71000

STOKE

Dave, Thanks a lot for your comments.

STOKE

Zomboid, Many thanks. I estimate another 21 months of work, 6 days a week, to get the boards built, track laid and wired, and some scenery complete ! 71000

STOKE

STOKE

STOKE

Funny

Jack,

Indeed I drove one of these trains on a couple of ocassions. Although I seem to remember they left Waterloo at 17.30 & 18.30 in the early 1990's. Was great fun as the class 33/1 & TC was at the rear. So opening the power handle in the 4VEP leading, meant the 8VEP part immediately tried to move, but the Class 33/1 had about a 5 second run-up before it wanted to move. However 8VEP & 2,000hp got the train moving if a bit sluggishly, which meant you tended to open the power handle fully. Then the extra 1,550hp of the diesel loco would kick in, just as you try and negotiate all the complex pointwork (max 15mph) and you find yourself accelerating rapidly with 3,550hp, and have to use the brake before you're launched into orbit. As the class 33 was limited officially to 85mph, and the rest of the train 90mph, cruising down the mainline to Woking (first booked stop) was not exactly exciting. as the class 33/1 engine would normally run back to tick over at around 88mph, so you lost the extra 1,550hp. However if this feature was either not fitted, or disabled, then 100mph was quite possible, which livened things up a bit !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

STOKE

Griff. Only just found your post ! Yes I was Europes only official importer of Japanese ranges back in the 1990's. (Tomix, Kato (only Japanese, not European or USA models), Green Max, Hasegawa, Modemo et al). The short runs you refer too, are actually part of the Japanese method of production. This is basically known as "Batch production". The manufacturer produces a batch taylor made to its regular demand with only a small overun. Virtually all products are as a result immediately shipped to retailers. This means the manufacturer does not need to invest is large wharehousing. Or keep in stock almost anything except possibly their track system. Indeed the manufacturer intensionally does NOT explain the system to either its dealers or customers. You keep them in the dark. The reason for this is supposed to stimulate "Panic buying". Customers and traders begin over time to realise that NEW models seem to vanish off the shelves rapidly, and there are no more. This encourages customers to simply rush and buy, stimulating growth for the manufacturer. It works well in Japan! Not sure it works quite as well in Europe. However what this all means is that virtually all production runs, are "NEW" models. If an item is re-run say 5 years later, the new production will have a different running number at the very least. Therefore everything can be slated as NEW. Around 1995ish Hornby discovered the Sandakan plant in Hong Kong. This being a very large plant with thousands of workers, and very modern high tech tooling. This plants existence was it seems mainly due to one or more of the very wealthy Japanese companies looking to benefit from cheaper Hong Kong labour. So they had invested in, and supplied much of the tooling. For Hornby this was their salvation, as they could not afford to retool the Margate plant at that time. Sandakan were quite happy to produce Hornby's (small by Japanese standards) production runs, and Hornby soon got wealthy. Indeed so wealthy they went on a spending spree around Europe. They bought Lima/Rivarossi in Italy, who had just purchased the German Arnold company. Then they picked up Jouef (France). Electrotren (Spain) SCX (Spain), Humbrol (UK) and one or two others. Virtually all production being transferred to the Sandakan plant pretty quickly. Everything seemed fine as far as Hornby were concerned. But then around 2012 disaster struck. Sandakan was bought by the larger Kada Corporation better known in Britain as the producer of the Bachmann brand. It would seem that as Hornby and Kada were competitors, Kada gave Hornby their marching orders. At that time I was living in Germany, and from the Editor of a German modelling magazine, I discovered that Hornby were in the process of doing a deal with the ex East German company Piko. Piko had just opened a new modern tooled plant in China, and obviously Hornby needed somewhere new to produce their numerous ranges, and quickly !!! Hence the availability and production problems which have been mentioned in the Financial Tiimes, and other investment publications. Hornby have been in a financial pickle over this problem for a few years, but hopefully are now over the worst. However I'm told by both a German and a Japanese source, that the Piko plant was not originally planned to take on other companies work, as well as their own, and this may explain the time it has taken Hornby to get sorted out. Kada (Bachmann) have obviously transferred much of their production to the more modern Sandakan plant, as the latest Bachmann models clearly demonstrate. Careful examination of new Bachmann models reveals many similarities with Hornby ones of about 5 years ago, and Hornby's latest offerings including re-runs, clearly reveal certain changes, incluidng inclusion of motors of the same type as found in certain current Piko products ! All this does seem to benefit British modellers as Bachmann models are now up to similar standards to Hornby.

STOKE

I

Presumably you Facebook page is written in English? Not helpful for Japanese! But the Japanese have always tended to be insular, one of the main reasons not even Marklin was aware of the size of the Japanese market, and Marklin had thought they were the worlds largest until I shoved the financial proof under their noses, that Tomix is the Worlds largest and valued in Billions of US dollars !

