jjb1970

This looks terrific for a Railroad model and provided the paint finish (and there's not a lot for them to do on that with a 9F!) this looks more than good enough for me to buy and be very happy with. Given it is not the sort of choice I imagine will be top of many train set want lists or the sort of passing trade wanting a Flying Scotsman I found it odd they did this as a Railroad model rather than as a main range model however I am extremely happy they are doing a Crosti 9F and if the Railroad model cuts the mustard as a good model regardless of being in the downspec range then I guess we should pay a bit less than the alternative and still get a good model so all good.

We have one manufacturer (Heljan) who have made their own niche making short lived, sometimes one off prototype and pilot scheme diesels so I'd imagine that nothing is too limited or obscure to be of interest on that basis provided a manufacturer is confident the models will sell.

I think (assuming Hornby are making a new King, still TBC...) then there is no reason both models cannot do well. I would expect both to be positioned differently in the market in several ways, Hattons will almost certainly make many more variants whereas the Hornby one will be much more widely available. On price, quality etc nobody knows how they will compare. Looking at SK's last blog it would appear that Hornby remain committed to their policy of compromising on certain features to control cost inflation for the long term. Looking at pre-release pictures of the Drummond 700 and D16/3 they do now seem to be getting a much better understanding of where to compromise and where to retain details. On current form we can expect a Hornby model to have a three pole motor, basic zinc alloy cut outs for bearings etc. There is no doubt this is a step backwards from their five pole skew wound motor etc but the more pertinent question is what effect does this have in the real world? From what I can see the real difference in performance is nothing like as significant as the noise about these changes around the forums. On detail, all we can do is speculate, but given that the existing King is not a bad model (although certainly it is basic next to current releases) it would be completely senseless for them or Steam to bankroll development of a new model unless it was better in a meaningful way unless they were going for a real down spec Railroad version. And I really cannot see Steam going for that. On delivery, yes Hornby have had a dire period but they do seem to be turning a corner and all of the manufacturers have had issues with supply. On QC, call me very lucky but all of the Hornby, Bachmann, Dapol and Heljan models I've bought have been fine. From time to time models come with detached detail parts but they're easy to put back in place and it is pretty much inevitable that this will happen from time to time if we want these fine parts factory fitted. This could mean I am extraordinarily lucky or it may mean that the QC afflictions of all the manufacturers (and look at the different forums on this section and you see plenty of QC whinges about all the manufacturers) are perhaps not as bad as the Internet can make them appear. At the moment I see no evidence to support any suggestions that either the Hornby or DJ/Hattons version will be either less susceptible to QC issues or to development delays. On engagement, I do expect DJM to have far superior engagement with the public, that is something that DJ is particularly good at and he deserves our admiration for that. Equally, Hornby are no different to other large model suppliers in not inviting the sort of engagement that small niche players like DJ and Rapido do. Does that make these small players better? In some ways yes, but I really do not see it as a particular problem with the bigger players either. On pre-order, I will wait and see. This may be a risk but I am happy to take the chance of missing out so that I can see what the models are like and then decide to buy. Given the number of variants being produced by Hattons and the past record of Hattons models I am really not worried about missing out by not pre-ordering. Ditto with Hornby, models may sell out very quickly but I still find that the models can still be bought without having to pre-order. Given that we have zero evidence on which will be better, how much the Hornby model will cost (and given things with China I'm taking the Hattons price with a pinch of salt at the moment) and when there are two competing models coming out I'd rather wait and see. Will I buy a King? Yes. More than one? Almost certainly. However I'll wait to judge which ones to buy once I see the models and really have no inherent leaning towards either Hornby or DJM as I have nothing against either and think both are worthy of our support.

