Ravenser

Kernow is interestingly similar. Certainly more Bachmann than Hornby, and D11, 47, 57 , 4 CEP, 3 car 159 , 2-EPB, 150 all feature. Also the more exotic stuff - Brighton Atlantics, Birdcages, 04s in ROD livery. There is also a lot of Scenecraft buildings , some of them old stock (when did they do Harrow and Sheffield Park?), but very little Skaledale APTs from both Rapido and Hornby being remaindered. I suspect all runs of APT are now going as bargains Dapol 73s being cleared as a train pack with the 4TC set. Accurascale HYAs being cleared. Only 1 Heljan item (O2) No small engines from Hornby . Several green Pacifics, but by and large the Hornby bargains are unusual stuff that you would expect to have limited demand - brakedown and engineers coaches , brakes (both passenger Mk1s and vans ) , restaurant cars, exotic liveries I've been repeatedly assured that 3 and 4 car MUs will sell , because Bachmann and others are making them. We'll only know if they do sell once things have advanced to the stage where they are either sold out or being cleared as bargains. But there are quite a lot of longer EMUs being cleared, and exotic subjects/liveries seem to end up in the bargain bins We've frequently been told Hornby are sitting on a large pile of unsold stock in their warehouse. On this showing - either they don't want to release it, or it's something other than OO trains (Airfix, Scalectrix , HO ...)

Very few people can afford to drive a Rolls Royce . There is a large market for cars like a Ford Focus. The Japanese built a large car industry targetting the market for Ford Focuses. If they'd tried to target the Rolls Royce market , it wouldn't have worked My point is that prices of top end items are starting to become prohibitive, not simply in relative terms , but in absolute terms - in terms of the household budget . And it's going to get steadily worse. People are now looking at prices and starting to say "sorry, I can;t afford that". In 5 years time that problem will be much worse. Production costs in China will continue to rise much faster than earnings here Therefore , if the existing model is already to a good standard - why retool? If you have a budget model - you can keep selling it: why retool? We are running out of new subjects with a broad reach in OO

You haven't been able to buy a Bachmann Mk1 TSO in blue/grey for some time . (Come to that, folk are complaining you can't bu a Farish Mk1 at all) I've recently upgraded an old Lima coach to a TSO: Lima Mk1 TSO project Naturally I looked around to see what the Bachmann equivalent would cost , to persuade myself I wasn't being a fool upgrading an old dog. And I was a bit taken aback to find there was no Bachmann model available , indeed almost no blue/grey Mk1s in their range....

