Planned items

[AMJ]

Many years ago there was a writeup in Railway Modeller at about the time that Dapol started up with comments in that they had a prototype of the LMS Beyer Garratt. This was dropped from production before the Pug entered the shops.

 

What other items have been mentioned as going to be produced but then cancelled?

 

Didn't Bachmann recently cancel a GWR 4-6-0 as Hornby had anounced the same and so Bachmann did a different GWR 4-6-0?

[Red Devil]

Lima V2, waited for one of those for years as a kid in the early eighties, then again if the chassis was anything like the J50......................

[stewartingram]

Trix: Brush 4; LMR Pullmans.

Wrenn/Dapol?: Adams Radial; others too but I can't remember which.

Kitmaster: A3. Dropped in favour of the US spacecraft due to the success of the moon landings I believe.

and of course relevant today - Dapol DP2; Olivia's BP.

[Guest Belgian]

Many years ago there was a writeup in Railway Modeller at about the time that Dapol started up with comments in that they had a prototype of the LMS Beyer Garratt. This was dropped from production before the Pug entered the shops.

 

What other items have been mentioned as going to be produced but then cancelled?

 

Didn't Bachmann recently cancel a GWR 4-6-0 as Hornby had anounced the same and so Bachmann did a different GWR 4-6-0?

I think Bachmann and Hornby were both going to do a "Grange" (or a "Hall") so one of them changed its mind and Hornby did the "Grange" and Bachmann a "Hall". I think the same happened with LMS 4-6-0s, Bachmann was going to update its "Scots" and "Rebuilt Patriots" but Hornby got there first and Bachmann did an original "Patriot" before Hornby got round to updating theirs.

 

Now we've got a deliberate duplication with "Tornado".

[Kris]

Peco themselves have done it with a couple of n gauge locos that were announced around the time of the original Jubilee.

[Tim Hale]

Thirty years ago, I took Pete Farr (Hendford Halt, Yeovil) to the Earls Court trade fair where we were allowed to see Airfix's last hurrah- a Schools and jolly nice it looked. Most definitely not their plastic kit production and most likely a Wills production mock-up.

 

I cannot remember the other candidates but their Far East production folded within months and we were denied a decent Southern locomotive.

 

DesA

[Kris]

Thinking further on the n gauge stuff, I'm sure I remember that when Bachmann took over Farish they said that they would be replicating their OO range in N (new items anyhow). Since then some new OO items have been shrunk but by no means all. Bachmann are not alone in doing this as Dapol have also announced items that have yet to appear.

Why has this happened?

It appears to have been a variety of reasons. Competitor product releases, economic climate and sales of similar items have all been given as reasons for this by manufactures. All of these to me are reasonable and sensible, but it doesn't mean that it is always a sweet pill to swallow when these announcements come out.

At times it seems to me that manufactures are criticised if they announce models in and advance and criticised if they don't.

[Guest Max Stafford]

Hornby intended to produce a J36 in 1981 and went as far as producing a prototype which still exists. The idea was pulled and ScR modellers had to do without theirs until finally, Bachmann announced theirs in 2012...

 

Dave.

[Ramblin Rich]

There were images in the gallery in the last month or so of a Triang version of the Brighton Belle - I'm presuming this was an actual prototype. I don't know any more, presumably it was canned due to the Wrenn version being available.

[Glorious NSE]

Bachmann listed a Vanwide and VEA in their catalogue a few years back - presumably dropped when they realised that whilst the bodies are the same, what's under them isn't at all similar!

[Guest jim s-w]

From Memory

 

Heljan 66

 

Lima 45

 

(I think) Lima 90

 

HTH

 

Jim

[Glorious NSE]

Jim - Lima had both a 90 and a 91 in their catalogue at one point!

[Accurascale Fran]

I seem to remember Lima having pictures of Peaks and 91's in their catalogue many years ago (around 89-90 iirc)

[Philip Jackson]

If I remember right Hornby did mock ups of additional coaches for the APT

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

It indirectly provides interesting information too. I was a little puzzled by Dapol's sudden move back into OO, until Bachmann announced that the Farish 9F and class 221 would not be going ahead at this time because of the availability of competing products. Basically, the UK N gauge market is saturated with the output of just two volume RTR makers; Dapol perceived a limitation on further growth opportunity in N so had to look elsewhere.

.

.. The idea was pulled and ScR modellers had to do without theirs until finally, Bachmann announced theirs in 2012...

You read it here first from Mystic Max. Or possibly Mastic Mix...

[pete_mcfarlane]

Kitmaster: A3. Dropped in favour of the US spacecraft due to the success of the moon landings I believe.

I think Kitmaster had long since gone bust by the time the US got to the Moon in 1969. Shame - a plastic kit of 4472 would be a sure fire money spinner.

 

Weren't Dapol doing a Leader as a retailer commission at one point? That seems to have vanished off the face of the Earth.

[Invicta]

Thirty years ago, I took Pete Farr (Hendford Halt, Yeovil) to the Earls Court trade fair where we were allowed to see Airfix's last hurrah- a Schools and jolly nice it looked. Most definitely not their plastic kit production and most likely a Wills production mock-up.

 

I cannot remember the other candidates but their Far East production folded within months and we were denied a decent Southern locomotive.

