Ravenser

I have had a Bachmann OO9 Baldwin out to stretch its legs with a few bits of stock on an embryo N gauge project laid with Code 55 . No problems were evident Not an absolute guarantee, but strongly suggestive you'd be ok

It is also the case that over the last few years the demographic has shifted noticeably, with a significant number of new modellers in the hobby, aged in the 30-50 bracket , and possibly lower than that too. The odd thing is that we did nothing to achieve this... After years of dire warnings like MartinRS 's , there's been a shift while we weren't taking any of the advice on what needed to be done. In particular I've been reading for years that the shop window of the hobby is exhibitions , and that simple layouts where the trains run round and round all the time , are essential to recruit the next generation of the hobby! However the hobby seems to have recruited strongly from the target demographic during 2 years when there were no exhibitions at all. And when every model shop in the country was physically closed to prospective customers for long periods of time. People will have their own takes on TT:120 , but launching an entire new scale specifically targetted at new entrants from this demographic, and those of the very fringes of the hobby is pretty radical action in anyone's book. We will see what happens, but we are left with the options: - "Radical action" may inflict more damage on the hobby as it is than it does good in terms of bringing in new blood to sustain the hobby for the future - Radical action has already been taken - so there is no need for inaccurate heavily compromised models (Hornby have not taken that route with TT:120) And one point should be made vigourously. Models that don't run well are a liability and will drive people out of the hobby. "Super detail" also meant a massive mechanical upgrade , which was a huge gain to everyone. Most 20th century mechanisms were fairly basic - and so was their running

And if the Jubilee was accurate , but less detailed? Mischevous question - when did Bachmann last release a Jubilee? ?? - and how many releases of a non-split chassis Jubilee did they issue?? My guess is that the cheapest option would be for Bachmann simply to re-run their existing tooling a few times. Nil R&D or tooling costs to recover.... (The only question is whether its been designed in a way that makes assembly expensive) I suspect - without checking - that the model has not been released often enough for there to be a significant second hand market in the things. And the old split chassis was notorious for failure and a pig to do DCC , so it's not a competitor second hand Just re-release the thing. No need to invest in new tooling for anything - just re-run the existing OO Jubilee We don't need everything retooled every 10-12 years, only for the new tools to be run 3 times and left in store....

Apologies - it says Electrofrog on the one piece of packaging I have left (the points have been laid) SL-E392F. This is an N gauge Code 55 point - the TT:120 points in the video visibly have frog wires I'd definitely have expected a wire wire with electrofrog. Even bought switches for them... But no frog wire on these N gauge points. Hence my comment that the TT:120 points are better

I had hoped so. It says unifrog on the packaging But I looked and looked and there was no wire on the Code 55 N points to feed the frog , and absolutely nothing in the accompanying slip of paper that referred to wiring in a switch. They are live frog yes, but only if the switchblades make proper contact

