eggs' they also have a habit of releasing very interesting and unusual prototypes and my OO fleet would be far poorer without my Heljan locomotives. And some of their releases are excellent, I still think the Hymek is excellent despite its age, and the 25 is excellent.

 

On the Hymek, I saw some Youtuber announced it as one of the worst models of the year a few weeks ago, in EFE form. I thought that was absurd. Yes, it is not as finely detailed as current new tooling but it captures the look of the Hymek superbly, detailing is more than sufficient at normal viewing distances on a layout and the examples I have are very sweet runners and can be handled very easily thanks to being very robust. Yes, a newly tooled Hymek could add etched brass fine details and the other refinements which are now normal, it'd also almost certainly be more expensive, more delicate and I really can't see that the overall shape and impression would be meaningfully improved.

[SRman]

3 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

I had the Heljan IC3, I knew when I bought it that it was an extremely basic model but I also wanted a model of the prototype. It was a 1990's HO model which would have been considered very basic by 1980's Lima OO standards. What I didn't expect was the fact that it could not run. They used a Tenshodo motor bogie which because of the arrangement just lifted up and slipped. And the model was as lightweight as it got.

 

They did the same with the X2. I foolishly bought both from a model shop in Denmark at the same time. As with the IC3 I knew the X2 was extremely basic but it was the only X2 available and I loved the prototype (I'm never quite sure whether it is X2 or X2000, most enthusiast sites and marketing use X2000, but SJ seem to use X2). The Tenshodo motor bogie struggled to move the power car never mind the full train.

 

The motor bogie wasn't a high end or exotic mechanism, cheap and simple, but they're reliable and work well enough when properly fitted. The experience really put me off Heljan for a long time.

 

... snipped

 

 

The later IC3 units which I have had an upgraded, proper centrally mounted can motor with flywheels driving bogies at both ends of the centre car, so that bit of it ran beautifully and had plenty of power. The problem lay with the cardan shafts and bogies not being anchored to the motor or the centre car. That's what the small screw is doing in my previous photo. I also added some extra lead weight into the driving cars, and some plastic tube onto the locating pins at the tops of the bogies to stop the end cars floating around too much.

They also offered unpowered units to go with the powered sets, but the coupling arrangement is rudimentary, to say the least, and the dummy units don't even have head/tail lights (or DCC sockets to which would have been connected if there were lights). The last one I bought was missing the pins to hold the inter-unit coupling in place, and Heljan were unable to supply any, which is really not good enough on their part for customer support.

As for the SJ X2/X2000, again I had a few lovely trips on the real ones, so treated myself to the Jeco (Swedish) model, which was expensive but has a decent mechanism and runs perfectly.

Edited February 1, 2023 by SRman

[Coppercap]

On 01/02/2023 at 03:42, jjb1970 said:

On the Hymek, I saw some Youtuber announced it as one of the worst models of the year a few weeks ago, in EFE form. I thought that was absurd. Yes, it is not as finely detailed as current new tooling but it captures the look of the Hymek superbly, detailing is more than sufficient at normal viewing distances on a layout and the examples I have are very sweet runners and can be handled very easily thanks to being very robust.

I like that: "some Youtuber" 😄 (I saw it too) - but I agree with you, nice model, and I do like mine, but it does need updating to keep up with the best of the pack.