RJS1977

It's a shame it's in July. Had it been in winter with snow on the ground, they could have travelled *by* cello!

https://youtu.be/2QZuOQZ1HC4?t=44

Operation Princess was far too optimistic, with many services being only four car and five car at the most, and being cross country was also a much more complex operation involving endless conflicting pathing arrangements.

 

The timetable was simply not robust enough and when things went belly up, which was often, could inevitably mean large numbers of passengers trying to cram themselves into just four cars.

 

There will be plenty of nine car IEP sets around on GW and, on the core route, many of the five car sets will be working in pairs (or even maybe more).

 

Expect five car units to be let out alone in Cornwal or through the Cotswolds but on the core route probably only on the slower stopping services or fill in services such as that to Pewsey.

 

A good comparison to make would probably be the Meridians on the EMT network where seven car, five car, four car and peak time five car plus four car operate, plus of course HSTs. Most of the more important busier services are well appointed with the slower stopping trains being shorter formations.

 

I'm not aware of any overcrowding difficulties out of St Pancras but stand to be corrected if this is not so.

In some regards, it wasn't optimistic enough. Passenger numbers increased by 40% after Operation Princess, which would have been a big contributor to the overcrowding problems. Some of the issues were also caused by a desire by Network Rail to reverse Birmingham/Bournemouth trains in the bay platforms at Reading (3 and the old 7), restricting their length.

To my mind (as a weekend user) the biggest issue has been on the Leamington - Birmingham via Birmingham International section as the single track between Leamington Spa and Coventry means only an hourly service can serve Coventry and BMI.

I haven't noticed the engine noise in a Voyager as being particularly obtrusive, my only issue with the trains themselves is the reduced luggage space caused by the shelves having been designed for tilting trains.

Street circuits are nothing new - apart from Monaco, Detroit, Phoenix, Long Beach and Adelaide have all had street circuits in the past and I'm sure there have been others. Even Montreal and Melbourne are at least partly on streets. And I do find the street circuits more readily identifiable than the purpose-built circuits.

The races don't have to be boring either as not all street circuits are as tight and twisty as Monaco - there was a decent amount of overtaking at Baku last weekend although the safety cars inevitably helped with that. And if it brings F1 to where people are rather than some circuit in the middle of nowhere, why not?

Here's hoping for a London race if Silverstone folds.

The outfall pipes at Dawlish used to be made from Brunel's old atmospheric tubes! I believe the length of atmospheric pipe at Didcot was used as an outfall for a while. 

Why do pirates wear a patch over one eye?

If they wore one over both eyes, they wouldn't be able to see where they were going!

There's a lady pirate coming towards you with a sword in one hand and another sword in the other hand. Do you know who it is?

Madame Two-Swords!

What goes "Splash-woof!"?

A sea dog!

More than anyone, Hornby has invested here.

• They have the RailRoad range for lower cost of entry
• They have multiple (relatively) cheap and cheerful trainsets (there are 6 under £100, including two Thomas and the Santa set)
• They have layout operating software to engage the 'connected generation'
• They introduced low-cost sound to add play-value
• They re-launched the Collectors' Club aiming it at youngsters (not what RMwebbers call "Collectors")
• They built their on-line forum to encourage brand-specific discussion amongst people, many of whom do not appear to be relatively new to model railways (being the point of the forum)

Where did it get them?

 

Recently here on this thread multiple posters have commented that Hornby needs to focus on the 'future of the hobby'. I believe that they have tried really hard to do just that.

 

My observation is that it wasn't working. It feels like the selection of train sets is declining - perhaps that's observational bias on my part. On the website right now, excluding the Junior and and the Arnold N set, there are 14 train sets and of these two are Thomas and one is the Santa set. In the remaining 11, three are only available from retailer stock. The only train set that you can pre-order is the perennial Flying Scotsman set - which suggests to me that this is the one that actually sells in any volume.

 

Based on the financial statements it is clear that their core UK railway business remains their largest share of revenue and (I believe) this is mostly from selling to adult enthusiasts. (It's actually very hard to tell from the financial statements.)

