Andy Hayter

Well yes - but definitely no. I have a Legrande double socket where the internal connections on the socket means that on one side the right pin is live and on the other the live pin is left. Further differences such as no ring mains and very limited daisy chaining of supply lines makes French electrics a wholly different world apart from the cable colours and even there, after a switch you can (or could if the regs changed this week) use any coloured cable. We have orange and purple as well as grey at various points in the house which was completely rewired some 12 years ago.

I chose pregrouping for 2 reasons. 1. It is the area of UK modelling that interests me. I am familiar with the shortcomings of the offerings. 2. Rather inconveniently for your argument, from Andy York's last survey, there are as many people modelling Pregrouping as the contemporary scene. 9.2% PG vs 8.8% current scene. The idea that I don't remember it so it is unimportant/doesn't deserve to exist does not hold water.

And the problems highlighted are not restricted to modelling current practice. Try modelling pregrouping 1900 - 1923. There have been a pleasing plethora of models released or promised in the last 10 years but try making a realistic train. Quite a number of locomotives but fewer wagons, very few coaches and almost no goods brake vans to finish off that rake of wagons. With the possible exception of the GWR where my knowledge is lacking we have SECR with a passenger rake to run behind a variety of locos released. Some open and closed goods vehicles plus a brake van. LSWR just makes it to the list with EFE's just released cross country coaches but no goods brake van for the goods stock. NER with a petrol railcar. I exclude the generic offerings as not close enough to prototype. The reasons are very much the same. Locomotives - especially in attractive liveries - sell. Coaches might sell but the cost of development is very similar to that of a locomotive but the sales price is around one third. Liveries can be just as complicated as a locomotive so the opportunity for generating margin is severely reduced. Wagons sell in some number but you only need one brake van for perhaps every 5-10 wagons sold. Your comment, "for a great many areas there is nothing available RTR" equally applies.

Assuming you mean a young kitten, which would be the easiest if your dogs are not aggressive, you won't get one early in the new year. Cats mate from around Feb/March to July with kittens born May through to early September. We get the bulk of our arrivals (stray kittens) from August to November after they have weaned at 4-6 weeks. What we do to avoid cat on cat aggression is to place the newcomer in a large cage 1m x 60cm x 35cm placed in the living area where the incumbents are regularly present. They become accustomed to one anothers scent and potential aggression released through the bars of the cage

The decision to sell or retain shares is/was partly a personal one (financial circumstances) and a view on the stability of a company and the overall market. In the days when I received shares as a bonus, it was from a "rock solid""bellweather" company (which no longer exists) and from the UK subsidiary of a major German manufacturer, so the extra bonus of 20% of paying no tax after 5 years ( as @Mike Bellamy has said) was a definite incentive to hold onto the shares. And some of course saved 45% (now only 40%) but times change. Judging by the declared shareholdings of Hornby directors in the past it seems that they received shares as bonuses. Just to get us back on subject.

This is a common situation where a company rewards its staff though bonuses based on shares rather than cash. The company has to have the ability to top up its shareholding in order to make these payments - hence the authorisation to buy back shares. Receiving the bonus as shares has an interesting psychological incentive. Having done a good job and received a block of shares, the employee is then encouraged to do a good job ongoing - firstly the get another bonus next year and secondly to help keep the company healthy and keep or improve the share price which directly impacts the value of that share block when it is surrendered.

I have just checked a recipe for Flammkuechen which confirms in part what I thought: It suggests the base can be bread dough or unleavened pastry. It is the latter that I have always had. I have to confess that the ones I make are with pre-prepared bases but the results ate certainly of the yeast free variety. https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/jun/24/how-to-make-the-perfect-flammekueche-recipe-felicity-cloake

Definite thumbs down on filo. That is going too thin and muktiple layers would give a very different result.

No it's what happens if you go into an industrial freezer. I am led to believe that a former UK prime minister knows all about it.

