Cyberspice

Plenty of companies in the UK make things. They just don't make them in the UK. We're the ideas people. You just can't compete with far eastern manufacturing costs. Either you pay people a decent wage but then can only afford to employ a few of them or you pay them a pittance but can produce products. However that is changing. Costs of transportation together with manufacturing optimisations where the designers and the production designers can actually talk to one another makes the difference between far eastern production and home production less of an issue. So for some quantities (e.g. the raspberry pi) it can be made here again. Again for premium products its worth it because there is a profit margin. Where the margins are less its harder. I recently bought a couple of 00 gauge items from Hornby and Bachmann. Compared to when I was young they're 1000% improved. The level of detail you now get comes at the cost of overseas manufacturing. You simply can't afford to do that here. Peco have said they wont make an engine for precisely that reason. The downside to overseas production is the iterations you have to go through with the manufacturers before they actually get the product right. That takes time. I suspect that's what Heljan are going through now!

I think its great news. If I was going model anything from my life time then it would be anything from the tail end of slam door EMUs from the end of the blue era through to the current post privatisation world of DB Schenker, DRS, Virgin and wot not. My only knowledge of steam is preserved lines and the steam specials on Network rail. My love of narrow gauge comes from holidays in Wales when I was small. There's more narrow gauge line in the UK than there has been for a long time. And its all preserved running everything from little hunslets through to awesome NGG16s. So naturally my narrow gauge layout is a preserved line because that's what I know. I don't care that Heljan's offering is based on one of three prototypes from North Devon or whatever. They make quality models and it will mean I can have a nice reliable model on my line together with some R-T-R stock from Peco...

In light of poor Jenny's news I'm going to be gluing RFID tags in to each of my locos.