Ravenser

The W&M railbuses were actually an adaptation of DB railbuses (there were about 5 suppliers of railbuses to BR, all in penny numbers). A new resin body on those mechanisms should work. You just need to source speed whiskers transfers

I think we are over interpreting slight variances in release dates. Some scholar will be able to tell us how fast Gresley Pacifics got repainted , but I wouldn't mind betting quite a few still had the early crest in say 1958-9 On the other hand the ER had an obvious commercial interests in putting the best and newest Mk1s onto the top ECML trains. It had always worked like that - the newest coaches out of works went into the sets for the top East Cioast expresses, and everything was cascaded down. You can bet the Talisman , the Elizabethan and so forth went maroon pretty quick Individual maroon coaches are for strengthening your Easterner set . Individual Pullmans are for strengthening your Scotsman set. The Stanier coaches are ready to go but the Dutchess has slipped - so Hornby have decided to go with it and release the Stanier coaches anyway. Over the next 6 months it should broadly pan out (Meanwhile Bachmann are releasing a whole block of maroon Thompson coached accompanied by diesels, a WD livery 2-8-0 and narrowgauge enginers..)

While this is technically and officially a "Hornby thread" it has in practice become the main thread for discussion of TT:120 on the forum. We now have a situation where discussion by those positively disposed to the new scale, and open to seeing what can be done in it, is being regularly disrupted by aggressive persistant interventions from posters who are not intersted in working in the scale and appear to be hostile to what is going on. These posters seem to fall into 2 categories : Hornby-haters who see TT:120 basically as another set of sticks with which to beat Margate , and some N gauge modellers who keep jumping into TT threads to shout that that there's no justification for modelling in TT:120 and you should do it in N instead, because there is more RTR in N... The key argument being deployed against the new scale is the spectre of the abandonment of Triang TT3 three generations ago. Just as Hornby dropped Zero-One and live steam after a few years. That is the line of argument BatchelorBoy is ramming down our throats with mailed fist. "Don't get into TT:120, 'cos Hornby support will be withdrawn pretty quick and then you'll be left high and dry" So let's confront that argument directly, from two directions: TT is a fully commercial scale on the Continent, and has been for over 30 years . There are multiple RTR manufacturers in the scale - Tillig (the biggest) Piko, Roco, Hornby-Arnold and various niche players too. 1:120 scale TT on 12mm gauge is not going away, whether Hornby are involved or not. You can buy it online , and there are British stockists like Gaugemaster and 3SMR In contrast Triang were the only people making 3mm scale RTR anywhere , the only British source of 12mm mechanisms , and nearly the only source of pointwork. In 1964 there were heavy import controls, tariffs and Exchange Control regulations severely restricted ordinary people's ability to get access to foriegn currency. Buying things yourself from the Continent was simply not possible and there wasn't much TT in the West anyway So if Hornby were to walk away from British outline TT , the existing large TT eco-system on the Continent remains intact and is there to support your modelling in the scale. 