But living Down under, leaves you short on what much of the rest of the World is up too. I Know I was in Aus a number of times when I worked for the UN back in the 1980's.

To give you a demonstration on the various market places (as I was a player in all this). The Financial times quoted a few years ago that the largest production run by Hornby in its whole history, was not a Thomas the Tank item but a production of 12,500 Hogwarts express sets. I also know thanks to access to a Police report concerning crime in the British model railway business, that regular production runs of locomotives by Hornby and Bachmann are usually in the region 3,000-5,0000 ! Production runs in Germany, Europes largest but rapidly shrinking market, were 10 years ago normally in the region of 10,000-15,000 for a specific locomotive model, and these were sold not just in Germany but across Europe and to a limited extent North America. Swiss companies are virtually all small specialists such as Fulgarex, Lemaco, Bemo, where production runs of HO scale locos is often counted in hundreds not thousands. Marklin used to claim they were the biggest (and oldest) model hobby company in the World. That was until I showed there Financial Director in person, the Tomix annual accounts as published on the Internet. This revealed that Tomix was approximately 100 times larger than Marklin, and valued in Billions of US Dollars. Even Marklin had been walking around with their eyes closed, and had no idea that in fact there are a handful of Japanese companies bigger than Marklin. For the record Tomix make production runs of a single model locomotive in the region of 100,000-120,000 and expect to have shifted the lot within 3 months. I should know I was their European main agent for years. In Central Tokyo are around 300 model railway specialist shops. Even Supermarkets in Japan sell model trains. A now very generous estimate of the complete European market including Britain is around 1 million enthusiasts. Japan has 9 Million just in N scale, and a further 1 Million in all other scales. (N scale being the most popular due to small house sizes). The German market has shrunk rapidly in the last 20 years, many famous brands such as Fleischmann and Trix are gone, having sold out to competitors. Piko the East German company was forced to move up market or go down the drain when East & West Germany reunified. But Labour costs in Germany are high, so even though there is a strong loyalty by German customers to products "Made in Germany" Piko went East and set up a new production facility in Red China. This plant is now the one being used by Hornby, as Hornby's previous facility the Sandakan plant in Hong Kong was bought from under their noses by their main competiitor Kada (Bachmann Lilliput brand names) and booted out. That was the real reason why Hornby had all sorts of production and supply problems a couple of years ago. This information I obtained from contacts in Japan (who originally set up the Sandakan plant) and the Editor of a well known German modelling magazine (I was until recently living in Germany). 71000

Very dangerous to quote Wikipedia. There is absolutely no guarantee that what you read on that site is correct. For the record: There is a bipolar signal by the DCC controller, but the carrier is 18v AC. The command station as quoted does NOT switch the direction of the DC voltage directly or ALL locomotives would change direction. That has to be done by the chip itself, on receiving the command for that chip to change ! However none of that is relevant to the problem faced by normal 12v DC users. Who are now being faced by equipment installed in models which is having adverse effects on their normal 12v DC set up. It is becoming apparent that whoever is responsible for electrical design at companies like Hornby, are forgetting the normal 12v DC user, in their blind rush for DCC. Somebody else just quoted the problem of the N scale "Brighton Belle" marketed under Hornby's brand name "Rapido" (ex German Arnold) as virtually forgetting 12v DC users. "Who were rather pissed off" at the time. This sort of idiocy by a major player in the business is supported by recent reports is the Fiancial Times (and other leading newspapers) of the panic setting in at Hornby as a result of major financial problems caused partly by a downturn in business. The reports went on to say that Hornby have started selling off chunks of their business to raise funds. The first to get the boot being the Spanish Electrotren brand name. That further, Hornby are going to reduce the number of retailers they supply as the Internet is now thought to be a better point of sale !!! If these reports are accurate I would say the Hornby Board has lost touch with reality, and is likely to make its financial position far worse. There is a realistic proposition that Hornby will be bankrupted shortly. They have pinned their hopes on a last ditch attempt at a new share issue, basically to pay off the large amount owed to Barclays Bank their banker. Barclays have delayed calling in the Receiver in case the share issue is successful. This is why I feel that the manufacturers, instead of providing ready chipped locos or locos with blanking plates that have all the other DCC parts in place. Should go one step further (and save themselves a lot of money) by providing chipped locos for the DCC enthusiasts, and others with NO DCC equipment in at all. This would NOT mean that a a non DCC equipped model could not be retro fitted, as anyone could buy a set of DCC parts and simply clip/screw the neccessary in place. This would solve the financial problem of having to charge both DCC fans and normal 12v DC users for the costs of all the extra DCC bits, they do not want and increasingly cannot use. 71000