If any manufacturer has commenced a project to model something and a competitor announces the same prototype then it makes absolute sense to move a public announcement forward. I've no idea how far either manufacturer is into their project, if they've already spent quite a bit of money then they're unlikely to walk away however if there has been no real spend yet then they can make an assessment of whether it is worth continuing if the same model is to be done by a rival. At the moment we are seeing a lot of comment around the Internet about models that haven't been built yet and about which nobody has even seen a CAD other than Hornby spoilers (and even this assumes Hornby are doing a King). We don't know how the models will compare, one may be a lot better, they may both be pretty much the same or one may be a bit better but more expensive in which case people may consider the cheaper alternative the better buy. Who knows, there are all sorts of scenarios and at the moment we are seeing arguments about a teaser from Hornby and an announcement from DJ/Hattons. I have confidence that both can make a great model and I wouldn't be at all surprised if we end up with two fantastic King models. A year ago I'd have said that purely based on the then current performance of Hornby, the issues with design clever and poor supply etc that I'd expect the DJ/Hatton to be the one more likely to be both a better model and to be delivered sooner. However in recent weeks Hornby finally seem to have started delivering models and the images of some of the new tooling indicate they're emerging from their troubled period with some fine models. So now I really would not like to speculate on which, if either, will be the better option. Only time will tell.

The existing Hornby King exists in that grey zone where it is clearly not the best King you could make and so it should be the case that a new King will have clear blue water between it and the old one yet at the same time it is not a bad model and is still more than good enough to sell as a lower cost model. Assuming it is indeed sold at low cost, it is past punching its weight as a main range model I think.

Bring both models on. I have nothing against either manufacturer, the Heljan models I've bought have all been beautiful runners (better than most of my other models) and superbly finished. I know they drop a few klangers but when they get it right their models are excellent. Equally I have every confidence the DJM offering will be a good'un. I'll wait and make a decision which to go for when they're released, indeed I can see myself ending up with both.

Dear me, talk about buses!! If Hornby are doing a new King and are dropping a spoiler folling the DJM/Hattons announcement then it is great news for GWR fans. If Hornby know that DJM are going out to make a model with the wow factor then somehow I don't think Hornby will do this to Railroad standards, especially when their existing King is more than good enough to sell as a Railroad model at a discount. Given the track record of DJ at Dapol (Western, NBL Type 2, Beattie well tank etc) I also believe the DJM/Hattons model will be a cracking model. This could be very interesting, and if it is true (and given we have already seen Heljan and DJM both announce a competing release, the LMS diesels from Bachmann and Dapol/Hattons etc it seems a fairly common occurence to get duplicate releases) then the real winner will be GWR enthusiasts.

I take the point on the availability of S/H models as an alternative to kit building and also a pool of less expensive models. That is certainly a great resource although I've tended to find properly good kit built models are generally not cheap and there is always that concern at how good the kit builder has been. If you buy from a trusted dealer then the dealer can often give a pretty good opinion of kit built models they've bought in S/H (good dealers tend to appreciate that gilding the lily so to speak to offload stinkers to the uninformed is counter productive long term) or at least warn you that it is kit built and sold as seen but I'd be more hesitant about buying kit built models via EBay and other such sources. If you can see the model then you can make your own decision about what you think of it, ask to see a test track run etc,unless there are good high res pictures from a number of angles it is hard to get the same feel if buying mail order. Alternatively, if you know who built it then that may give you enough confidence to buy. I know there are buyer protection schemes but those can get a bit messy. I also wasn't that impressed by the Heljan Mk.1 coaches but I have found some of their diesels to be very well done when admiring them when bought by friends. They seem to run well and the finish is good. Haven't had the pleasure of seeing the Ixion models in the flesh yet but they get good reviews. I have a few times wavered and been close to succumbing to some of the Heljan diesels but have resisted so far. My worry is where it could go cost wise, much as I'd love to indulge myself with O gauge I can't afford to and I fear if I did buy a 47 or Western or something it'd be the start of a long and slippery road I'd rather avoid at the moment at least.

The railroad thing is confusing me a bit as looking at this and also the pics of the crosti 9F in Hornby Magazine they seem to have narrowed the differential between railroad and top line models to the point where there doesn't seem to be that much difference. Not saying that is a bad thing if railroad are offering bargain slightly de-spec versions of models that'd be considered perfectly acceptable to most modelers but I am a bit confused by how it will all fit together.