12mm track is readily available from both Peco and Tillig , and will certainly remain so. Peco TT track is staying , come what may. You will certainly still be able to get 12mm gauge mechanisms Furthermore Hornby are already in Continental TT with Arnold , and according to Rekoboy , well regarded. The 66 and IFA are being released by Arnold as well - there will be a good marketfor those in eastern Europe. Likewise for Hornby's track. Those items will stay in production . Nobody expects Arnold TT to vanish As for BatchelorBoy's doomsday scenario , that Hornby will go bust in short order because they are totally incapable of doing anything right, ever - the online vultures have been circling for 6-7 years with "The End is Nigh" posters and Hornby are no nearer the edge than they were then. Hornby may be making much more money from trains than their competitors and be doing better in the market in terms of sales - it's just they have a large debt to service. The reported profits are therefore not a direct guide to whether Hornby models do better or worse than their competitors. Remember paying interest on debt is a tax -efficient way for the majority shareholder to take money out of Hornby Hobbies. You don't get taxed on a profit, and you don't pay tax on the dividend you get as a shareholder And critically - if Hornby Hobbies went under as a company the tooling would certainly find a new owner. I can't think of a single case where the tooling wasn't sold on . Even with Rosebud Kitmaster most of the tooling survived. The second angle is to point out that TT:120 is not solely dependant on Hornby. Peco do track , buldings and now announce a wagon. Lincoln Loco have already announced a 22 and released a 33 body in TT120 . Someone (LL??) has done a resin or 3D print body and bogie parts for a Cl 42 Warship : I saw a photo on my facebook feed. ALD are doing a Class 25 in TT , possibly nRTR And there is a surprisingly large list of TT:120 British stuff available on Shapeways as 3D prints Shapeways British 1:120 list I would love to know who was behind Gaugemaster's Expressions of Interest in a TT Class 66 . Was that Tillig seeking to stake their claim to what they may regard as "their" scale? If there is any kind of British market for TT, then someone in the Continental TT market might dip a toe into the water Remember that both OO9 and 7mm finescale were not RTR scales until very recently . Both grew and flourished to a remarkable degree based on the availability of nothing more than track and mechanisms (in the case of 7mm, they largely did without commercial readymade mechanisms) And of course everything Hornby do make - will stay made . There is certainly a future for TT:120 even without Hornby long-term . It looks a better brighrer future than we were sketching when Peco had just announced track and there was one loc coming from Heljan. It's still game on, even if a much more purely constructional "game on" This of course is only the "reasonable worst case scenario" ("Bring out your dead!" "Kiev will fall by the end of the week") There's another world in which Bluetooth DCC and TT:120 are the best decisions Hornby have taken since moving production to China , and they push Hornby Hobbies comfortably back into the black....

