MarkSG

Who's going to be the first to complain that Rapido have got the wheels the wrong way round..... https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/brlowmacep/e227bcc94

I suppose the simple answer is that they weren't hugely numerous, they're not particularly glamorous, and there are still other early diesels that haven't been done yet. I expect Heljan will get round to it eventually.

Other way round, surely. The old adage that "revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, but cash is king" still applies. Obviously, you can't have cash without profit, and you can't have profit without revenue (turnover), but turnover is always only ever a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Chasing turnover at the expense of lower profit is a common cause of business failure. (Not saying that's what happened to Hattons, because as far as I can tell it wasn't).

You'd have to ask the owners that, for a detailed response. But in the radio interview referred to previously, Richard Davies gave the impression that, long term, the shop wasn't a going concern, at least in its present form. It wasn't at immediate risk of insolvency, but there didn't seem to be an obvious way forward to return it to long term stability. There are probably parts of the business that could be sold off as a going concern. The manufacturing side is the most obvious of those. But the reality is that retail is a tough environment these days. If I was going to start a new business now, I wouldn't start a model railway shop. The management team at Hattons know their market sector well. And the decisions they've made reflect that knowledge.

Yes, I feel much the same. I don't want this to come across as critical of the organisers, because I know this situation isn't of their making and they're still doing their best to put on a great show in less than ideal circumstances. But the reality is that the bowls hall isn't as good a venue as the sports hall, not just because of the heat but also because it's smaller. One of the things I like about Railex is that it's always gone for quality over quantity, so the show doesn't feel cramped and you can spend plenty of time at each layout and still see them all, making for a good day out. But the bowls hall loses that, it feels cramped, so you feel less like lingering longer over the layouts. And even with the organisers' best efforts there have to be fewer layouts present. So it doesn't feel like a "whole day" show in that environment - last year, we ended up leaving a good two or three hours earlier than previously, because we just felt that we'd done everything in that time. But if I'm not going to spend all day there, then Aylesbury is a bit too far to justify the travel time.

Hattons had a big share of both the new and second-hand markets. That's all going to go somehere, but it may take some time before it's apparent where it has gone. Second-hand in particular has a critical mass: the more you sell, the more people will look to you first when buying, meaning that your stock will shift faster, meaning that sellers will look to you first to offload unwanted items, meaning that you've got more to sell...

I didn't know people even did this, to be honest, although I can understand why it makes sense if you're after something specifc that's sold out new and is likely to be snapped up quickly when it appears in the second-hand listings. How regularly do Rails update their listings? Maybe what we need is an email alert system, similar to eBay, when they add something you're interested in.

Well, that's it. Trunk emptied. Goodbye, Hattons. Best wishes to all the staff for the future.

The mega-layouts certainly bring in the crowds. But they also take up a lot of space, and take a lot of time to construct. And, as I've said earlier, I'm not sure that they're the sort of thing which will inspire people to take up the hobby themselves. I think they have an important role to play, but they're not going to be the be-all and end-all of it. Free-mo has never really caught on in the UK the way it has elsewhere. I think part of the reason is that the fairly rigid interconnect requirements (which are necessary for the modules to interoperate) tends to make for unrealistic scenic treament. Plus, of course, Free-mo is a standard designed for HO (it mandates code 83 track, for example), so a UK OO version would need a different standard, and, as far as I'm aware, there isn't one. Free-mo layouts are probably enjoyable to build and operate (not that I have any experience of either), but from an exhibition visitor perspective they're generally not as interesting as a well-designed and well-constructed standalone layout.

Ah! You have to go specifically to the "preowned" link at the top of the page. Just including preowned in the "closing down sale" page doesn't show them.

Well, whatever they were they didn't last very long. All I'm seeing now is track!

The article is available on their website: https://thecritic.co.uk/death-of-the-model-railway/

I've just bought some chips and track as well. I don't really need either of them right now, but the chips are, as @big jim says, cheap enough to justify putting them in the cupboard for as and when I may need them in the future. And the track will be useful for the test oval as and when I set it up - I'll have enough now to run a double circuit test track, which will be handy.