Hornby International has always tried to position itself as an "affordable" brand on the Continent. Triang was the "affordable" alternative to HD While TT:120 looks like it is intended to be an "affordable" range using the principles they branded as "Design Clever", I expect Railroad to grow in significance in OO. I don't think Hornby is abandoning OO at all, nor do I think TT:120 has "stolen" investment from OO. Rather , I think Hornby feel they are running out of good opportunities for new tooling investment in OO , and TT:120 offers a better way of using the tooling budget. Which looks a better investment case - tooling up a 3rd "High spec" Class 37 in OO, or tooling one in TT:120 to Javelin/Pendolino standards? I'd expect Hornby to continue in OO but largely by re-running its existing tooling, only generating new tools as old ones become life expired (see the new TTAs or the Railroad Mk1s - both replace 1960s tools ). Lynton Davies' strategy at Oxford Rail was to generate affordable models , not high end premium ones. Meanwhile Airfix have a recognised strategy of re-issuing "classic kits" from vintage Airfix tooling, long ago paid off It's a switch away from a business led by new tooling to re-issues of existing models from a big but rotating bank of tooling (As many do on the Continent) Agree - Bachmann clearly have a capacity issue, and therefore it is their commercial interest to use that limited capacity to generate as much turnover /profit as possible. That means using the production slots for premium priced "full -fat" models. 10-15% profit on a £400 model is better than on a 10-15% on a £150 model. If they have to "bid" for capacity internally against other commissioners , chasing cheap volume production is out. An aside - it is possible that new entrants' market share comes at the expense of Bachmann, stepping back because of capacity constraints. Certainly that would be true in N . (Bachmann do not seem to be producing much stock for the LMR/ScR steam modeller in OO at present, and only a limited amount for the ER steam modeller) And Bachmann seem as though they might be moving towards the "re-issue not retool" model for OO steam. So far as I'm aware no new steam locos have been announced for a while, and not much steam new tooling released in recent years. The Ivatt 2-6-2T was a new chassis under the old body I'd argue that Dapol are actually working to an "affordable models strategy" in N. They do not announce much new tooling in N but they knock out regular runs of models from their existing tooling. It seems to be slightly less detailed than Farish , but still all of it is 2000 tooling - it is also priced a little below Farish. Dapol turn up at major shows with a stand and sell 66s for £100 and wagons at 6 for £100 . Meanwhile boxshifters want £145 for a pre-order Farish Class 14, and £43 seems to be a going rate for a bogie wagon (Those prices are of course significantly lower than prevail in 4mm) Meanwhile Gauge O exists to demonstrate that there is indeed a market for expensive models . "Affordable" in Gauge O means below £500. One member on here used to have as his signature "British O Gauge . You want how much? That's Yen, right??". 7mm finescale has always been a world for the well-heeled, its tutelory deities being people like Beeson , WS Norris, GP Keen, Col RJ Hoare, and the famous professional loco-builders ... You can see why manufacturers might want a slice of the big-ticket action. But Andy's survey shows that it is only a little over 10% of the hobby. 80+% of us can't play that game If you are doing things that nobody thought could ever be done RTR , as a one off run - the price is what it is. Pay it or miss out. So far only two locos have reached market, and it's too early to assess how viable their approach will prove to be long-term The four challengers (AS, Rapido, Revolution, Cavalex) are all clearly aiming at the high end (Do we call them "the Four Musketeers?" ) . In N , they are selling into a market where there is a significant restriction in supply, where models were historically more basic, and where coverage of the prototype has always been more limited - but the N gauge market is much smaller. The "direct sale /pre-order /one-off or occasional" approach - what I think of as the Aussie Model - evolved to make RTR viable in niche markets hitherto thought too small to support it. If you want it , this is the price. Buy now or miss out. It may be run again in 5 or 6 years. Or not. Two of them have a substantial base in other markets , where they have an established business approach They are not built for a cheap high volume approach. The business model evolved to hang in there in small markets : if the British OO market shrivels , these players can hang on to the bitter end. But the RTR market is very largely down to a minority of high-spending modellers. It's the other 60% who might be interested in affordable models....

Now for some comments of my own: A good many years ago I was involved in a club layout project which ultimately failed, about 18 months after I dropped out. Originally the project was to be DC and we were introduced to a gentleman whom it was suggested would be suitable to be our "sparks" . He wanted to specify not just a dropper to every rail , but 2 droppers per piece of rail , for complete reliability in case a dropper failed due to dry joints, wires snapping etc. He drifted away before things got properly going, the layout went DCC - but we still went with 2 droppers to every longer bit of rail and one dropper to the short ones. When I built Blacklade , I carried on with the same standard, and from memory I tried to use "3 amp" wire, soldered underneath the rail, to eliminate any risk of voltage drop (we had an issue on the corner board of the club project where there seemed to be voltage drop, and some of the droppers were running at 3' to 4' run) So Blacklade has massive electrical feeds and is probably very much over-engineered in this area. This still doesn't eliminate all risk of stalling. Anything with all wheel pickup from two bogies is fine and runs entirely reliably. But the two home-made diesels , powered by 5 pole Hornby Ringfields with traction tyres but pickups to all wheels (effective 6 wheel pickup) are known to stall and need prodding occasionally. Baby Deltic .The detailed Lima 37 (also 6 wheel pickup) is a little better but not perfect. In an effort to mitigate the stalling I swapped out the wheels on the unpowered bogie for Bachmann coach wheels which have shallower flanges , and this helped. I did the same on the NBL Type 2 : D6103 Neither is totally stall-free and I am toying with the idea of ordering a budget pack of double-motor Ultrascale wheels and rewheeling the power bogies on both. Given that each bogie is electrically an 0-4-0T , I'm sceptical of the claim that provided you have a dropper to each rail there will never be issues with 0-4-0s stalling... Why didn't I fit stay-alives? Well, I would have liked to, and there is bags of room inside both locos. I even managed to source a Lais stay alive, and I have a couple of DCC Concepts ones going spare . But - it wasn't at all clear that a Lais stayalive will work with anything other than a Lais decoder. And all I have is a capacitor with wires and no instructions. Certainly hard soldering is going to be required - not necessarily an issue in itself , but I've no real idea what I'm supposed to be doing with it.... In short stay-alives recede into the mists of dark arts /esoteric knowledge , like a will o' the wisp. "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty..."