ALD Models: ALD Models Class 25 I'm not expecting this to be earth-shattering. But it looks like a route to a decent 25 that runs ok. We are seeing a slow trickle of products appear for people who are prepared to go beyond pure RTR, without it requir8ing the full on high-skill model engineering that seems to be common in P4 and even 2mm FS. I think the ecosystem/culture that emerges in TT:120 - assuming it becomes established - may feel more like that in 3mm . Certainl.y that's where some of the initial craft producers are coming from... So - Class 22 and Class 33 from Lincoln Loco, Class 25 from ALD in some form (nRTR?). We're really less than 6 months in from the first announcement of the scale

One key issue is that it was quite easy to produce something that knocked 20th century RTR into a cocked hat. The huge improvement in mechanisms between 20th century RTR and 21st century RTR was always rather glossed over in the bitter "D+E Wars" which focussed exclusively on small flaws in body shape and confusions in detail. But the massive improvement in running was in itself a major reason for replacing your 20th century RTR locos with 21st century versions. It's far far more difficult to "top that!" when the m odel you are trying to render obsolute is to 21st century standards. There weren't that many 21st century RTR locos with serious flaws , and otherwise all you can offer is a bit more detail - at an increasingly steep price. The law of diminishing returns has set in with a vengance In 2000 -2010 we were living in a golden age of RTR when production costs were low, manufacturing capacity was plentiful, there were low-hanging fruit in every direction - and when incomes were rising nicely, China was open and the future seemed rosy (And some keyboard warriors of that age were living in a fool's paradise of angry entitlement...). Bachmann were the whipping boys then We're living in a very differnt age now , with shortages of everything, soaring prices, China completely closed for nearly 3 years , and so on and so forth. Everyone's delivery dates have slipped, relentlessly . With TT120 we are getting a bit more transparency than usual and we can see that the 66 is slipping a little and the Duchess has real problems with wet rails on Shap and appears to be slipping quite badly Part of the angst is because Hornby are still trying to run a normal full programme. Bachmann these days announce very little and deliver only a little bit more than that A lot of the exuberence is coming from threads about manufacturers whose products have not yet reached market. Several of the companies involved have a solid prior record in another market, but the Dave Jones Fan Club and the marathon 216 page Hattons Class 66 thread show what can happen. The latter starts off with pages and pages of excitement about what is going to be the best model ever , blow away Bachmann and make Hattons the cutting edge of the hobby. It ends with Hattons flogging off a stock of broken models on ebay and saying glumly that they may rerun the thing at some point but have no immediate plan to do so. Hornby have never had a debacle like that , but some people on here seem eager to assume failures even before anything has happened, and act as if nobody else has ever had a problem. Back on topic , I think a manufacturer seeking to launch a new scale has little option but to "go big or go home" . A look through the early TT threads when it was just Peco track and a prospective Heljan 31 shows plenty of people saying "how can you build a layout with just a 31 and a wooden mineral???" Hornby have to launch a complete ecosystem for this to have a decent chance of working. On the other hand they can't cover all bases. There will be gaps. I note that Lincoln Loco , whose resin bodies are increasingly well regarded in 3mm , have said they will duplicate the range in TT:120 and have already made bodyshells for a 33 and 22 available . Lincoln Locos TT thread This looks very promising - I've seen some fine results with their 3mm Class 25 body in the 3mm Society magazine. I do think TT:120 is going to need a constructional culture to fill in the inevitable gaps, and I hope it will prove a scale in which it's practical for ordinary folk to make stuff in reasonable comfort. Simply sitting waiting to be spoonfed with all requirements won't work. That may well give it a distinctive and different appeal

Whitemetal melts below 100C - hence soldering it is a high-wire balancing act,. "Die-cast" is , as far as I'm aware, our old friend Mazak or some similar alloy. So it melts at very much higher temperatures and is definitely an industrial process I presume it is being suggested that die-cast tooling is cheaper to make than injection moulding tooling , even if the production cost per unit for diecast is significantly higher. Therefore the expense of tooling up the loco would be lower , even if the production cost for each loco is significantly greater. If recovering the tooling costs forms a substantial part of the cost of a very short run loco, the saving on tooling costs per loco might outweight the additional production cost per loco for going diecast. That I think is the argument being put forward (The first production run for the Dublo 4MT 2-6-4T in 1954 was famously 100,000 units. Clearly at that volume any savings in tooling fixed costs for Meccano Ltd would have been swamped by the much higher unit cost of the diecast process)

Hornby have to stay compatible with what Tillig do on the Continent - the bigger market for this track is going to be in Mittel Europa , to support the Arnold range. Tillig is the dominant TT track Therefore Hornby are locked into Tillig geometry and code 80 to match Tillig