The following was gleaned when I ran Europes only Japanese specialist model railway import business. In the worlds largest model railway market Japan, which has 3 times more model railway fans than the rest of the World put together, DCC is virtually non existant. This I was told by the Managing Director of the Worlds biggest model railway producer (Tomix) was because Japanese modellers are well aware of a serious electrical problem in DCC chips. This being because a DCC chip is too small to house a proper rectifier. Instead 4 diodes in a quadrant are used, but this only provides Half Wave DC. Half Wave causes "jitter" in more sensitive motors which results in rapid overheating, and obviously a potential burn out ! DCC it seems in Japan is only used by around 1.5% of the estimated 10 million modellers. I can certainly vouch for this, as a brand new Kato loco I tested overheated in just a few minutes, when using a British controller that was not supposed to be either Feedback or Half Wave, but was. Conversely in Spain where I'm currently based, the National model railway show here revealed around 75% of the layouts present using DCC. However most of these had added Wifi so the operators could use their mobile phones to drive their trains. The result I am afraid was awful, as most likely due to interference between layouts, train operation was totally erratic, when anything moved at all. The Spanish I concluded are not very good with anything electrical. This suspicion was born out when I gave a talk to a wealthy LGB club, and drew a diagram to show how the 12v DC system of Common Return works. Every member present insisted such a system would result in a short circuit. The same applied to Cab Control when I explained that !

As the owner of Europes first importer/wholesaler of all the main Japanese model railway ranges (I sold the business 10 years ago), I can tell you that production costs from the Japanese manufacturers of a locomotive broke down into roughly the following percentages: Non electrical parts 30%, packaging 15%. Electrical parts including a high quality motor 55%. Motors are not necessarily the most expensive item, as one motor type can fit many different models. However sold state circuit boards must be specificly designed for the particular model they must fit. So quantity is limited, and the price jumps. As the 4TC has four vehciles and therefore 4 circuit boards, its my guess that these boards will be the single most expensive part. Realisticly interior lighting in trains was switched off during daylight hours (except in tunnels) until 1978. At that time BR got an agreement with the NUR (National Union of Railwaymen) that train Guards would be relieved of their duty to control the lights, so that they could be trained to collect tickets and leave the Guards van as required. That allowed BR to start reducing station staff, but meant interior lights were left switched on virtually constantly after 1978. From that time on, only when the Driver tripped out the unit, when the unit was berthed did lights go out. However if you stand on a station platform in daylight hours, the fact that interior train lights may be on is not noticable. On a model, interior lights have to be made far more powerful in proportion to scale, so the owner/ viewer can see them. This is unrealistic, so interior lights in model trains are just another daft gimmick. About the only vehicle lights that could be seen in daylight hours are the table lamps in Pullman cars, simply because they were virtually against the glass. But even the table lamps in Hornby Pullmans now cause a major problem because capacitors have also been added. The fundamental problem with DCC is that it uses 18v AC in the rails. AC which in Europe changes direction at 50 times per second (50Hz) means that both wires/rails are simultaneously both + & -. This fact alone prevents a model layout using this system to replicate or mimic virtually all the fundamental safety rules of the real railway. Because real railways in Britain, Europe and Japan use complex signalling systems based around the principle of the "block". A "Block" is a section of line, and its size and how many signals are involved varies from system to system. But whichever system is suitable for your layout, the only way to replicate the block within the budget of the average customer, is to section the track. This prevents the use of DCC as its an AC based system. You therefore realistically need 12v DC to cope with this fundamental requirement. It now becomes apparant that anyone chosing to use DCC fails to understand that the railway is basically built around the signalling. Indeed as DCC features and parametres are controlled by the North American NMRA, due to their purchasing power, and the USA has virtually dispensed with expensive signalling on their freight orientated railroads. This explains why modern DCC is of little use to those making layouts of anywhere but the USA ! My original complaint that I do not use DCC and do not want to have to pay for the superfluous gimmicks of the Toy train set brigade therefore still stands. And I do not want to have to waste my time dismantling every model to rip out these increasingly problematic and potential dangerous electrical accessories. Such problem can and have already caused fires in peoples homes !

The price is a question ! I would like 3 of these 4TC's. But & its a big but. I'm not sure I want to pay for a load of complex electrical extras, mainly for the toy train set DCC mob, that I will be forced to rip out and dump, because otherwise these extras will probably interfere with my track circuits, damage cabling, or at the very least trip out my controllers. Experience with a Bachmann 12CEP formation as supplied, revealed a demand of over 3 amps when run on 12v DC. Once the interior lighting and ALL the other electrical components necessary (there are many) were removed, demand dropped to a tolerable 1.3 amps. The pile of removed electrical parts MUST have contributed significantly to the retail price !!!! So I do not want childish and unrealistic interior lighting or even switches to turn them on or off. Interior lights were NOT switched on in trains during daylight hours until 1978, that was the RULES.

STOKE

STOKE

M

STOKE