Chester cathedral charges a sightseeing admission fee during its busiest tourist visit periods (summer and Christmas, basically). So all the income from the admission fee went to the cathedral, none of it went to the Making Tracks organisers. The costs of putting on Making Tracks were primarily met by sponsorship.

Here's a link which will, temporarily, by-pass the paywall: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/708066ca-b449-43d7-a480-25f58e3b8427?shareToken=eddcef33b3f9924a0bc75ce8643acb91 To summarise it for the benefit of those who can't read it, Waterman is, possibly a little surprisingly, quite strongly critical of Warley's decision to call it a day, suggesting that they'd failed to make the effort to attract a younger audience. I don't know how that's likely to go down in Sandwell. But the rest of the article is much more positive. Waterman points to Hornby's latest financial announcement and the new Model World show at the NEC as reasons to be cheerful. He also mentions the "Making Tracks" exhibition in Chester Cathedral, which attracted considerably more visitors each year than Warley did, which I think is a very good point - people will go to look at model railways, but the wider public doesn't necessarily share our love of traditional model railway exhibitions. Social media, too, is one of his key themes, along with exhibitions which allow some kind of hands-on experience for visitors. I don't necessarily agree with everything he says - someone who can afford a 120ft O gauge layout in his shed is possibly not representative of the average enthusiast, and, while people certainly do like looking at Making Tracks (or its rival in the big layout stakes, Heaton Lodge Junction), I'm not sure that they're the sort of thing which will inspire people to start building a shunting plank in their study at home. For that you do need a more traditional, multi-layout exhibition which can showcase the different types of layouts which can be built by clubs and individuals with much more modest means. But his enthusiasm shines through nonetheless, and I think he is absolutely right to say that the underlying foundations of the hobby are healthy, it's just that we need to continually look at new ways to get people involved.

I've just had a quick look at early editions of Railway Modeller in the archives. The very first edition of The Railway Modeller (as it was then) in October 1949 only had six display advertisers: The Leeds Model Co Ltd Tyldesley & Holbrook ERG (Bournemouth) Ltd Hamblings The Pritchard Patent Product Co Ltd Allan Brett Cannon Ltd Of those, only ERG and Peco (advertising here in their full company name) ring a bell with me, although having had a look at some of them Hamblings (or Hambling's - their use of the apostrophe seemed inconsistent!) were also advertising in the 1970s. The earliest RM that I remember reading myself is from March 1975 (which possibly dates me a bit). By then, there was a lot more advertising, so I haven't listed all of them. But those with at least half a page were: Bradford Barton Railway Books Hobbytime Millholme Models * George E Mellor (GEM) Railmail Guy Norris Ltd * Hattons Victoria Model Railways West Coast Scale Models * Eames Peco * Ratio E L Rosza (Liliput) Berwyn Hobbies Hammant & Morgan Vanguard Models * M G Sharp Models W&H Models Ltd Holt Model Railways Beatties * * indicates a full page. Beatties had the back cover, and was the only advert which included colour printing (not full colour, it was just the same spot colour that the magazine itself used on the front cover). Oddly enough, I never visited a Beatties store (there weren't any anywhere near where I lived), and I never used them for mail order because other advertisers always had a better offer. But I do remember the online discussions when they went bust in 2001 (because by then, the Internet was a thing, even if RMweb wasn't), and a lot of it bears considerable resemblence to what's been said in this topic.

It's a little more complicated than that. If part of the business was being sold off as a going concern, then the customer base could be part of that sale. For example, if the manufacturing side of the business were to continue as a new company (which I think is entirely possible, given that it appears to be a profitable sector of the main business and would be reasonably easy to hive off), then the contact details of customers who have bought those products could legitimately be part of the transfer of assets to the new company (at least, the contact details of customers who have both bought those products and agreed to receive marketing communications). But what they can't do is just bundle up their entire customer database and sell it to a different retailer or marketing firm.