Well if people want to give me a good kicking or enjoy a pile on , here I am.... The OP has ignored and omitted my clarification, that I was saying that the size of N gauge makes construction for yourself much more difficult - hence it is done a lot less than is usual in 4mm , even today. Not that N gauge modellers are inferior in practical skills to modellers in a different gauge , but that the conditions under which they are working seriously restrict the extent to which making it yourself is easy or comfortable in N. Consequently ordinary modellers working in N end up being restricted to RTR ( even on the scenic side, to a degree). I've heard someone exhibiting an N gauge layout at a show tell a spectator that they wouldn't attempt to build kits because it would be too tricky/fiddly . That speaks volumes - not about the modeller concerned but about the awkwardness of building stuff in such a small scale I was wondering aloud whether the larger size of TT:120 might make building it yourself an easier proposition in 1:120 than it is in 1:148 - nearly as easy as it is in 3mm where build it yourself is routine and assembling a wagon kit or making a building doesn't raise a sweat. That would be a significant advantage to TT:120 , if it proves to be true I also said "4mm" not "OO" . That's not a trivial distinction. There is quite a lot of EM/P4 in the 4mm scene , and people working in those gauges normally pride themselves on making it themselves, not buying it (rightly or wrongly). 2mm Finescale seems to be a much smaller fraction of the N/2mm scene than EM/P4 are in 4mm. The finescale movement in 4mm has had a very large influence on the scale over the last 40 years, mostly positive. That has thrown quite a lot of emphasis on finesse and accuracy in modelling, and on making things yourself to achieve that. (It has also in the past injected a certain amount of finescale bigotry into the scene , and an attitude in a few quarters that it's better to make nothing than to make a mistake. N/2mm seems to be much freer from that.) Also 4mm is a much older scale than N/2mm , and its culture was formed decades ago when as the Johnster pointed out , "make it yourself" was essential (And of course in OO9 - also part of the 4mm scene - until very recently making things was also obligatory) I was sparked to say this by the way that, repeatedly in TT 120 threads, any suggestion as to what might be done in TT with the products now being announced/delivered resulted in one or more N gauge modellers jumping into the thread to say "well , if you are going to model X , you should do it in N not TT:120". And always , but always "the reason you should do it in N" was said to be that more was available RTR in N than would be available in TT That does sound a bit like a perspective from which RTR is the be-all and end-all, and making things yourself isn't significant Whereas potentially one of the major advantages of this new scale, larger than N, is that m,aking stuff yourself becomes substantially easier than it is in N . I do think that TT:120 will have to have a significant craft/make it yourself element in its culture if it is to develop and establish itself as a scale. If it turns out to be too difficult to make stuff , or achieve any degree of finesse when doing so, then TT:120 will have its wings severely clipped. But we won't establish that by arguing about it in the abstract . We'll establish it by seeing what people manage to build in TT:120 over the next 18-24 months . That will give us a benchmark. So I'm pretty heartened to see a thread like this : Lincoln Locos diesels in TT:120 This is people getting on and building locos Hornby haven't announced, using good quality resin bodies being made available and RTR TT drive trains. I personally could probably make a fist of working in EM if I chose to change gauge. But I wouldn't dream of attempting to work in 2mm finescale . Far too difficult for me to do that in such a tiny scale It's the constraints imposed by the scale , not the innate talents of the respective modellers, that's the point here

