blueeighties

7 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

 

Some very strange English in places and one hilarious typo!

Same as most of your posts 😆

Hornby DCC diesels are wired very oddly....common negative rather than the DCC standard of common positive. This is why lighting boards attached to the cab interiors cannot be swapped between Non  sound and DCC sound fitted Hornby locos.

Jason's (Stickswipe) class 56 lighting boards are excellent and well worth fitting....the headlamp is a more realistic colour as opposed to the incorrect Hornby cool white colour.

3 minutes ago, Mike Bellamy said:

 

Just to add a bit of controversy to the numerous comments in this topic - now on page 8, why haven't any of you (except Mike SM) said anything about the Bachmann results ?

 

Just two comments in 24 hours . . . . . . . . 

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/180035-Bachmann-europe-2022-results/#comment-5211866

.

Because this is a discussion about Hornby.....

20 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

 teh full inventory accounting 

 

Following the prcices clue

 

 has so fa been  

 

comes bav ck 

 

afvertised and 

 

I think it's time you renewed your spell checker. Chunks of your musings are becoming increasingly incomprehensible.

World has gone mad.

On 17/04/2023 at 02:08, saxokid said:

Made start on two more freight yard towers today..

You posted this in the wrong  part of the forum.

2 folk have asked if,

A) are you using the correct cable between powercab and faceplate.

B) Have you got the correct cable plugged into the correct socket on the faceplate.

As a courtesy to folk offering advice, maybes confirm? The Powercab is a very simple unit to set up and operate, if the basics are correct, and your 5 locos have their DCC chips installed properly  the NCE is faulty.

The constant advert pop ups everywhere are now at the point where simply browsing and reading the forum is a pain. It's a real shame, I understand the need for advertising and don't mind it, but not when it's constantly shoved in your face.

8 hours ago, newbryford said:

 

Although I was speaking to a shop manager over the weekend who told me that Hornby recently held an information session and there weren't many retailers present........

 

 

 

I'm surprised any turned up....the way Hornby have treated their trade customers during the last couple of years.

1 hour ago, WIMorrison said:

completely agree that it will ‘lock’ people into Hornby. It is surprising how many people will only buy from Hornby because it will work with their locos - they seem to have a poor understanding of what it is they are purchasing or how control systems work, or mix and match. 
 

it is however, their money to spend as they wish 😉

True, but look back and see how many times Hornby have been ahead of the game in releasing new potentially market leading products only to make a bit of an ar#e of it and lose out....Zero one, super detailed diesels anyone?

21 hours ago, Covkid said:

 

A good quality one. 

IMHO the Skytrex Met Camm has a few issues in terms of appearance

Pretty much everything from Skytrex were only rough approximations of prototypes. 

On 12/03/2023 at 16:55, Legend said:

Be fair . They’ve just advertised their Class 87 Diesel 😁

Indeed 😆

On 09/03/2023 at 12:32, Chris56057 said:

All steam, no diesel and electric content at all. Disappointing to be honest. 

Pretty much echoes their approach to manufacturing models now.

A 101 dmu would have universal appeal.

I wonder if they are going to film the boardroom reaction to the Cavalex class 60 announcement for series 3 😆

That has to be the worst model 'shop' name in history.

16 hours ago, adb968008 said:

I wonder if Hornby will tout a revised class 56, 50 and 31… with grills and doors no longer separate parts but tooled in ?

 

They just did this with the HST.

 

 

Why? They have lost the market now.

Well, over the last week or so I have tried clearing all cookies, Internet history etc, and all to no avail. Most of the main (and enjoyed) subject topics are inaccessible. Those pop up Digitrains ads on every new page are a real pain. Appreciate I haven't subscribed and adverts are a given, but they just seem a bit over the top.

On the other hand, I guess a positive is the huge reduction in forum surfing time, it's just a bit of a shame having been here since day one 😦

I would happily sign up for membership, but I'm reluctant to as others who have still seem to be reporting issues.

4 hours ago, Ravenser said:

 

 

We can, I think , join the dots and see a wider strategy here. Hornby have decided to "go small". 