Your claim was that Hornby would charge £230 for a 156 if they had one in the current catalogue. Because, you said, that would be the RRP of a Class 60, and they would charge the same..... But Hornby are actually charging £145 RRP for another 2 car unit from legacy tooling (the 110). That indicates what Hornby would be likely to charge for a 2 car 156 using their legacy tooling, if they had it in the current catalogue I never suggested that Realtrack "ought" to charge £180 for their 156 unit. I was simply pointing out that the Realtrack 156 is pretty expensive , which limits its sales . Hornby can sell their 156 model as a budget/affordable alternative , and as a cautious estimate a Hornby 156 is likely to be 2/3rds the price of the Realtrack one, maybe even lower... Therefore Hornby can continue to produce and sell 156s , as a budget/affordable model with a large price advantage, and Realtrack have a limited impact on their sales. I am not persuaded that the market for very high spec models is more than a limited part of the overall market. The experience of Continental HO in similar circumstances is that chasing the top end in terms of spec /retooling in a saturated market ends up in prohibitive prices, small volumes, a collapse in demand , and manufacturer bankrupcies.The players who did ok in that environment were the ones offering budget ranges of affordable models - Piko being a prime example. Some of Piko's models were compromised - the dirt cheap HO Corails that were far too short with windows completely the wrong shape being a prize example . I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole - but that's not the point. The point is that they sold well because they were cheap, Piko made money on them, and thrived and grew. Meanwhile Roco , who make accurate Corails at about 3x the price, went through bankrupcy. As the Yanks say, "go figure" I might also point to Dapol. Dapol in N barely announce any new tooling. But they knock out stuff from their existing tooling with great vigour , at modest prices. At Warley they were selling Class 66s off the stand for £100. 6 JNAs (3 packs of 2) could be bought for £100. Bachmann announce new Farish tooling each year but there are complaints that they just don't make a regular supply of staple items like Mk1 coaches. What is actiually coming out of the Kadar factory in N is surprisingly limited. I suspect Dapol are setting a market level that constrains prices for Farish , to the point that Bachmann Europe aren't able to bid high enough to secure sufficient production slots for N. Hornby's pricing for TT120 may well be set with one eye on the cost of N gauge. They need TT120 to be a little cheaper than N : which is now rather cheaper than the prices we see in OO Farish also do a 66 in N. It costs rather more than the Dapol model, and I suspect it may be a little better. But the Dapol model is a decent one, with centre motor drive and lights, well finished. And Dapol are still selling it merrily . (Full disclosure: I'm building a small N gauge layout as a side project. I had a modest core of stock stockpiled for years which includes 2 Dapol 66s I was given (long story...). I need more stock to run the thing - it's a wagon works - and I'm not really in a position to spray cash around recklessly on a side project. I snapped up a Class 33 for £80 off the Dapol stand at Warley. I managed to talk the man on the stand into letting me have a pack of JNAs for £35 , as he only had 2 packs of GB Railfreight ones left... That's £17.50 each for a perfectly decent large wagon. Farish TEAs meanwhile cost £43 in the local model shop, and the Revolution JNA-T a very similar amount. I've only bought one of those. I'm not in the market for old tat, but I find myself warming to Dapol in N...) Dapol and Piko in different ways show there is an alternative approach to chasing the top end with higher and higher spec new tooling. Hornby are plainly positioning themselves to go in the Dapol/Piko direction in OO - whether we like it or not .Accurascale , Cavalex. SLW and Revolution are built on a business model designed to cope with smaller volume markets, they have no incumbent business to defend, and they can ride the high-end train to the end of the line and survive. The flip side of that is that their business model does not allow stock items that are continuously available. If you miss it - it may or may not come round again in 5 or 6 years time *(OK, SLW will sell you a different sub-species of the genus Rat...) Meanwhile yesterday I tripped over a Sams Trains video on "The 5 Worst Trains of 2022" . Some of them are things I wouldn;t complain about, but interestingly every one of the 5 is Bachmann Europe... None of this addresses whether Hornby's overheads are too high, or whether they are sharp enough in picking the right paint and detail varients, or whether they have the webshop and logistics fully up to speed for what they are attempting online. But their tooling investment strategy is not necessarily wrong, commercially

But Hornby charge £145 for a 2 car DMU using legacy tooling (the 110). That's RRP... Not discount price. (You will have to pay the full list price with Realtrack, whereas with Hornby you will normally be able to pick them up at a discount to RRP. So the comparison is already slanted against Hornby..) The 156 is much the same thing as the 110 . I had already "allowed" an extra £30-£35 above the current RRP of the 110 when I suggested they would be about 2/3rds of Realtrack's £270 (I'm implying an RRP of £180 there) A full fat high spec 60 is a different animal, and not a sensible comparator Besides , in the real world you can have a new Hornby 60 and 2 Accurascale HYAs thrown in for £240 Kernow - 60 + 2 x HYA That is real world prices , available now... It's taken Bachmann a decade to get 158s back in the shops ... During that time Bachmann have had 1 DMU on offer. And they sell 158s for £280 at Kernow . The best Bachmann can offer about a new Turbostar is that the project hasn't been cancelled... This rather suggests that Second Generation and Post Privatisation MUs aren't exactly the volume money-spinners they were 15 years ago (And that many of us have kept "seeing" things in the Bachmann range long after they have ceased to be available in the shops) The days of picking up a new DMU for £60 from the end of run discounting are long long gone . It's a serious commitment now to buy a new-tooled DMU. That affects potential sales volumes And in 5 years' time costs in China and prices here will have risen still further. Just how far are we from hitting the wall in terms of what the market will bear? Hence pouring investment into new tooling that increases your production costs compared with existing serviceable and largely depreciated tooling for the same subject looks questionable business Unless you can deliver a substantial upgrade to the finished product, at an manageable price, you cannot get people to replace their existing models with your shiny new product. Without the "upgrade cycle" sales volumes are going to be seriously curtailed . The days when a new loco or multiple unit could be an impulse purchase are over, as well It was "the upgrade cycle" that drove the 20 Fat Years from 1999. Your investment in tooling therefore needs to be directed into new subjects , not yet offered (and those are getting few in OO) or into replacements for tools that are reaching the end of their life There's an assumption that TT:120 is a madcap venture that is starving the OO range of the investment it needs. The reality may well be that a Class 66, Mk1s and Gresley Pacifics in TT , using Design Clever to keep production down , is a much better investment than tooling up high end duplicates in OO I think we can agree that a TT Class 66 will sell far more in Eastern Europe and here , than Hornby tooling up a high-end 66 or 37 in OO. TT Mk1s may well sell much more than doing things like Grampians or Barnums in OO