Good to see a layout starting to emerge

Costs are escalating inexorably in China. Extra detail that adds to the assembly cost is going to be an ever increasing price burden Therefore fripperies that increase production costs unnecessarily are not a good idea. I tend to include working fans, opening doors, firebox glow and the like . These, if present, affect all models. With smoke and DCC Sound there is a simple check in place - it's called the market. If you don't want smoke or sound , then buy the plain vanilla version. Sound and smoke will only be made in the quantities the market will buy , and models without them always exist. They are optional extras. However the "fripperies" are unavoidable once they've been designed in, and everyone pays for them. I'm not clear whether sprung buffers are in that category , but I'm not actually sure why they are needed , obvectively To be clear , I am not advocating that manufacturers tool up replacement models at lower detail levels than the current versions . Where I see the big issue is the amount of money that is being sunk into R&D and tooling to replace existing relatively recent models that are widely accepted to be accurate and run . That development money has to be recovered from the market - it is a cost we are relentlessly piling on the hobby, driving the price of RTR ever higher at a time when it is already being driven higher and higher by other factors When we have an existing model that is "good enough" - a term cribbed from US modelling , that is "accurate and runs well" - why are we as a hobby pouring money into "retooling it to modern standards" ? Money that simply adds to the costs that need to be recovered from the modeller To be clear something like the B set coach which was 40 years old and unflushglazed is fair game. That's not "good enough" and the moulds won't last for ever . Whether Rapido needed to pour as much detail and assembly cost into their new model and push the price to £85 a vehicle I don't know . Similarly , anyone making something that hasn't been done before is exempt from this line of argument. The Rapido 6 wheel SECR brake van costs what it costs. The SECR is probably one of the few pre-Grouping railways which is close to being possible RTR. The lack of a brake van was a noticeable obstacle to doing so - in pre-Grouping days brake vans were very much company signature items . If you want one, you'll buy it, that's what it costs. This is not a vehicle you buy 15 of. But to take one example , what exactly was wrong with the Mk3 Bachmann 37 in OO that after just 10 years it urgently needed two new models developed and tooled to replace it - with all that cost to be recovered from the hobby just as real wages face the worst squeeze in 200 years? I accept that Heljan were probably replacing a life-expired tool when they decided to retool the 47. But I can't quite shake the feeling that Barwell have decided to bet the shop on a couple of diesel classes and the rest of standard gauge goes hang. That's very much the culture of D+E online discussion (a lot of D+E modellers don't have room to build a layout and run trains) but I'm not sure its good for railway modelling (as opposed to Class 37 + 47 modelling) I'm struck by Dapol's business model in N and find myself warming to it. They are not developing much new tooling in N . But they have a sizeable tool bank of N gauge models , all developed in the last 20 years and to a decent 21st century standard. And they keep re-running them. Dapol always have a good range of N gauge models to sell you, and they are usually a bit cheaper than Farish. Meanwhile Farish do a few diesel loco releases and the non-availability of staple items like Mk1 coaches in the Farish range is causing some angst . Something of the same attutude is manifesting itself in OO too. Kernow currently list over 3x as many Hornby coaches available as Bachmann in OO, and quite a few of the Bachmann listings are for more esoteric items like inspection saloons, TPO stock and DBSOs; even if Bachmann still have slightly more wagons listed. (Adding EFE + Oxford doesn't change anything). I doubt whether AS's Mk1 suburbans "compete" with Bachmann's efforts since there's no guarantee Bachmann would ever have done another run of theirs- the Bachmann ones aren't flushglazed, anyway, which means they aren't "good enough" Now we are scraping the bottom of the barrel to find suitable new prototypes in OO, I really question whether pouring in money to retool things already made to a good 21st century standard is truly in the interests of the hobby overall, however far it may be in the interest of one manufacturer carving a share at the expense of another

It's not a Hornby product, but as this seems to be the main TT:120 thread active, I'm adding a cross-reference post here: The Peco TT:120 7 plk wooden mineral is now being advertised in Railway Modeller, along with extra TT120 buildings As this doesn't seem to have been picked up on RMWeb , I've added a thread here: 7plk minerals from Peco, in the Peco section of the forum

The Peco TT:120 7 plk wooden mineral is now being advertised in Railway Modeller, along with extra TT120 buildings As this doesn't seem to have been picked up on RMWeb , I've added a thread here: 7 plk Peco wagons, in the Peco section of the forum

The Feb 2023 Railway Modeller carries a half page advertisement for Peco's forthcoming 7 plank wooden mineral wagon in TT:120, at the top of page 70a These have wooden solebars and are quoted as 9' wheelbase with spoked wheels and NEM355 pockets. They are initially available in GW grey, LNER grey, SR brown , and LMS grey, as well as BR grey with PO number All three greys appear much of a muchness in the advert pictures. I have a feeling GW grey was a rather darker shade. I think they are authentic for both the LNER , which owned some 7 plk minerals , and the LMS who inherited quite a few from the MR. I believe they aren't strictly authentic for the SR , which used 8 plank wagons that doubled as general merchandise opens , and I dunno about the GW , though I think the GWR invested heavily in the 20T steel "Felix Pole" minerals They are also shown in yellow PO liveries for Coleman's Mustard and Cadbury Bourneville . We are told "More Liveries Coming Soon!" They look quite nice setailed and authentic in the pictures. But wooden PO minerals is a huge subject and I don't pretend to be expert in any of the details. A few pages earlier another advert shows that Peco have added a platform shelter and a wooden gangers hut to the TT:120 building kit range. GW lower quadrant home and distant signals are also now shown in the advert