I think the big question is to what extent a range of affordable RTR can grow the hobby. If the O gauge hobby remains static in terms of numbers then I suspect this will be quite a short experiment from Dapol or alernatively their prices will go up to compensate for low volumes. If they can grow the market which appears to be one of the underpinning ideas for this foray into O then existing demand scenarios are not really relevant. Whether they will succeed in creating new demand will be shown in time, I really do not know. I hope they do, there are a lot of modellers who would love to do something in O but are put off by the costs and having to work with kits for almost everything. By going for small prototypes suitable for a small low-ish cost first attempt at doing O I think they have made a sensible choice if they want to grow the market by hooking new entrants. If you buy one of these and a few RTR wagons to make a little end to end or O gauge micro layout (micro being very much a relative term in O......) then it still won't be cheap but it is within the realms of many thinking "I'll have a go and see how it goes.." and if it doesn't go well they can sell the stock (even if they don't get much for it) and aren't risking ending up with a few half built kits. If they can get people on this hook then it could really grow O gauge and the kit manufacturers should benefit greatly as some of those people look beyond what they can buy RTR. Heljan seem to have found a nice niche for their RTR O gauge models although they decided on a very different strategy in going for modern diesels and jumping straight into big main line trains rather than building up from small stuff.

Hornby have been very open about their change of direction towards pulling back on high end features to try and reduce price inflation. Switching from a 5 pole to a 3 pole motor is part of that and if manufacturers were trying to cut costs it is probably one of the better places to start given that in the real world most customers probably won't notice a difference and when their main rival uses 3 pole motors without recieving complaints or suffering loss of sales for it. Whether or not people support this move towards a different detail-price balance is another question entirely but at least Hornby have been very open about it so their customers are aware of it.

As with many things the more relevant questions are not so much whether a 5 pole skew wound motor is better than a 3 pole motor (it is) but whether the 3 pole motor offers acceptable performance and whether the chassis is a good design. My own experience tends to indicate that whilst a 5 pole skew wound motor is better that in the real world models with 3 poles motors work perfectly well and that the chassis design (pick ups, weight, balance, bearings etc) has a bigger and more noticeable effect.

That is a bit of a misrepresentation. For a start, I don't think anybody is happy with inaccuracy, everybody wants a model to look like the prototype and that infers at least some degree of accuracy. People make a decision on where to compromise between what is acceptable and absolute accuracy, considering running quality, accuracy, cost, availability, robustness and probably lots more. Every model is a compromise at some level and I see very, very few models that can not be criticised at some level if you really want to find fault. If the model looks like a good representation of the prototype many are willing to make their own judgement of whether or not it is acceptable based on their own sensitivities to things like cost and realism. If you are at the extreme end of wanting the highest level of accuracy then that is your choice and you have every right to be of that opinion just as others have every right to decide that for £200 RTR they can accept the model not being perfect. Nobody objects to criticism of any model, what I think people dislike is criticism which becomes intolerant of any other opinion. What is rubbish? I would bet money that this RTR Terrier will be better finished and run better than many kit built models that admittedly have the potential to be better than the Dapol version. On leaving alone, I agree that if you are not happy with the model then you should be left alone to not buy it, the converse is true and people that see this for what it is, a nice good value little model which is a nice way to dip a toe into O gauge should be left alone to enjoy it without being dismissed as idiots who are happy with any old rubbish.

Indeed, the Western was an outstanding model that is not just a fine Dapol model, it is one of the finest OO diesel models period. The NBL Type 2's were also very well done. Some of their N Gauge models have been extremely good too but they do seem to be inconsistent at times and veer between the very good and models that leave room for improvement.

These really do look very promising and a lot better than I suspect many expected after some of the recent new models from Hornby and their "design clever" ideas. If Hornby have found a sweet spot between reducing some detail to keep price increases under control whilst retaining enough detail and a good quality of finish to satisfy most of their customers which looks to be the case just looking at the pics in this thread then they may very well have found a very nice position in the market. £110 for a newly tooled model is pretty acceptable if the model lives up to the promise of the pictures.

