Actually, the 'ski jump' is very, very easily fixable. It's not a tooling problem, it's an assembly problem, brought about by a small transparent plastic spacing washer between the chassis and the underside of the footplate that serves no purpose other than forcing the front of the footplate up into the 'ski jump' shape when the front body to chassis screw is tightened. It takes no more than 30 seconds to fix: remove the front body to chassis screw, gently prise the front of the body away from the chassis by a millimetre or so, shake out the errant spacing washer and then replace the screw. As you tighten the screw, the footplate returns to its intended, straight, alignment. I've now carried out this fix on over a dozen late-model Hornby A3s and A1s (mainly Book Laws and Minorus) and it's worked perfectly on every one. On the first couple, before I was confident of the fix, I removed the body completely from the chassis but then realised it was unnecessary to go so far and on all the rest I've just removed the front screw to release and remove the washer. It honestly is that simple.
Earlier (Sanda Kan assembled?) Hornby super detailed A3s like Windsor Lad, Ladas, St Gatien, etc. in my experience never had that washer fitted to them anyway.
Sorting out the 'gouge' along the top of the boiler is however definitely a tooling issue, being caused by slight misalignment of sides of the moulding tool or poor bedding in or looseness of one of the alternative (different detail) slides in the tool. Either way, Hornby and their Chinese contractor could fix that problem if they wanted to, at a cost of only a fraction of doing a very expensive and frankly unnecessary complete retool. Looking at the moulding details on late-model Hornby A3s, the tooling certainly isn't worn out, nor anywhere close to it. I've been lucky in that none of my later-produced A3s have displayed this 'gouge', but I've certainly seen it on others. That's why I'd suspect a slightly loose slide in the tool: as the slide's position moves fractionally, sometimes it produces a good moulding, other times it doesn't.
As far as the 'ski jump' is concerned, though, it's genuinely a really easy fix (and before anyone asks, I think I ought to send a copy of this post to Hornby, just in case they're unaware).
Pete T.