 

What is clear is that Scalextric is underperforming. No amount of selling trainsets to children will fix Scalextric.

Unfortunately the Railroad range isn't large enough and a lot of what is in it isn't really relevant to younger modellers:

1) Beyond Smokey Joe/101/08 there isn't much in the way of tank engines (Jinty and 57XX make occasional appearances but not regularly enough to act as a 'stepping stone'). Most of the locos are 'big engines' retailing at close to the £100 mark. There should be for at least each of the Big 4 at least one tank engine, one 'small tender loco' (Dean Goods etc) and one big engine.

2) There aren't really any contemporary items in the range - most of the diesels are 1970s Rail Blue for example. Apart from preserved lines, young people today aren't going to have any experience of them. There needs to be at least a Railroad HST and IEP, and a 66 as well.

Net result is if a parent buys a train set, there's not a lot to expand the collection with, so the child loses interest and the set gets binned rather than becoming a hobby. There's an increasing realisation that young people are spending too much time on screens and a need for things that different generations can do together.

Ultimately Hornby has a choice. It can either:

a) Continue to concentrate its efforts on selling 'high end' products to a market which is dwindling as people die off/get priced out, which will eventually lead to the company's demise

or

b) Make genuine efforts to reach younger/less pecuinious modellers (and parents) with a relevant, broad, range of budget items and advertising/marketing to suit. Yes, it's a high-risk strategy but it offers the prospect of a longer-term future if it can be made to work.

Not all older modelers are rich so there is a market for it. For every highly detailed layout here there are 1000's more out there where anything goes and its bought on a budget regardless of if they are 7 or 70 years old.

 

£30 for one wagon could be a huge wad out their state pension.

 

.

Yes, and in the case of wagons, you don't normally need one (unless it's something specialised like a flask wagon), you need 5-10 of them!

As far as I'm aware the orange Miura was pulled from that garage and restored, and I agree on the other exotics being likely candidates for saving too.

 

Any truth in the rumour someone's currently restoring an orange Miura they found in a river in the Italian Alps?  ;-)

I should think the E-types, Astons and Ferraris at least may well be economically viable to restore (some of the Astons didn't look too bad apart from the layers of dust).

I wasn't a particularly big fan of him either after that.

To my mind deliberately driving into another car is equivalent to drug taking in athletics and should be treated with the same severity.

John Noakes (along with Val and Pete) 'appeared' in several Paddington stories Michael Bond wrote for Blue Peter annuals in the 60s & 70s, and later published as a book in their own right.

On the other hand, Michael Schumacher got banned/excluded a number of times and still won the title in 1994.

Only by yet more dubious tactics in the final race....

Triang (the one making cheaper models) still outlasted Hornby Dublo (who made the more expensive ones....).

Lima lasted nearly 50 years, and the collapses of Triang, Mainline and Airfix were more to do with other parts of their respective empires than the railway ranges.

My observation is that like M&S currently in general/clothing retailing (and C&A, Woolworths and BHS before them) their problem is simply competitors across the toy and model sector are doing better at chasing the declining market.

 

As a comparison - M&S seem to have failed to grasp that they have become a general retailer, albeit specialising in clothes and food, but crucially omitting to sell many of the other items you buy on a supermarket trip. Result the supermarkets that do sell clothes have skimmed off much of the basics from M&S's staple items turnover, underwear and other basics like shirts, trousers, tights etc. Hornby have diversified, but perhaps not widely enough, and new entrants to the market like Bachmann have taken a big slice of the trains market, which the shift into high price items to cater for the "must be more accurate/less toy like" demands have further reduced as a market because of the necessary high price. 

 

Whether they have the right strategy remains to be seen but, were I to be a shareholder in either of them, the noises from Hornby would satisfy me more that the board perhaps has the will to change direction than those from the equivalents at M&S.