 

DesA

 

I remember reading a series of articles on the history of the Airfix range in one of the mags (BRM?) a few years ago, and IIRC, Airfix possibly intended to produce a basic core range for each of the 'Big Four- something like a large express passenger loco, a medium-sized passenger/mixed-traffic loco, a freight loco, a large tank engine and a small tank engine.

Hence, for the GWR, we had the Castle, Dean Goods, 61xx Prairie and 14xx. For the LMS, we got the Rebuilt Scot and 4F, and so on

 

Any idea what the others were likely to have been? Obviously the Southern express loco would have been the Schools, and one of the LNER tank engines the N2 that eventually reached the market as part of the Palitoy Mainline range.

 

Was the LMS 2P that's been in Hornby's catalogue in recent years originally intended to be part of the Airfix range, or was it a Mainline/Dapol design, recycling some of the existing tooling & tender drive from the Airfix 4F? I'm sure there was a mention of an LMS 4-4-0 in the Airfix history article, though I think it may have been a Compound, rather than the 2P?

 

I've also got a vague memory that Airfix might have looked at producing some RTR London Underground stock?

 

There were also a series of articles on 'models that never were' in Model Rail a few years ago- IIRC the Hornby J36 mentioned earlier in the thread was one of those featured

[Jenny Emily]

Bachmann listed a Vanwide and VEA in their catalogue a few years back - presumably dropped when they realised that whilst the bodies are the same, what's under them isn't at all similar!

 

I remember that! I was really hoping that the VEA would appear, and remember at York show that year there was a VEA in their display cabinet. However on closer look it seemed to be a hastily built and painted kit. It was quietly dropped and never mentioned again.

 

I'm under the impression that Bachmann also shelved an OO version of the class 14 because of the Hattons/Heljan version. A shame really, as the Farish 14 retails for less than half what the Heljan/Hattons one does.

 

 

 

[Ceptic]

Thirty years ago, I took Pete Farr (Hendford Halt, Yeovil) to the Earls Court trade fair where we were allowed to see Airfix's last hurrah- a Schools and jolly nice it looked. Most definitely not their plastic kit production and most likely a Wills production mock-up.

 

I cannot remember the other candidates but their Far East production folded within months and we were denied a decent Southern locomotive.

 

DesA

 

At the time, in one of Airfix's last catalogues, there was a subtle hint / partial pic. of a proposed range of Bulleid coaches.

What's the odds, that they would have turned out better than Bachmann's offering ?.

Or did Bachmann aquire what tooling Airfix had developed ?,.I wonder.

[John M Upton]

I do believe that somewhere on a dusty shelf is a pre order I put in many decades ago for the Lima Class 101 centre car in Network SouthEast livery. It appeared in the catalogue but never ever appeared!!

 

I still have around here somewhere the Lima catalogue that announces a 44/45/46, 90 and 91!!

[Gwiwer]

What's the odds, that they would have turned out better than Bachmann's offering ?.

 

Based on the differing quality between Airfix Mk2 aircons and the Bachmann Mk1 and 2 (early) ranges we'd be talking chalk and cheese. Bachmann generally win hands down.

[Mike Bellamy]

. . . . IIRC, Airfix possibly intended to produce a basic core range for each of the 'Big Four- something like a large express passenger loco, a medium-sized passenger/mixed-traffic loco, a freight loco, a large tank engine and a small tank engine.

I don't know about Airfix but this was the proposal for Replica Railways as described in their 5 year plan drawn up in 1986 and shown on their company history web page here

 

http://www.replicarailways.co.uk/images/stories/Downloads/5yrplan1986.pdf

 

Interesting to see what they planned to do and which models are now available from other manufacturers

 

Mike

[PLD]

One that very nearly did make it...

 

In the late 1990s just after the first motorised version of the Peak Horse Hong Kong tram was released, Bachmann (who were the European distributors) started to develop a 4mm scale ready to run 'Preston type' tram for the UK market using the mechanism from the HK tram and a body which (despite their denials) was clearly a shrunken version of the Corgi 1:64th scale models...

 

They got as far as producing pilot castings for the body (which I did see) and alegedly a complete working prototype model (which I never got to see). Unforunately, sales of the motorised Hong Kong Tram were much slower than Bachmann had hoped for and the mechanisms had assembly problems (an easy fix to those in the know) so there was a high rate of returns. Result was that Bachmann 'dumped' the remaining HK models as non-running and the UK tram was binned...

 

I don't suppose for one moment there would have been the same demand as for some of the other items mentioned in this thread, but a Britsh outline ready to run tram would I'm sure have opened up a who new arena both for purely tram layouts and as an added feature on railway layouts...

[D9020 Nimbus]

Additional Airfix models were SR G6 and O2, to use some common parts, I seem to recall. Hornby have made proving models of quite a number of types other than the G6, including an ex-LNER N7, as well as some others which have since been produced by others.

[Pennine MC]

Based on the differing quality between Airfix Mk2 aircons and the Bachmann Mk1 and 2 (early) ranges we'd be talking chalk and cheese. Bachmann generally win hands down.

 

 

Not sure that's a valid or fair comparison. Even the Mk1s are twenty years or more younger than the Airfix vehicles, which were well ahead of anything else produced in the 80s

 

 

Having said that, to return to Ceptic's point I do STR some sort of link between Airfix and the Bulleids, possibly (like the B1 and LN) via Mainline's takeover of Airfix and subsequently via Replica?