Can we have a Y4 then? 😇 5x as many as KGV and 101....

What on earth is an A4 doing at Princes Risborough on the GC & GW Joint????

They haven't done a Blue Spot Fish, but Pacifics were regularly rostered on fish trains. (Immingham used Britannias at one point). 266 Scotch Goods Kings Cross - Niddre, the top ECML express freight service , also got some very high end power, with A4s being regulars So a Pacific on a fast freight is not necessarily inauthentic, though a V2 might be much more likely (it's where the name Green Arrow for the class leader came from) An aspect of ECML operations that seems to be slipping from memory

1. The 155s had a very short life - except for a handful owned by WYPTE. The 156 is a vastly better bet , which is why Hornby have bet on the ex Lima 156... So did Charlie Petty, even though the 155 is a distinctive W Yorks type 2. Hornby haven't made any for about a decade 3. There is no comparison whatsoever between the old Dapol 155 and Hornby's own 153. The Hornby 153 is a good detailed modern model with full underframe detail , flushglaze and decent detailing , fitted with a very good smooth slow running mechanism, lights and DCC ready . The old Dapol 155 is err... basic . It cannot be detailed to get close to the standard of the 153 : I know cos I've tried, and I own 3 x 153 4. I've heard no real criticism of the 153 , bar a hint it might be fractionally low. But there are no scale drawings of the things to check (D+E modellers don't approve of scale drawings...) . Consequently nobody thinks there's anything wrong with them The 155 is not worth touching as a subject. I can't see any justification for claiming that the 153 is rubbish that belongs in the bin. This would be retooling for retooling's sake. I suspect the biggest problem with the current 153 is that it is made by The Wrong People and is therefore assumed to be dud.... P.S : in what sense is the Second Generation Unit market occupied by Bachmann and Realtrack? 15 years ago , yes Bachmann had a big range . In recent years the only thing they've offered has been a 150 . Everything else has been missing in action. Hornby have 153, 156 and the vintage 142. Yes , Realtrack have produced several fine units - but they are pricey . £255-£270 for a 156. Hornby have a vintage 110 in the current catalogue at £145 , and a 153 in an extremely complex vinyl livery at £153. I would expect a 156 run to be under 2/3rds realtrack's price. Again , affordability. (A lot will again come down to availability of a specific livery....) One issue emerges - we are seeing things as "in X's range" when quite often they haven't been produced for some years, and sometimes they only had a few runs. You can keep selling older tooling for years if the model that nominally "displaced" it isn't actually available....