Then the challenge for the manufacturers is not just to keep chasing a declining market - but to find ways of growing the market. Triang, Airfix/Mainline and Lima did that by making models at more affordable prices than the competition. Growing the market isn't just good for Hornby but for all the other manufacturers and traders in the sector.

 

We must organise respective visits.

 

Rich

I'm thinking there ought to be a spur line somewhere which allows goods wagons to be transferred between the two stations - maybe a supposed continuation of the line to the Cattle Market on 'The Other Buckingham'. It would be quite good fun for you and Tony to have some identical wagons which could be transferred over the spur - if you both have running sessions at the same time, you could shunt some wagons on to your end of the spur, ring Tony, he places the same wagons on the Cattle Market line and shunts them into Buckingham GCR yard, then shunts some other wagons into the spur, calls you back, you put the identical wagons on your spur and shunt them back into your yard!

If it is any consolation to you, we have the same problems on t'other Buckingham. Fluorescent tubes and old eyes make it very difficult to tell colours apart and some have faded. So the cry goes up "where does pink go?" with the answer being "there is no pink, it is faded purple". Orange to red and green to blue are worst with white to yellow close behind.

 

Of course I can see them all perfectly and it is the other operators who need tests for colour blindness.........

 

But I am delighted to see the method used on the layout. The Denny way lives on.

 

Cheers,

 

Tony

Not wanting to hijack Richard's thread, but how's 'The Other Buckingham' coming on?

More likely that it shorted the terminals with its tail or something. Getting into a transformer needs tools that squirrels typically don't have access to...

I don't know, they're usually pretty good with nuts...

McAlpine's used to have a large fleet of steam locomotives used on construction projects. I believe the one now at Fawley is the only survivor, but I may be wrong.

I've often wondered what would have happened if the railways had refused to carry all the materials required for road-building projects given the adverse effect road transport has had on so much of our rail network. (Though of course up until the 1960s, the railways legally couldn't refuse to carry anything).

I've often wondered about some sort of "Model Railway bake off" - start off with say a dozen contestants. Each week the contestants carry out a different task relating to a model railway (e.g. build the baseboards, lay track etc). The person judged to have done the worst gets evicted until the last 2 or three have built complete layouts.

Now here's another idea - back in the day it used to be quite common for a station on a train set oval to represent several different stations as the train went on its journey e.g HST starts out at Paddington, 3 laps takes it to Slough, another 3 to Reading, Didcot, Swindon etc. How about something like a Scalextric lap counter in with the set, which counts the laps and plays appropriate announcements at the correct times? Maybe even designed in such a way that it could be connected to a laptop/tablet/TV set to display photos of the city the train's arriving in.

Granted, but in recent times, prices have gone up a lot, whilst wages have remained steady and disposable income has fallen. And of course, when a low-fi model is removed from the range to be replaced with a high-spec version, the price often doubles at a stroke. Yes, I know, better quality, but if you only want a model of a particular type of loco and aren't too fussed about all the extra detail (or even, don't want it - either if you're going to do a conversion/repaint, or give it to a slightly hamfisted youngster), you don't want to be paying double!

The reason the pre-China models weren't "just" children's toys is simple - they were the only models available so if an adult enthusiast wanted say an LMS Princess, he bought the Triang one, because it was that or do without.

I'm sure exactly the same would apply now if Hornby were to introduce a Railroad version of say a Bagnall 0-4-0F, a Class 387 or 1973 Tube stock(*). Provided the price reflected the lower quality, a model Tube enthusiast isn't going to say "I'm not going to buy it, it doesn't have....."

However it's clear from the catalogues and TV ads that the models were clearly aimed at children (or father & son).

* As well as a stand-alone model it could also be sold as two driving cars (trailing cars sold separately) in a train set with an oval of track, battery controller, toy bus and taxi and cardboard cutouts of a Tube station and say Buckingham Palace, Houses of Parliament, Tower of London etc (or a link to a website where these could be downloaded). It could then be sold through all the network of "tourist shops" found throughout London and beyond, as well as the more usual Argos/Toys R Us/model shops etc.