Freezing here too. Got a call from the delivery driver at 11:00 asking if he could leave our parcel at the drop point (11km away) since we were the only delivery he had up the hill. Since I had a gas bottle that needed changing, I agreed. Bright blue sky and temperatures still well below zero following last night's light fall of snow meant that all of the car doors bar one were frozen shut. Following a period of scraping and running the engine with the blowers on meant that I could eventually set off with clear windscreen. As I left the village however I was rewarded with a superb view across the valley to the Vercors, les Ecrins and finally Mont Blanc. It's a view we only get perhaps 30 days each year. The Rhone valley itself was filled with a brownish haze courtesy of the traffic and industries. And that's one reason why we live on a slightly remote mountain.

Had both eyes done one year apart and went from strongly myopic with astigmatism to near perfect vision. I do now need glasses for reading. As has been noted, the down side for a modeller is that you cannot do the close work. Solved with 2 pairs of cheap reading glasses (as opposed to the prescribed pair at 1.5 in both eyes). One pair is 2.5 and does for most close work and the second is 3.5 for really close work

Hi Keith, regarding "B" I think this a Pfalzbahn wagon recently brought into the Bavaria, state railway. A bit of history: The Pfalz, located on the west bank of the Rhine just above Alsace, was part of the Bavarian State and was nicknamed Bavarian Siberia. The bad guys got sent there to eke out a tough existence. Railways came in the name if the Pfalzbahn which operated as an independent company into the start of the 20th century when it was incorporated into the Bavarian State Railways even though there was no direct connection between the two parts of the system with the Badische and Wuerttemburgische State railway systems between. Ludwigshafen (shown on the side of the wagon) was a major city in the Pfalz.

The whole is called Tarte au Flame, Flammkuchen or tarte flambée

You are of course very perceptive and the meal failed to include any of those vital food elements, which probably accounts for the fact that a mere 8 hours later I had a sudden urge to partake of a slice of pork pie - or paté en croute as it is known here. To make amends this lunchtime I had pizza - or the Alsace/Pfalz equivalent which might not meet PB's demanding definition. A very thin base but with no tomato topping. Instead the base is covered with a sour cream and yoghurt mix and topped with finely chopped onion and lardons - but like traditional pizza then topped off with flavouring items of your choice. In my case soft goats cheese, which is traditional, and black olives*, which is not. * proper ones with the stone in - not the destoned ones which are actually green olives dyed black.

I have to fully agree about the brands @jjb1970. I have only experience with Arnold and Jouef but I think the my observations would extend to the other brands as well. While Arnold are a long way from being the major brand in Germany (That is Maerklin), they are widely regarded in the smaller scales and until Fleischmann became solely an N gauge brand Arnold were certainly a leader in N. Germans will tend to buy German products. Rename Arnold as Hornby International and regardless that there has been no other change, in the minds of the public it ceases to be German. Jouef was (and in the minds of the public still is) the French model railway company, in much the same way that Hornby is the British equivalent. In fact Jouef is officially marketed as Hornby Jouef, which works because Hornby used to have its own branding and manufacture in France as Hornby Acho. There are still folk around that remember that. Nevertheless I have yet to hear anyone talk about Hornby Jouef. They just refer to the company as Jouef. Assuming that you did go ahead and rename the brands under one umbrella brand, what would you do with the old brands. The brand names have value. You would then probably want/need to maintain their trade registration to avoid a competitor from taking the names (names only) over. But if you are going to protect the names what are you going to do with the brands? Selling the brand name to a competitor seems like a poor strategy.

No. Not like that anyway. Hornby make the interest payments; not the shareholders. But why would they want to kill the golden goose? Unless of course you have a better way of generating cash at 13 precent or better. The most they could get back would be the money they had lent and the shares would effectively be worthless although they may have some contractual claims giving them preferential treatment..

Freezing cold all day - literally, as in below zero. Lunch spent with our walking group in a local-ish hostelry*. Excellent company and value for money - 20€ for 3 courses, aperitives, wine and coffee - and excellent quality to boot. In total 3.5 hours which demonstrates the benefits of slow cuisine in the company of good friends. * 7 miles away but 2000 ft lower down.