Without wishing to restart an argument between two members, some relevant posts from another very long thread, where they are in danger of getting buried.

In the meantime there would be the possibility of 3D printed bodies from Lincoln Loco. That said, Lenny Seeney hasn't done AC electrics in 3mm so there is nothing to scale down...

Someone has done a comparison video on the Peco and Hornby TT:120 track Peco v Hornby TT track It is useful to have figures - the Peco sleeper spacing appears to be scale, and the Unifrog point has a wire to the frog, allowing seperate switching. This is better than Peco's N gauge code 55 points which have no wire and rely on electrical switching through contact of the switchblades (not entirely reliable...) It is evidently possible to join Hornby and Peco track - which may allow use of Hornby rigid curves on rthe return curves of a continuous run layout, and in the FY

DJM . He was goign to fo it as a follow up to the 71 but he never delivered . Pure vapourware

I think we are at cross-purposes. My point is that the RTR market is going to be almost entirely driven by a limited sub -set of the hobby. 1. That sub-set seems to be here, on the forum - it's not the mythical "collectors" who never want to take anything out of the box , nor the legendary "train-set market" . The oft-repeated claim on RTR threads that "of course we aren't the manufacturers' real market" is wrong. 2. Nearly everyone now uses RTR to some extent. But 60% of the people in the hobby are indeed an afterthought as far as RTR manufacturers are concerned . It's the high spending 40% that count. Hence the pervasive feeling that "what I do doesn't really count... . What drives the hobby is some other chap, over there"

3 hole disc wheels were normal on new construction from the 1930s onward In 4mm I would only fit spoked wheels to specific pre-grouping wagons - the great bulk of the wagon fleet has 3 hole disc wheels When TT:120 enjoys kits for pre-grouping wagons it will become an issue, but till that happy day it can be worked around. Bigger compromises than that are accepted in an adjacent scale, and for any wagon built in the last 90-odd years disc wheels are fine

For clarity's sake - 41.6% of modellers own 75% of the locos. But some of that 41.6% may have large fleets of kit built locos which get them up to the 100 loco mark. The folk who buy RTR in such quantities are probably no more than 40% of respondants. They drive the RTR market, while the other 60% of respondants don't really count for much to the manufacturers. So you end up with a hobby based largely on RTR these days , where 60% of the hobby feel they are outliers and "the hobby" isn't really about people like them Add in the heavy focus on the exhibition circuit pre-pandemic , where only a limited sub set of the hobby are heavily involved and the great majority are occasional spectators , and you have another source of the feeling that the hobby isn't about me, it's really about what they do, over there. (Of course most of the folk heavily involved in the exhibition scene are modellers less focussed on RTR . So they too assume that the hobby isn't really about them - it's basically about the other guy, over there...)

You cannot reverse-engineer someone else's tooling We don't know the ins and outs of what has happened here, but as a general principle you can't take a model by someone else and back-engineer to a tool and then say "but it's mine! I made this tool. So I'm entitled to sell the models" Someone in the Far East did that with Triang Big Big many many years ago