This is an affordable O gauge model, OK it may not be perfect but it will be a lot better than most people will be able to achieve from a kit and it undeniably looks like a terrier. If this hooks people on O gauge then it will be another engine to grow the scale by opening it up to people who feel intimidated by kits and cannot afford to keep paying custom builders to build and paint kits for everything they'd want/need for a layout. Some of the people this could draw into O gauge may then very well go onto kit building and higher end models. I think the efforts Dapol (and others such as Ixion and Heljan) to bring a range of relatively affordable, good value O gauge RTR to the market should be welcomed even if they do have some short comings.

Something I will give the USA is that of all the national delegations at IMO the US is the only one which is made up entirely of staff drawn from regulatory agencies such as the EPA and the USCG. And their delegation is extremely highly respected for the technical competence and capability of its members. Every other national delegation that sends anything more than their permanent representative relies on people seconded by industry, such as classification societies technical specialists (me), ship builders, engine builders, ship owner representatives etc etc. Now for the most part those seconded from industry bring the technical experience and knowledge that national delegations need and cannot source from internal resources, but there is always the question of who those people are representing. I like to think that in working for an industrial provident society I'm free of commercial pressures to push regulations for the benefit of local ship owners and such like but even in my case there is no doubt that my employer has its own interests which I am expected to safeguard. If you ever observe the voting and plenary interventions then there it can feel very much like the Eurovision song contest.

On the role of Transport Canada, there is a general issue with many regulators that they are under resourced and what resources they do have are often squandered on whatever the political idea of the day is and business process tasks. Another issue is that in many cases the prosecution budget is so small that everybody knows that even if they're caught by a regulator the chances of real consequences are minor.

In a sense the Herald of Free Enterprise is a text book example for a serious accident with multiple causes. The media concentrated on the bow doors and it is absolutely true that sailing with open bow doors to reduce the turn around was the immediate cause. The media did give some attention to the corporate culture of TT/P&O (I actually felt sorry for P&O as they'd just bought TT and were not responsible for TT's culture but it was the P&O name that garnered all the disapprobation) which was driving such short turn arounds leading to unsafe practices. There was some attention to manning levels and hours of work but not that much. The part that was not really appreciated by many was the inherent vulnerability of Ro-Ro type vessels to free surface effects on the vehicle deck. Since failure of a bow door is an entirely foreseeable event (even if it wasn't the result of deliberate action) then the question is why did regulators, class societies etc accept these designs in the full knowledge of their vulnerability? In 1994 the ferry Estonia went down with a truly shocking loss of life (852 dead) due to failure of the bow visor and subsequent catastrophic loss of stability. That was 7 years after the Herald of Free Enterprise. The vulnerability of Ro-Ro vessels was known before the Herald of Free Enterprise. The UK made efforts to secure international agreement for new Ro-Ro construction standards and found few if any supporters. After the Estonia there were changes to the SOLAS Convention but more fundamental improvements to Ro-Ro stability were limited to those countries who signed the Stockholm Agreement, this is not a general standard. After the Herald of Free Enterprise the UK Carver Report recommended formal safety assessment for shipping and applied much of the same rationale as was proposed over 20 years earlier in the Robens report to shipping. This despite a lot of effort is still not really accepted by the maritime industry despite an IMO resolution supporting formal safety assessment. This may surprise people but there is no requirement for anything like the equivalent of a safety case for a ship. You build to prescriptive classification society rules and meet applicable statutory requirements and if those standards are not great then it is somebody else's fault. I regularly get told by ship yards (and I'm not talking about the bottom feeders) that they are not interested in formal safety assessment, it adds cost, it adds uncertainty and as far as they're concerned it adds no benefit. There is a concept called the "swiss cheese" model which is a nice easy to comprehend way is illustrating that almost all accidents happen because of a result of multiple failures, the swiss cheese slices representing safety barriers all line up in such a way that the holes are all aligned too so there is a clear path through all of the barriers to create a disaster. Whilst it may seem simplistic it is a very good way of reducing the argument to something anybody can understand. In the Herald of Free Enterprise multiple things lined up: the inherent stability problems of Ro-Ro designs the practice of using draught from airflow through open doors to ventilate the vehicle decks manning levels lack of interlocks or indicators on the bridge a sea state that meant the waves would enter the vehicle deck And other factors too. Corporate cultures generally are difficult to quantify but in my opinion are absolutely fundamental. At a certain level the fact that regulators allow designs with a high level of vulnerability does not prevent operators building above minimum standards whilst the commercial pressures that drive bad practices tend to come down from high levels.