Serious question - how much longer has the ex Airfix 4F tool got? It's been around for a very long time. (Have Hornby put a loco drive chassis under it? I can't remember) When did Bachmann last run their own 4F? Can Bachmann Europe bid successfully for production slots at Kadar to make it, and still make money selling it at a price constrained by what Hornby charge? (A little Google work suggests Bachmann launched their 4F in 2012 , re-ran it in 2015 - Hornby did several runs in 2015-6, and again this year. There may be a few years left in the old tool - but clearly Bachmann haven't blown away Hornby . Hornby's model is recently available ; Bachmann haven't made any for almost 8 years. Who got value for investment here?) At some point down the track , a retool of the body and tender to fit an existing loco drive mechanism could make sense I don't think Hornby bought the 31 tools from Dapol. I bought a spare Airfix 31 body when Dapol were clearing out old stuff some years ago. That was well after the Dapol/Hornby tooling sale (maybe a decade after)

Hornby already have a budget 37. It's ex Lima What I don't know is how much mileage is left in the Lima tools. They must be at least 35 years old now, and they have been well used. The Triang scale Mk1 tools lasted 50 years before use for the Harry Potter sets finished them off. Similarly the "new" RR motor bogie is now nearly 20 years old, and the tooling must have been intensively used If we assume the TT 37 and 47 are due not later than the end of 2024, then you might expect development of a OO version to take three years from then. Announce in Jan 2027 for Christmas? By that stage the Lima tools would be 40 years old, and their end in sight... Will AS still be knocking out 37s as a stock item at that point? As I understand the "Aussie business model" , you do a project, you price to recover your costs, you do the run - and then on to the next subject. For a popular subject you migfht announce a re-run 5 years later. We know Heljan use "soft " tools which are much cheaper to make , but have a much shorter life. I assume the likes of Austrains, Eureka and Auscision do the same , and presumably Rapido, Revolution , Cavalex, SLW and AS do likewise Hornby and Bachmann use "hard" tools with a long life and a higher initial cost, and assume that models will become stock items , available for long periods I think Hornby may start to restrict their new OO tooling investment to rep;lacing old life-expired tools . The hints that the very old 2716 Pannier is to be replaced by a 57xx fit with that. The J50 effectively replaced the J52 and J83. Hornby may also need to think about replacing the ex Airfix tools they bought , which must be nearing the end of their life. 14xx , autotrailer, and a number of wagons... They've already addressed the aging Mk2Ds

The 31 is a perfectly decent locomotive. It runs very smooth and slow and sure There was some query about the exact treatment of the cabside widow area. Otherwise no problem. There was a mazak rot issue with the castings of the first batch . Otherwise the only reason for a "mixed" reception was that it came from Hornby and not a "favoured" brand I bought two. One now suffers from Mazak rot (first batch) the other is an excellent loco. I also have a detailed up Airfix 31 , which looks the part and runs surprisingly well on DCC (left over from a teenage layout) In addition I have 3 or 4 Airfix 31 bodies in stock and some detailing bits. What I really want to lay my hands on is a RR 31 motor bogie to go in the RR chassis frame I sourced , under a detailed Airfix body. Since the layout is small and it won't need to shift more than 2 coaches, that should be adequete. And I need to decide what to do about the mazak rot example , and how to transplant the drive train into something else. The Accurascale model looks nice , but I'm not sure there are significant advances over the Hornby model , unless you want a condition AS are doing and Hornby haven't. I'm not saying I wouldn't buy the Accurascale model - just that I'm not sure I can really justify buying another brand new high spec 31 that I don't really need when I have a cupboard full of projects where the money has already been spent and the cost of doing the job is almost nil... How do Hornby respond to the AS 31? Knock out a load of RR 31s in various liveries. Then when Accurascale have sold their runs - announce the Hornby full-fat 31 as a 2nd batch refurb 31/4 in blue and a 31/5 in Dutch, at a very similar price to AS. No investment needed at all to do that... The catch with the new boy's business model is that they do a run - and then that's it. On to the next project. Hornby can simply re-run their 31 when Accurascale have moved on to something else , and Hotnby's will be the only model available to buy. From here on , it becomes a question of who has the livery/condition you want available at the time . The right paint will outweigh any difference between the models Hornby's "response" will be to carry on doing what they have already been doing , and not spend a penny on new tooling (appart perhaps from deleting the working fan)