For printed magazines, yes, I typically do. I settle down with a mug of coffee on the sofa (in winter) or a glass of beer on the patio (in summer) and deliberately have a break from the day when I do nothing except read the mag and generally enjoy the peace and quiet.

Given that RM is the oldest of the current magazines, I suspect that a larger proportion of its reach comprises long-standing readers who see no reason to switch from the way they've always purchased it. The fact that it's still the one which you can guarantee to be in any decent sized newsagent is probably related to that. I would also expect that Model Rail benefits from being part of the Bauer stable and their ability to cross-promote other titles. The latest email missive from them includes an advert for a "January sale" of magazine subscriptions starting at 99p, and when I click on it I end up at a page with variouss different titles available. One of those is the most popular fully paid magazine in that list (Empire), so if Empire readers are in turn being shown Model Rail and Rail as suggestions then it doesn't need a particularly large proportion of them to be interested in railways for that to have a useful effect.

I suspect that a lot of people still buy Railway Modeller at the newsagents, because it's still a standard title at the likes of WH Smith. And Hornby Magazine is pitched more strongly at casual modellers and readers, and has name recognition, which probably generates more impulse sales.

It's the import value rather than the retail value, certainly. But it's still a useful data point. As far as revenues are concerned, Hornby had £55.1m in revenue in the financial year ending 2023, Bachmann had £17.9m in the year ending 2022 and Pritchard Patent Product Co (Peco) had revenue of £7.8m in the year ending 2022. All the other manufacturers are too small to meet the requirements for detailed reporting. Hornby, Bachmann and Peco all do things other than model railways, of course, although Hornby's proportion of non-railway product is probably bigger.

I suppose a lot depends on when their lease on the warehouse runs out (or how long it is until the next break point). If they're still having to pay the rent, then it's probably not a huge additional commitment to keep on enough staff to finish off all the pre-orders that they have on the books. The real end will come when the premises close down.

Now that the Stafford show has the use of the Bingley Hall at the showground there is a lot more space available. So it's entirely possible that increasing the number of continental (and US, and other parts of the world) layouts is already something they're looking into. But it's only been in the big hall for two years so far (this year will be the third), so there's inevitably going to be a period of experimentation until they settle on what works best for the venue. Changing the mix of layouts too much, too soon, might risk losing some of what has always made Stafford such a good show. So I'd expect it to be incremental, rather than wholesale, change while they work out the optimal balance and numbers.

I agree. Nothing is guaranteed to last for ever. Voluntary organisations, such as model railway clubs, are always vulnerable to demographic changes. Businesses are always vulnerable to economic and technological challenges. Exhibitions are doubly vulnerable, both to changes in the organiser and potential loss (or unaffordability) of a venue. These are simply unavoidable. Sometimes they can be worked around, and sometimes they can't. A lot of the exhibitions that I remember going to in my teens and early twenties don't happen any more. A lot of the shops I bought from don't exist any more. But others have come into existence in the meantime. Organisations will always come and go. There are some potentially serious threats to the hobby that may or may not rear their heads in the next few years. A reliance on China as a manufacturing base, and consequently a supply line that runs through the Red Sea and Suez, is one that I suspect will be giving a lot of industry executives sleepness nights at the moment. By contrast, people in a model railway club getting old and deciding to call it a day is not an existential threat. All of us will get old eventually, if we're lucky. Those who come after us can make their own decisions, set up their own businesses and run their own exhibitions. And the hobby will survive, and follow the course they set for it.

It's certainly given the media the opportunity to indulge yet again in a choice selection of headlines from The Sub-Editors' Little Book of Railway Analogies. "Hornby growth plans on track after Black Friday boosts sales" - Evening Standard "Hornby shares steam ahead as sales and new customer numbers rise" - This is Money "Hornby back on track as successful Black Friday helps boost sales" - The Mirror At least The Times bucks the trend slightly with "Hornby powers into its second century with increased sales".