 

They have seen the state of Continental HO play out over 25 years. Everything sensible got covered , then the race went to higher and higher specs duplicating others models at higher prices/higher detail/shorter runs, culminating in the "museum standard" model - a short run of ultra high detail models at eyewatering prices. Not to mention models of exotic one offs

 

Then the unit volumes collapsed, shortly followed by the sales revenue. The second-hand market was awash with high-spec models: people switched to buying second-hand not new.  Almost everyone went into heavy loss, with multiple bankruptcies, and the RTR sector shrank sharply. The only players making any headway were those offering budget ranges with restricted detailing at affordable prices - think  Piko

 

Most of their moves over the last 20 years make sense as reactions against this scenario. The move to China gave them a super-detail product at a moderate price. A powerful tool in Britain , for higher spec models - but also enabling them to produce and sell the models from the old Group Riva brands at a more affordable price, against high-cost Continental producers. Railroad is clearly a stab at a Continental style Budget range . Design Clever was an attempt to break out of the higher spec/higher price/reduced unit volume  arms-race spiral , a spiral which they knew would end in disaster.

 

Hornby have clearly flagged that space is a big issue for many , and that they need to be offering a small scale, not just OO/HO . Furthermore Continental N is not so saturated as HO has been for 20 years. Their Rivarossi acquisition bought them some N gauge presence. In Germany they've had a nibble at the TT market. Now they are putting money behind N in France, Spain , Italy , where there are still gaps and opportunities.

 

And in Britain, where they had no small-scale product, they've clearly decided that N is already too crowded for Hornby to carve out a meaningful niche (Dapol and Revolution duplicating the 59 shows how things are going). But N has a low market share in Britain - so why not build on their German developments and launch TT as a unique scale with features that tackle the difficulties with N? 

 

There is a precedent for this . 1977 was "The Year of the Three Royal Scots" . At the end of 1976 , Airfix and Paiitoy appeared at the Toy Show each announcing an entire new OO model railway range with a flagship Rebuilt Royal Scot . Lima announced a British outline range too, and Rivarrosi appeared announcing they would do an unrebuilt Royal Scot and coaches in HO

 

According to legend, Old Man Farish came back from the Toy Fair that year shaking his head. "They've all gone mad," he told the assembled management when he got back to Poole. "It'll end in tears. We're getting out of OO."

 

And they did. Graham Farish had been a long standing bit player in OO and something rather more in N. Over the next couple of years their modest OO range was phased out, and everything went into N. When Hornby Minitrix folded a few years later (Hornby's last small-scale British play) , Farish WAS British N , for a full 20 years.

 

And while Poole-era Farish may have been a bit basic and mechanically rough , Farish the business did ok for some 20 years

 

Hornby are seeing the same writing on the wall. Either they follow the likes of Accurascale down the rabbit hole of tooling the same subjects repeatedly at higher and higher specs and lower and lower unit volumes - or they move in a different market, one that isn't saturated. Accurascale and Revolution are built for low unit volumes : they use the "Australian model" which evolved as a way to serve a fragmented small market where potential sales were too low to support a traditional "full-fat" RTR manufacture. That's not Hornby's game - and they will be well aware that that route ultimately ends in an implosion with volumes collapsing as the price becomes prohibitive. Hornby sell more 66s than Hattons produce. They choose to rerun the ex Lima Railroad 31 much more often than their own high-spec model, which says something about the realities of the market

 

Like Continental HO, OO is now running out of sensible subjects. Very little that made it past 1955 hasn't been done . Hornby clearly reckon that putting money behind the smaller scales for restricted housing spaces makes better sense across Europe than chasing high cost "museum standard" models of things like Big Bertha. Bachmann's "plays" here are OO9 and Farish N . Hornby are using N and TT on the continent - they need something in their biggest market

 

TT:120 is a gamble, no doubt - but a rational and reasoned gamble. "We have to break out of the closing trap - we have to make a major move that changes the terms of the game"

So why has the popularity of O gauge exploded the last couple of years?