This post may be touching on one of the most important things to emerge from this survey Stated the other way, 58.6% of the modellers own 24.8% of the locos... (and some of the other 41.6% may have large kitbuilt fleets) A clear majority of the hobby (roughly 3/5ths of it) are barely involved in the "RTR circus" . 75% of sales of RTR locos go to 40% of the modellers We tend to assume that these days the hobby is dominated by and about RTR . But the RTR manufacturers must focus on that minority of the hobby that buys the great majority of the models they sell - not the majority of the hobby that doesn't This may account for the sense of dislocation and disassociation that pervades the hobby . Everyone seems to be convinced that they personally are not typical of the hobby as a whole. What really drives the hobby is some other chap: who is completely different from me, whom I've never met, and who is found on the other side of the hill. Someone about whom I can only speculate.... We hear often that the RTR market in OO is really about "the collectors" , a legendary race who don't like taking their models out of boxes and do so only to put them in glass cases. It's not about us. It could never be about us... In reality "the collectors" seem to dwell among us . They are planning a layout - in fact generally 2 or 3 layouts. In the mean time they are going to buy a Titfield Thunderbolt set, three AS 37s , a Jones Goods and an LNER dynometer car this year. To go with the Hardwicke and Hattons LNWR coaches they bought last year. Are Hattons going to do a run of their coaches in HR green? Pretty please? [I'm aware HR coaches were generally matchboarded not panelled] (I really must stick a decoder in my Hardwicke this weekend and get it running . Should look good on a 2 car blue/grey set of Mk1s as a steam special)

There will now be an Exodus from the thread , which may end with Revelations

It's worth teasing out... Most of us, if pushed and using historic measures like magazine circulations , would have said pre-pandemic that there were 100-125K reasonably active modellers , and maybe 150-200K involved with the hobby at the widest definition. (It's frequently recalled that around 1980 the Railway Modeller alone had a circulation of over 100,000. Now it's in the mid thirty thousands) Take your 70,000 , apply 20% market penetration (rounding the 18.3% from Andy's recent RMWeb survey) and you get 350,000 modellers in the hobby. That makes the hobby nearly twice the size we thought (4mm seems to have 85%-90% market pentration , depending on what overlap you assume between 4mm standard gauge and OO9) Your 40% uplift on the NGS figure is also startling . So much discussion has assumed that the hobby is gradually dying out, and that everything must very slowly wind down There has very clearly been a significant influx of younger folk with families since the start of the pandemic. You see and feel that the demographic at shows has shifted downward, markedly - even though the Mum and Dad with Toddler in Pushchair (chanting "Thomas the Tank!") have vanished almost completely N gauge may have done disproportionately well, but even a 30-35% increase in the hobby is quite staggering to consider The actual gripe from the trade seems to be that Hornby can't supply them with all the stuff they want to order and think they can sell. Bachmann too have severe supply restrictions - hence the moans in N that there's no Farish being made , and the whole EFE initiative If the hobby has really grown by a quarter or a third (or even more) that means a massive uplift in demand for RTR, but restricted supply from Hornby and Bachmann. It's not that others are eating Hornby's lunch - it's that the tables are piled high with food for all. Thios would also put a new perspective on the fears that current hard times will strangle sales. There may be a lot of suppressed demand out there (And if there are a lot of recent entrants in the hobby , they may be relatively uncommitted to a specific gauge and open to moving into new scale)

To a considerable extent . But - why wouldn't they? Firstly - 1:120 is a commercial scale elsewhere. It's been growing moderately for the last 3 decades. Hornby (as Armold) are already in it, they went into it from nothing, and they've done ok . They are regarded positively in Continental TT There's nothing inherently wrong with the scale that makes it somehow unsaleable. Continental experience is that where TT is established in a market , it is number 2 scale, and N gauge is trailing in the far distance. In the Peco TT120 thread Someone linked to some German-language market share statistics, and the figures were interesting. Not only is TT number two across Eastern Europe, it has a much bigger share of the market than N does in places where N is second scale. HO:TT ratios in Eastern Europe can be around 3:2 - elsewhere HO:N ratios are 2:1 or 3:1 , and in Britain the 4mm/2mm ratio is almost 5:1 I'm not expecting anything like that in Britain : I reckon TT:120 will be doing very well to get to 50% of N here in the medium term. But much of the negative commentary assumes that TT is a scale / product that nobody would dream of buying. That assumption is wrong Secondly - why do you think people would be more likely to keep buying N? I see a steady trickle of postings from people who are in 4mm and say they don't have space for a layout. Almost invariably they then say "tried N but couldn't get on with it / it wasn't for me" or some variation on that. A LOT of people are "bouncing off" British N gauge, for whatever reason. The scale appears to have a very high churn/dropout rate. I don't see people saying they "tried 7mm but couldn't get on with it so I've gone back to 4mm" Also , you will sell a lot more stuff to people starting out in a new scale than to someone who has been in it for years, and is just buying a few items to top up. The bulk of the N gauge market is established modellers who've been in the scale for years. Everyone who buys TT:120 is starting with a clean slate, so can be assumed to be open to buying quite a bit of stuff. That gets you through the first few years. I'm not quite clear what you are driving at with this relentless negativity on all points and all issues. What we know is that so far all items have sold out very quickly, half a dozen TT:120 group have spontaneously come to life on Facebook, there is interest within the modelling community in working in the scale (potentially up to 25% of the hobby are open to it) and people are starting to make things using 3D bodies We have the A4 and Mk1s coming shortly, followed by individually available locos, coaches, followed by P3 Staniers , an 08 and wagons, all in the next 3 months. Lets see how far and how fast this keeps going..