I'd say , yes, but... I certainly don't regret buying the starter pack - it has some useful bits in it - pliers , gauges , uncouplers and so forth. But it does assume you are hard-mounting Kadees. It's aimed at US modellers , who don't have NEM sockets on models. Since I build kits and modify older stock that didn't rule out the pack for me. I still have uses for hard mounted Kadee couplers. NEM Kadees have to be bought seperately

Even at a production run of 1500, it is still difficult to see how the numbers stake up here. We were told Bachmann had spent over a million pounds developing and tooling their new 47. Even halve that , and development and tooling costs, spread across 1500 units, amount to more than the RRP of the model. (The Drax Biomass saga is relevant as an example of what happens to price when all the tooling/development costs are loaded onto a single short run ) If diecast tooling is cheaper , that helps (and covers my point about "soft" tooling). Admittedly the original Hornby Dublo seem to have found it a much more expensive technology than injection moulded plastic. The dynamics of price in the "collectors" market bear no real relation to actual costs. That's the whole point of "brands" - they are about selling stuff at prices unrelated to what they cost to make. You are paying for the "magic fluence" But the brand does need to recover the cost of production . It's a little difficult to see how the numbers stack up here to enable Hornby to get it's money back. A point that various people were making further back in the thread But

I think 2000 was the figure being floated for the first run - 1000 Hornby /1000 Drax What the recent run was is guesswork . But a single retailer appears to have recieved over 100 x 2 wagon packs: That appears to be at least 6 piles, each 4 packs wide and at least 5 packs high. More than 120 packs visible I'm sure there are more than nine tier 1 retailers Drax Biomass wagons have moved out of the "small volume limited edition" into the mass market The original point of all this was that the first run of the Drax wagons was clearly pretty small - and very highly priced , presumably to recover all the tooling and development cost and perhaps whatever was agreed with Drax If the Prototype Deltic is a one off model , it too will have to recover all tooling costs from this release. A release of just 500 models seems impossibly low for a loco model from entirely new tooling . Even 1500 (500 DC / 500 DCC Fitted / 500 TXS Sound) seems very low for the numbers to stack up and justify making it The other possibility is that Hornby expect to re-run this Dublo model in some form- as they have re-run the Drax wagons

The GN suburban may be a little easier to do than anywhere else. But even if 8 cars/6 cars is prototypical max you then have to allow for an ECML express, so you aren't actually any better off . Unless perhaps you model Royston, where there would be some operational interest with 2 trains turning back in differnt directions. Whether that would be enough to sustain the layout I'm not sure You could model Royston on a day when the ECML is diverted via Cambridge . VBut then you are straight back in the bind , cos the FY has to take full length HSTs, Deltic/47 +8 , in squadron service. Again you are looking at 20' length or more in OO to ensure the storage sidings can handle the trains (That , BTW, is one reason why the abortive club project needed to find a conurbation outside London where there were electric services away from mainlines . Needing to accommodate full length ECML/WCML services in the fiddle yard would have been just as much of a killer. We did have to contend with a senior member of the club who made it abundantly clear that he would ensure the Committee vetoed any scheme that did not accomodate a scale length HST . We dealt with that by having a 2+7 HST (scale length for Cross Country) shuttle up and back to one road in the FY. But then that's your longest FY road taken ...)

I have seen in a 3mm context that the check rails on Peco have to be filed /modified to take Triang TT3

I was once aware of a corporate giveaway deal involving a container freight operator, sponsors of names and a manufacturer (not Hornby) . Basically if they were naming a loco for you , then you could order a specific number of models of the vehicle , numbered and named for your loco, from the manufacturer , as a corporate giveaway. They would then do a run in your number /name - and the balance of the models were sold in the general market. But you certainly had to pay for your models . I can't remember the price - if I was told - and it would no doubt be wholesale price or better. But the models didn't come free. (As it happens , we hadn't a clue what we were doing with the things , and I ended up with two of them for nothing .....) So I am rather struggling with the idea of Company A approaching Company B saying "we want you to make us a cororate giveaway, specially developed . But we want it for free." It doesn't seem very good business: corporate giveaways normally have to be bought

I can't believe that Drax got their wagons free. They must have shouldered the cost of their half.

