Coryton

Given the much greater sales of train sets that Hornby must have, I would expect their turnover to be higher in model trains. However the margins on train sets are clearly much lower than for individual rolling stock and track etc., so profit is another story.

I wouldn't criticise the new Hornby Junior range, if it's anything like the recent Marklin "My World" trains. They are excellent for young children, robust enough to be laid out on the carpet like the old clockwork trains and can be left to young children to play with on their own in a way you couldn't with a regular Hornby train set. The Marklin trains run on regular H0 track so there's some kind of upward compatibility into "real" model trains - there's even an adaptor truck from the simple magnetic couplings to regular H0 ones. Given the rate at which the Marklin range is expanding, it must be doing quite well, and it seems very sensible for Hornby to emulate them. In short, I see this as a very positive move...assuming it's as good as the Marklin product.

Well who knows...come next Christmas we might find the same cheapo car slot tracks and non-descript train sets but instead of being unknown makes they'll have Scalextric and Hornby on the boxes...

Absolutely, but in this case the Hornby name was used for arguably a better range of models, and certainly not for something cheap and nasty trading on the brand name. Have a look at what Sports Direct did to the Karrimor brand...

Well if they're getting the product development side right but are let down by the top management, it suggests that there's something there for a successful restructuring of some form (unpleasant as that is likely to be for those being restructured). As for Bachmann, they have had significant price increases, but they don't seem to have combined price increases with a policy of making life hard for their distributors - indeed they've limited discounting presumably to help small shops compete against the box-shifters. I find it quite refreshing to visit the Bachmann web site and just find a list of models and prices, not an on-line shop.

If Bachmann and Hornby are both heading in the same direction, it suggests that they've correctly identified where they can make money. Having said that, Hornby do seem to be catering for the lower-price, less-detailed end of the market in some cases, such as the new Mk 1 coaches. Both Railroad and non-railroad are less detailed than Bachmann, but also considerably cheaper. I suspect locomotives are much more likely to sit in a display case and never be run than a coach.

Let's suppose that Hornby is broken up (and of course it's by no means clear that this will happen). There are two things of interest to most of us here - the tooling and the brand itself. The history of model railways in the UK is a complicated one of brands and tooling changing hands, and there's no reason in principle that the two have to go together. Clearly there are various possible scenarios. Probably the most disturbing for most of us here would be for the name to be split from the tooling, and the name used to sell something cheap and nasty (yes worse than the current train-set 0-4-0 - think of the battery powered cheap plastic train and a loop of track type things that make an appearance at Christmas each year). This could probably generate significant sales from people who don't know any better while the name gradually becomes (irretrievably?) tarnished.

Bachmann already do porthole stock, including a brake third that looks to me very much like the one in the picture.

That would make a nice model...special edition maybe? Assuming that there is already a model of this in a more conventional livery.

If so I'm sure we can fill many more pages going round and round it again.

I didn't see anything in the latest Railway Modeller that hasn't already been said here - they will be releasing Bullhead flexi-track, and points may come later depending on how many people find it worthwhile to buy the track even though they can't get PECO points that sensibly go with it (not quite how they put it). I don't think they gave a timescale. There were a couple of pictures.

Should't railroad track be flat-bottom with spikes?

I think nobody has mentioned this before, but 150+14x combinations are standard on the Cardiff Valley Line services. It is extremely rare to see two 150's coupled together, but they often run in multiple with a Pacer. I don't know the reason but assume that they want to spread the benefit of the greater seating capacity of a Sprinter around as many trains as possible. On the Valley Lines, they don't get much use out of the end-corridor gangways on the 150's. Or the 153's, which I have only ever seen run as single units.

I did wonder... The nearest length of bullhead rail to me is shorter than that. And consists of two different weights joined together. Code 75 and 100 maybe?

I hope it will come in longer lengths than that!

I've learnt over the years that it's hard to underestimate design costs. There's lots of reasons for them to go up. Not many that make them go down.

Maybe. A rather different view to the usual doom and gloom that British locomotives are just too small. It would be interesting to know to what extent GE have covered their (presumably rather significant) design costs with the initial 30 locomotives. Of course with the class 59, EMD went ahead with an initial order of 4, though they certainly got the repeat orders they were no doubt hoping for.

But - given that the demand for new diesel locomotives in the UK is somewhat limited, and the rest of Europe has a more generous loading gauge, the development costs might come out to be rather large per engine sold. So this case "Operators claim they can't buy compliant engines as the builders don't offer anything and want £££££s in order to supply a compliant design" might (for once) not be so unreasonable? Of course there are plenty of UK loading gauge 66's happily running around the rest of Europe at present, many of which were originally used in the UK so presumably the cost of bringing them back to UK compliance wouldn't be prohibitive. Maybe someone could do a "new lamps for old" swap with an emissions but not UK loading gauge compliant engine? I'm a bit surprised to hear of more 70's being required though given that when I go through Westbury at the moment there generally seem to be quite a collection of Colas 70s sitting around doing nothing. Or are they waiting for the weekend to pull ballast trains?

Barry? Barry?

Maybe it was supposed to be a joke? Does anybody really think something must be rare and sought after because the seller tells them?

That's the Zen of ebay...

Until I saw the photos i thought they were describing a bad weathering attempt...

I don't know....I thought it had a certain charm. An MLV looks pretty daft but they existed.

Ah well as it's so expensive they won't sell as many, so the price has to be higher to cover the development costs. Seriously, I think the real question is why the Sentinel is so cheap - not that I'm complaining...

I wouldn't call it incidental given that - whichever market is larger - it is extensively marketed for 00 gauge use, by the (UK) company that makes it. I've also seen it argued that given that the rails are too close together, it looks more "right" to also increase the sleeper spacing rather than have the sleepers as 00 *scale* on HO *gauge* track. I've never bought the idea that the UK market isn't large enough for proprietary "true" 00 gauge track - it has to be much larger than that for 009 and HOm and they appear to be worth making track for. And is the US really the main market for code 100 Peco track? From what I've read it isn't as readily available over there as it is here...and they do have a separate range of (code 83) US style points and track to match. Anyway - how about a 00/HO track gauge? Can we agree that in this case we can sensibly say 00/HO? Yes - it is a rare treat to see trees towering over the rolling stock on a model railway in the way they tend to in real life.