Hornby can keep knocking out models from the OO tooling they already have . It works for Dapol. It's what a lot of Continental manufacturers were forced to do when the market got saturated, the prices got silly and the money ran out.

But actually , we don't know any of that . It's entirely speculative. - We don't know the size of the British market for model railways. - We don't know what proportions of Hornby Hobbies' turnover relate to model railways and what to other things. We don't know how big Hornby International is, and what proportion of Hornby's model railway activity is in HO, N and TT - We don't know the split /share of different gauges/scales within British modelling. (I've been criticised in the past for quoting market shares based on a Model Rail survey - I was told the numbers are worthless. Andy has run a survey on here - but we are quite often told that the RMWeb community isn't representative of the hobby as a whole... ) - We have some idea of turnover for Bachmann Europe and Peco - but quite a bit of Peco's sales may be outside Britain , and we don't have any estimate of that proportion. Some of their sales revenues are magazines and Pecorama - we don't have estimates for that.. Transfer pricing might affect Bachmann Europe's figures - Rapido are primarily manufacturers in the North American market, so we have little idea of the size of their British activity - We have very little idea of the current turnover of anyone else. A certain amount is in N not OO, or in O but we don't have any numbers as to the split... So we are speculating on Unknown Number A (Hornby's OO turnover) as a proportion of Unknown Number B (total UK market) . We are then guessing at Unknown Numbers M, N , O , P, and Q (new entrants' turnover) and what proportion of it is from OO to arrive at Unknown Number X (new entrants' OO revenue). This is followed by a guess as to whether Unknown Number X is a significant size relative to Unknown Number B, and an assertion that Unknown Number X has grown significantly relative to Unknown Number B in recent years. A further assumption is then piled on top of this - that any growth in Unknown Number X has come at the expense of Incumbant 1 /Unknown Number B, rather than Incumbant 2 or 3 , or as a result of growth in the overall market , or as a result of shifts between scales This isn't a commercial costing. The uncertainties make Reading the Tea - leaves look reliable A confident declaration is then made on the basis of this tower of uncertanties that X,Y, and Z are eating Incumbant 1s lunch... RevolutionBen has suggested that there are 70,000 people active in N. That is a figure that most of use find startling to the point of disbelief. In that figure he is assuming a 40% growth over the last 5 years or so, due to media exposure and the pandemic. That too is an extraordinary number. It's been understood for many years that the size of the hobby has been in gentle decline for decades. Even a 10% increase in the size of the hobby over the last 5 years would be a dramatic reversal But for the purposes of this exercise , let's run with a very high estimate of the size of N 5% of 70,000 is 3500. Estimates from carton markings are that Hornby must have already sold at least 2000 of the Scotsman sets. It is reasonable to believe that The Easterner has sold similar numbers, and that people have bought either one or the other as a starter pack, not both. It looks like Hornby have already sold TT:120 sets to over 3500 people, which is more than 5% of the number active in N. Therefore they have their equivalent of 5% of the N gauge market, with 9 months of the year still to go