I'd understood from someone else's reaction that they seemed to be suggesting the whole thing was a rumour spread by someone beginning in D about his competitors .... Hence I was starting to wonder if the technology was something of an urban myth There is a discussion to be had about whether the extra cost of "hard" tooling makes any sense these days. If we are in an environment where manufacturers should be planning to recover their whole tooling and development costs from the first 1 or 2 runs , then it's arguable "hard" tooling makes no sense. I don't know whether "soft" tooling is compatible with diecast, but it would seem to make no economic sense to pay the extra money for steel tooling of plastic bodies for these exotic one offs . Including things like the B17/5 , W1, LMS Co-Cos , Blue Pullman, etc etc Looking at the turbulent history of OO Class 37s, nobody has got more than 10 years out of a tool. If that's the case even with a high volume subject - what is the point of "hard" tools any more??? If OO RTR is slowly being garotted by rising cost , is this a cost that Hornby and others need to off-load? But diecast may be a different ballgame. It is quite difficult to see how a new-tooling project can be made to stack up on the basis of just 1500 examples

From what is being said , I think the Duchess is the one that will slip all the way back to Winter 2024/5 We've already seen a finished 08 running round Hornby's layout at Warley - given that and the release date it's hard to credit that it could be going for tooling now . So presumably it won't be one of the two 0-6-0s in question Before Christmas , when the release dates changed , SK was quoted as expecting the 66 to go for tooling after Christmas and hopeful release dates would come forward . It looks as if the 66 has missed that target, but may be with us in a year or so, with the 50 behind it. That a pair of 0-6-0s have moved ahead of these larger locos in the queue does cut against the "narrative" that Hornby are only interested in big green namers Apparently the issue is that the new TXS decoder is a little too large

But if they are for collectors , then it doesn't matter - cos they won't be run. They will live in a display case or tucked up safely in their little boxes It does beg the question of why sound is fitted , but I suppose it allows an extra run of the things, and more options for the collector. The quality of the sound project probably doesn't matter either

If this "soft tooling" technology, using lower cost aluminium tooling rather than longlife steel, does indeed exist (and some have been implying it doesn't) then it really needs to be used on short run projects like this, and the B17/5. You are never ever ever going to make enough to justify the cost of tools with a 50 year life..... Whether such tooling can cope with diecast metal is another question. As for recovering all costs on the first run, and what that does to the economics with paid -off tooling , I give you the Drax Biomass wagons. £83 a wagon whjen first released. Recently knocked out at £25 a wagon. (There may have been an element of putting a shot across the bows of a competitor who has a comparable wagon, but I doubt Hornby ran them at a loss)

But in OO 2023 is a "marking time" programe because 2022 is running late In TT we've just been told : So in the real world , the Duchess is slipping and will be out well after the LMS coaches. The 66 isn't quite finalised and seems to be slipping a little One 0-6-0 has gone to tooling already, and another one seems to be ahead of both the 66 and Duchess. (It's possible that the 0-6-0 in tooling is the 08 , but the impression seems to be it's steam. They've shown a working 08 running round the layout already) Reality may be a little different from a quick look at the website. In particular small locos in TT seem to be progressing faster than the catalogue listing suggests. It looks like the proportion of small locos in TT may be more like 25%-33% (2 or 3 out of 8 or 9) But , as I said earlier , small locos in a small scale are inherently challenging, so smaller scales will favour bigger prototypes. Hornby have already said they can';t get sound into a TT 08..., Using the TT listings to argue for a big loco prejudice at Hornby is misleading. How many small locos do Farish do in N? Not that many. Hornby have done quite a few small locos in OO, they've done them well, and they have sold. If they were genuiniely only interested in big named locos the Pecketts, the Sentinels and the little Ruston would never have happened