I am sure the full profit/loss account for these guys will be quite complex but in a simplified view provided Hornby remains as a going concern they are on a winner. All the while the results are OK but lacklustre then the loan facility remains in place and is a nice source of income. Following a period of sustained profits, the share price should rise and given a scarcity on the open market (since they are the majority holders) the price could move significantly. Win Win with the only downside being financial collapse of the company, upon which, I am sure we would find, they have first dibs on assets after HMRC.

I understand the comment and if you or I were to buy a few shares that would certainly apply. However regarding the main shareholders, there is something you overlook. The principle shareholder has given Hornby a revolving door credit of (IIRC) GBP 10m. Hornby can call on this as and when they require for short term cash flow or investment. The accounts show GBP 653,000 being repaid as interest in the 6 months. Simplistically you could double that for the year as an annual rate (In fact it is more than double but let's keep things simple.). So 1.3m return on a 10m loan facility (13 percent) is a nice little earner and a lot more than we could get from the savings account. You may think these boys are silly but they are a sight smarter financially than me.

But I will hazard a wild guess that Essex does not enjoy regular winter lows in the high minus teens or occasionally twenties. A lot of folk don't understand or believe that we can get such cold winters this far south in France until I remind them that looking across the Rhone valley I can see the peaks that people ski from.

While I will admit that my lemon trees have been brought in about a week ago, they (and olives) are surprisingly frost resistant with most varieties able to withstand -10°C or worse. That reminds me: must bring the olives in.

While those comments should apply to major industries such as steel, vehicle production, cement; I don't think they are transferable to niche industries like model railways. The opportunities to split production close to the markets around the world must be vanishingly small. The argument also misses the point that it is possible to manufacture in another country and still repatriate the profits back to the home country. On the points made by others: Autonomous brand separation - my thoughts on reading this was exactly the same as those posted by @wombatofludham. Having been through this personally in the 80s with the eventual divestment in the 90s, such brand separation does open the doors to divestment. It also allows management to get a clearer view of profit and loss in each product*. None of this means that the Hornby brand is up for grabs though. It may well be that the focus will fall on other brands. It will be interesting to see how far the autonomy is created - to individual brands in the modem railway sphere (Hornby, Jouef, Arnold etc) or whether model railways will be treated as a cohesive business group. There are arguments for doing both - negotiating with Chinese producers being one advantage of keeping a widely embracing group; while it could reduce the opportunity to easily sell off an individual railway brand. Has Hornby had its day? - Well judging by this thread, with this group of posters/analysts, I would say its importance has certainly waned. 10 years ago when I joined RMWeb, the discussion of Hornby results a couple of days in would have run to close to or more than double figures of pages, yet here we are on page 2. Competition has certainly reduced the importance of Hornby to the serious rtr modeller. However the fact that we would seem to hold Hornby as less important does not mean that it is less important in the overall market. It could just be that we are the dinosaurs and not Hornby. * This can be a two edged sword, since it is likely to overlook the benefits of working as a group. The opportunity to sell all brands through the same outlets in a simplified way, as already noted, being just one. It might also annoy the trade outlets if for example they have to order individually for each brand and get invoices and have to make payments similarly - assuming they don't have to do this already.

Winter has arrived here. Doing the nightly rounds of cleaning litter trays, feeding cats, letting in those cats that should be in and letting out those who prefer to be out overnight etc, in my travels between the house and the grange it was noticeably snowing a fine snow. I doubt it will settle, the ground still being a bit too warm but a couple of door mats have a light covering.

As a pre-grouping modeller, pre-orders are pretty much a way of life. Either it is a requirement from the manufacturer/commissioner or the models sell out just before the reviews come out.

Liquid flux man here. I have used Carr's for years but when the bottle ran dry I was forced to switch to home made. The nature of the product is that it cannot be sent by international post. So 85% phosphoric acid let down to a little under 12% seems to do everything Carr's red label did. If you cannot wash the joint off, then a light spray with dilute bicarbonate of soda in water will take care of any acid residue.