MarkSG

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".

The Hattons website is probably one of the most user-friendly, in terms of functionality, of all the main model railway retailers. In terms of visual design it's not quite as slick as some of the others, but the back-end is very well put together. It reminds me a lot of some of the websites I've worked on in the past for major retailers with a much higher profile than Hattons. The thing is, though, that front-end techology - what the customer sees on their screen - changes faster than back-end technology. As far as online retail is concerned, the underlying functionality doesn't change all that much. Fundamentally, it's a fairly simple process whereby a customer selects a product, pays for it and then you send it to them. Unless you add completely new functionality, it's not going to be significantly different for different retailers, or significantly different for any retailer than it was last year, or the year before that. Or even ten years before that. The front-end, though, changes a lot for all sorts of reasons. One is usability, and the increasing tendency of people to use their phones for online shopping and general web browsing. That requires a very different visual design to a PC sized screen - or, more specifically, the ability of the site to adjust to whatever size screen the user is using. Even as recently as about a decade ago, a "responsive" design, to use the jargon, was advanced, or optional. These days, it's absolutely fundamental. The Hattons website does get that right, and does it very well. But making it do that is a lot of work, particularly when you're having to add it to an existing website. If you're using an off-the-shelf online retail system, it's just a case of updating to the latest version. If you're completely outsourcing it, you don't even need to do that. But doing it in-house is hard work. Other front-end changes are simple fashion. What looks nice is very subjective, but it's surprising how much people's subjective opinions tend to concur! I said earlier that the Hattons site is a lot like some that I've worked on in the past for much bigger retailers, but it also has to be said that it still looks a lot like the sites I worked on, despite the fact that I haven't worked on them for nearly ten years (and they've moved on since). So maybe that is an indication of the fact that managing it was getting too much.

Everything is still in recovery mode. Almost across the board, every part of the leisure sector hasn't yet returned to pre-Covid levels. There are all sorts of reasons for that, including the economic shocks of the past couple of years which have dented recovery as well as the simple fact that a lot of organisations and businesses simply didn't survive lockdown at all and their replacements haven't yet got into their stride. In any normal year, the number of organisations in any sector closing will be broadly balanced by those opening. Obviously, if it's a declining market then the new ones will be fewer than the ones they replace, while in an expanding market there will be more new ones than those they replace. But, still, it tends to be a fairly clear trend line either way. Covid massively disrupted that. Significantly more organisations closed during the pandemic than normal, despite the assistance of the furlough scheme. And the pandemic also inhibited new startups. So we're only just beginning to see a return to normal levels of new businesses, events, etc. And it typically takes around five years for a new organisation, either commercial or non-commercial, to become established and here to stay. So it's going to be at least five years from the end of lockdown, and probably more, before we will have a reliable indication of where the market is going. We may be in a long term decline, or we may not be. We simply have no way of knowing, yet. I wonder what people would have said, had RMweb existed back then, when the National Model Railway Exhibition in Westminster Central Hall closed after more than half a century of operation.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll have to dig that out on IPlayer later. But yes, it's good to see some positive reporting. The main thing is, that this is a season of change. Not just for us, but huge swathes of the leisure sector are having to readjust post-pandemic. I was at a meeting yesterday of our council's Town Centre Panel (which I chair), and one of the items on the agenda was an Economic Assessment of Tourism. And the reality is that we still aren't back to pre-Covid levels of tourism, or of events and their attendance. There's been a steady year-on-year increase since the end of the final lockdown, so things are moving in the right direction, but it's still got a way to go. Expecting everything to instantly return to pre-Covid levels, and then stay the same, is unrealistic. Things change, for all sorts of reasons. We've also had various other factors, including the economy and inflation (which puts considerable strain on event organisers). For some events, and some businesses, it's a natural end of the line (corny rail-related pun intended, sorry!). After all, it's not the first time it's happened. I wonder how many of us are old enough to remember the "National Model Railway Exhibition" at Westminster Central Hall. I certainly do; I remember reading about it in Railway Modeller and persuading my dad to take me, and then, as I got older, being allowed to go to London on the train myself to go to it. But it doesn't happen now. I don't remember when it stopped, but I'm sure there was wailing and gnashing of teeth over it back then, just as there is now over Warley. And for Hattons read Beatties, and Railmail Model Railway Centres. But the hobby has survived all these changes in the past. And it will survive them again. Clinging on to a rose-tinted, nostalgia-laced view of the past won't stop that.

That's a rather unfair comment. The context of the post (which you selectively quoted) made it clear that it's a different field to ours. So the same economics don't necessarily apply. Most model railway exhibitions are run by clubs, who need the show to turn a profit as it's an important way of financially supporting the club for the rest of the year. But there are other sectors where it's acceptable for a show to make a loss, because the ancillary benefits to the community of having the show go ahead justify the need to subsidise it.

Good to see that the media still can't resist corny train-related puns in news articles, though!

The trunk service didn't create cashflow issues (because the items were paid for when they went into the trunk, not when they left it, and carriage was paid for when it was incurred). But it did, obviously, take up storage space. I presume that worked for Hattons because they had a large, modern warehouse that had more capacity than was strictly needed for just retail stock, so they were able to utilise the extra space by providing a unique (and, to customers, valuable) service. It certainly gained them extra business from me, and probably other people as well, so it was a creative way of exploiting their infrastructure assets. It would be nice to see other retailers picking up on the idea. But it does, of course, need there to be the space available. It might not work for retailers in smaller units, and particularly the retailers operating from more traditional city centre premises where space is at a premium.

From the bottom of that item listing: Additional Items Required (NOT INCLUDED) - Baseboard (PLY) size 1320mm x 1020mm x 10mm) - PVA glue - Humbrol 32 Dark grey paint (or any dark grey paint or painting trackbed) - OO scale I can just imagine someone looking at that list and then going into a shop and saying "I want to buy an OO scale, please". 🙂

There were fewer trade stands in 2023 than 2022, at least if we assume that the versions of the traders page from the website archived at archive.org is correct. My gut feeling is that that's primarily what made it feel more spacious, rather than significantly fewer visitors, although of course attendance may have been down a bit as well. But a reduction in trade stands would, of course, also be a reduction in income to the club. I don't think that, alone, would have made it unviable. But I do wonder if part of the thinking was that if visitors were less pleased by the trade last year, they'd be less likely to come next time. And, if so, that could have led to a vicious circle whereby less trade makes it less attractive to visitors, and fewer potential customers make it less attractive to traders, and therefore both would dwindle until it did stop making a profit. So maybe going out now, on a reasonable high and before there was any risk to the club, was felt better than carrying on until there was a real possibilities that economics might have forced the organisers' hands.

OK, thanks. That's a bit disappointing, to be honest. I appreciate that it's beyond your control and it's too late to do anything about it now for this year. But if the stadium is going to continue being unhelpful, then maybe the time has come to look at a new venue altogether for 2025.

Is it going to be in the bowls hall again this year, or are you back in the main hall?