I've just got a new book "Triang Collectables" and it really is a bask in nostalgia. The opening of the red box at Christmas as most boys got a trainset somewhere between their 4th and 10th birthdays . The perusing of the catalogues looking at the large layouts wondering where all the track went. Great days. Unfortunately they are in the past . Reverting to a Triang Trainset plan isn't going to do it. I suspect you said that tongue in cheek

No, a big part of Hornby's problem is that they are chasing a shrinking demographic as the older modellers with more disposable income are gradually dying away. Add in the fact that costs (and therefore prices) are rising much faster than wages, it's no surprise the sales totals are going down. The more limited a production run is, the fewer units the development costs are spread over, so the unit price increases. So people become more hesitant about buying one (except the Peckett!) - Hornby end up with models left on the shelves, so next time they introduce a new model, they reduce the production run. Unit costs increase, sales fall, so they reduce the next production run etc. That's not a sustainable model.

If Hornby and the other manufacturers are to survive long-term, they need to get new modellers into the hobby (preferably young ones as they'll be in the hobby longer). I've exhibited at plenty of the more family oriented shows and there's no shortage of interested children coming along, likewise to preserved railways etc. I know plenty of parents who have bought train sets for their children, but because they haven't been encouraged to expand it with new rolling stock, accessories etc (because there's so little available at pocket money/birthday present prices), the child gets fed up of it after a few months and it goes in a cupboard/the bin.

Hornby need to stop worrying about the 'chequebook modellers' and start reaching out to the younger/less well-off modellers again. The IEP is a case in point. The original Hornby HST and APT were mass-produced, low-cost items aimed at bringing young people into the hobby and they flew of the shelves. Now the only version of the HST available is £250+ for two power cars, and a five coach IEP is going to be nudging £500. Yet these are the very trains that the next generation see (or will see!) day after day. Instead we have a Railroad Crosti 9F, which were all scrapped fifty years ago!

Would the people who are going to buy the high-res IEPs at £500 not have bought them if they were only available at say £100 for two driving cars and a centre coach, with extra centre coaches at say £25 each? Especially if the detailing parts could be obtained separately.

So what's needed isn't more super-detailed locos a diminishing number of people can afford, it's affordable and relevant models. If that means the wheelbase is a mm or so out because it shares a chassis with another loco to reduce costs, or the buffers aren't sprung, or there isn't a DCC socket, then in the words of Winsor Davies:

"Oh dear, how sad, never mind!"

As regards the space issue, there are ways round it. My childhood layout wasn't a massive empire, it was a 3' x 4' oval with sidings which stood behind a chest of drawers in term time and was laid out on the spare bed during school holidays, later graduating to an end-to-end layout on shelves round two walls. Bunk beds with a layout underneath have been built in the past, along with layouts which fold down from a wall or descend from the ceiling. Hornby catalogues in the past had sections devoted to how to find a home for a layout, along with how to wire it up and add the scenery (using Hornby accessories of course!).

At the very least, Hornby should put a mini-catalogue in each train set box ( a paper one, not a CD, though one of those could be included as well) showing how to turn a train set into a layout, and giving ideas for further expansion (along with a list of dealers). Copies could also be distributed via shows, heritage railways, modelling clubs etc. But in order for that to work, there needs to be a suitable range available to encourage expansion.

Had a visit today from a friend who is into pre-war BMWs. We went to check up on two that are hidden away in Suffolk, slowly deteriorating because the owner won't do anything with them or sell them to someone that will. His collection includes several other pre WW2 cars suffering the same fate.

 

Why do people do it?

I believe one of the Peugeot convertibles driven by Peter Falk in Columbo (only four were ever exported to the USA IIRC, and they all ended up in either the original or 1990s episodes!) suffered a similar fate.

And I've never seen the sketch - only Pierce Brosnan quoting it at John Cleese in Die Another Day!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfHmKXUu010

would see a retain to Triang days.

 

 

Best thing that could happen in my opinion :-)