If I have slipped into bragging I apologise, my intent was not so much to brag as to praise the fact that bodies like the HSE and the various industry specific inspectorates, authorities and investigation branches have been doing a very good job and we should tell them that. I'd be just as quick to castigate them when they get it wrong, and they do get it wrong at times.

In a sense I agree, but it is exactly because we are talking about peoples lives that it is good that this subject is of interest and generates discussion. Safe systems of work are only as good as the corporate cultures and people implementing them and it is this culture that we should never become complacent about.

That figure surprised many and was received with some amusement by many but I actually think recognising that our own trains are pretty good is something that we are very bad at. I have to say, having used a lot of trains in a lot of countries I find our services very competitive. We lag behind in high speed rail for sure but overall in terms of getting from A to B I really think UK trains do as good a job as any and better than many. The only railway I use which really does make me cringe when I come home and do a comparison is Japan, Japanese railways really are something else.

Well, I do attend the International Maritime Organisation on behalf of a national delegation (the UN agency for maritime affairs), I do work for the European Commission and travel internationally on a regular basis working with clients from various countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America so whilst I wouldn't presume to know every safety regulation in the world I do probably have a lot more exposure to international safety regulations and attitudes than most. The Herald of Free Enterprise is an interesting example, after it there was a move to improve ferry survivability standards and it took the loss of the Estonia to really concentrate minds in Europe into some of Europe (not all) signing the Stockholm Agreement. And it wasn't the UK that stalled things. Most overseas countries openly admit that formal safety assessment mechanisms have been largely imported from the British model.

I think we all recognise that we should not judge North American rail roads based on this incident, there is no doubt that there is plenty of extremely professional, well managed and safe railroading in NA just as all countries have their chancers. Many of us are great enthusiasts of NA trains, speaking for myself I love North Eastern roads (particularly Pennsylvania and Conrail) as well as Canadian trains and if judged purely by how much I spend then my model railway fleet is mainly North American (though not in numbers of models by a long way). In terms of rules, procedures and everything else that forms a safe system of work then there is a balance between a robust system and keeping the system usable. This is a potential conflict in most safety critical industries and sometimes the systems can become unwieldy and too complicated for those who have to use them. This is not really related to size as I've seen such systems that's produce a stack of paper much more than an inch thick and which were very well constructed, logical and usable but rather the technical content. I've also seen procedures three or four pages long that were almost incomprehensible to all but the person that wrote them. If the system is well constructed (in modern management speak, the architecture....) then people are more than capable of learning and using very heavy safe systems of work. I know I keep banging on about electricity but there we had 12 basic rules, Rules A1 - A8 plus 4 general provisions. Those 12 basic rules covered everything and took up 4 pages in the rule book. There was then a mountain of additional rules to implement these 12 basic rules, procedures, management instructions, local management instructions etc etc which if collected into a single volume would have needed a heavy lifting risk assessment but because everything flowed from those 12 basic rules and were built up in a logical fashion it was actually a very user friendly system which almost anybody could learn pretty quickly.

As well as self sufficiency the change in energy costs for North American industry is helping job creation by offsetting some of the labour cost disadvantage relative to emerging economies. Unfortunately the UK has politicians that think pumping up energy costs for industry is sensible, it might actually be sensible if we had a genuine plan for weaning ourselves off fossil fuels and/or imported energy but when we pay inflated prices and policy is a mess it is not good.