I think this is a misunderstanding of the situation. A second source of British outline RTR in TT:120 doesn't make Hornby more likely to keep making it. If anything it slightly increases the chance that the project becomes unremunerative and Hornby pull out Hornby have announced such a large programme of new products in TT:120 rolling forward so far that an extra couple of items from someone else isn't going to make a lot of difference . This is as comprehensive as could reasonably be hoped for at the start of a new scale Despite scepticism expressed at the start about whether they would really happen, it's now clear that items into Phases 3/4 are moving into tooling. The initial shipments are selling through. The range and scale is receiving hitherto unimaginable publicity through the television series. A user base/scale community is starting to emerge. It's going to be full steam ahead , all guns blazing, for the next 18 months. Beyond that we can't yet see..... But this does mean there is going to be a userbase/scale community for British outline modelling in 1:120 scale. (Size and character to be determined) . There is going to be a fair amount of tooling for British outline RTR models in TT:120 in existence. And a couple of years' production of actual models out there. That means the genie is out of the bottle. British outline modelling in 1:120 scale will continue in some form, regardless of whether Hornby are able to sustain their British range, and indeed regardless of whether Hornby Hobbies prosper or collapse into administration (and all; scenarios between). The existence of commercial TT on the Continent will help to underpin it now that it is coming into existence We're no longer debating whether British outline modelling in 1:120 scale can exist at all. We've debating what form its future will take. Will it be a largish scale based on construction supported by ready made point work and some mechanisms , as OO9 and 7mm were for some decades? Will it be a small construction-based scale like 3mm? Or a full blooded RTR scale like N and OO? All options are on the table . But if the userbase grows to a decent size and Hornby then drop out, someone on the Continent may well be tempted to dabble,...

Class 66 , Class 92, Class 87, and any type of wagon Freightliner have also used in Eastern Europe. (Hornby have indicated that the delay sending the 66 for tooling was due to sorting out the variations covering Eastern European 66s) This doesn't help steam age modellers, but 08s and J94s might not be completely without interest to the Continental market

If there is some kind of market for British outline TT, then it is likely that one of the players in Continental TT might have a punt on a British model or two . Especially of something that has also run in Eastern Europe. There are a few options for that nowadays. I am very curious who may have been behind Gaugemaster's Expressions of Interest for a Class 66 . My guess was that it was a defensive play by a Continental manfacturer who was trying to block Hornby out of having a TT 66 to see in Eastern Europe by getting there first. Given BritishColombian's comments about Tillig's "proprietorial" attitude to the scale, Tillig are a definite suspect. Piko and Roco are also possible. Hornby's 66 has gone for tooling , and we can be confident it will go into production. So will the IFA - both are being released in E European liveries under the Arnold brand The scenarios are therefore: - TT:120 in Britain prospers and remains in long-term production from Hornby - After a few years Hornby largely drop TT:120 in Britain , but the 66 and some other items including the track remain in the range under the Arnold brand - Hornby go bust . Production stops . Someone buys the Arnold TT tooling (an entirely saleable asset) along with the 66 and any other dual market items , and they go back into production - Hornby go bust. The British TT tooling is lost. Someone on the Continent plugs the obvious gap by releasing their own 66. We know someone out there is already willing to tool up a 66 in TT if there isn't one from Hornby I'm not sure quite why you are so determined that there cannot or should not be any commercial support for this scale in Britain outside Hornby (even to the point of denialism about Peco making TT:120 track for the British market) . But we already know that 2 Continental manufacturers are willing to look at tooling up a British locomotive in TT if it isn't available from Hornby. That is where we should logically look for any other RTR players to emerge. I doubt very much that anyone with a stake in British outline N will go anywhere near this scale for at least a decade. But those manufacturers already in Continental TT may be willing to have a modest punt, if they see some kind of market

Agree. There is resistance/opposition to TT:120 , but it doesn't come from those in 3mm. Look elsewhere for that.... I would see it as a question of cordial fraternal relations between two adjacent scales. There's an interesting and generally speaking supportive letter in the current Mixed Traffic, which arrived last week. (Personally, I think the question of the 3mm Society covering 1:120 scale would only arise in the event that Hornby abandon British outline TT:120 after a few years. At that point there might need to be a lifeboat operation such as the Society was launched to do in 1965 for 3mm after Triang pulled out. But as I've said before, British outline 1:120 scale would always be in a stronger position given the existance of TT as a fully commercial scale on the Continent) Useful to know that the wagon wheel size is more or less standard with the Continent. If we get plastic wagon kits, then that could be a resource. Alternatively Hornby could sell packs of their own wheels - as they do in OO