That is of course the one Lima model that Hornby did retool. So I'm not clear whether its the Lima 67 or the Hornby 67 that's being reissued in Railroad. Either way , this should be be a very good centre motor drive . The whole point of Railroad is to provide cheap models from tooling that has already been paid for. Spending money to downgrade the motor might well raise the cost - you've then got a tooling investment to recover

The phrase is taken from the Continental HO market , and yes I think it does imply something so exquisite and elegant (and eye-wateringly expensive) that it sits all its life in a glass display case That is the ultimate end of the arms race in detail, and it did nobody in Continental HO RTR any good. On the other hand , the U.S hobby has a phrase/philiosophy "good enough" from an eminent 20th century modeller . The idea is that you aim for a consistant high standard across everything- but you don't go chasing the last level of cutting edge detail. You are aiming for a high average , to paint the big picture. "Finescale" as we know it is quite a small thing in the US. P87 is far less influential in the hobby than P4 here Of course for some decades the standard of British RTR was sufficiently low , especially mechanically , that the models were clearly not "good enough" . Therefore a big leap to the levels of US HO RTR was much needed. We made that leap 20 years ago . The argument that we need to make another big leap, at a time of sharply rising production costs , looks to me rather questionable. I think we've reached "good enough" , and are now overreaching Does anyone seriously believe that Bachmann need to retool their Mk1s , to a higher level of detail , and increase the price by 50%? (new tooling Bachmann coaches are running out at £75, and if you are aiming at a higher spec, you'll be north of that). Instead , the market seems to bear a range of slightly less detailed accurate flushglazed Mk1s that are cheaper to manufacture, at 80% of Bachmann's price. These are "good enough" layout coaches in practice.... So what on earth was wrong with the "old" Bachmann Mk 4 Class 37 , that it needed retooling? The tooling can't be worn out. Exactly the same can be said of Hornby, these last 20 years... Which Hornby models can't be used straight from the box? As for a wide variety of prototypical layouts - it isn't Hornby who've announced Big Bertha and the 4DD, or ES1 What I am questioning is the alleged need to repeatedly retool subjects already done in modern models , to ever higher levels of detail and ever higher costs of production. I cannot see any obvious reason to replace my Bachmann 158s with the new versions at considerable expense. Others have made similar comments about a variety of recent releases...We are reaching the point where the game aint worth the candle , on either side of the fence Things not done to modern standards or which open up new possibilities (AS' chaldrons and NER hoppers come to mind) are still worth doing,. But in OO the field is dwindling fast.

I was basing my remarks on the Stationmaster's comment : I understand that to mean that the best sellers are the DCC Sound releases, not the penny-plain DCC Ready. This sounds like people buying a Sound 37 as a flagship , rather than because of the new tooling. The flip side of this is that anyone wanting a state of the art DCC Ready model might skew to AS , since theirs will be cheaper. Twenty years ago , people really did dump all their Lima 37s and 47s onto ebay and replace them with new locos from Heljan and Bachmann . That won't be happening this time - so the market for new models is restricted to folk who have recently entered the hobby and haven't yet filled their boots and folk who want even more 37s. At current prices there starts to be a limit to how many more you buy. And if people do sell on their older 37s and 47s to make room for a new purchase - then the increased supply of good quality modern models available second hand will provide an alternative supply of models for those who need more 37s . ebay is a source of decent models in a way it wasn't 20 years ago. That cuts deeper into the market for newly produced models... Yes 37 and 47s sold well in the past. They won't sell so well now, for all those reasons. Will both Bachmann and Accurascale be able to fill their boots this time round??

The situation with Bachmann 37s and 47s can be taken another way - the improvement visible on a new 37 which is only DCC Ready doesn't amount to a reason to buy it when you already have a modern standard 37. It's the factory fitted DCC Sound that is selling models , not the new tooling.. That would explain what you are hearing. Hence my feeling that the arms race in higher spec tooling is now hitting the law of diminishing returns. The "upgrade cycle" has stopped, unless you can deliver a whole new dimension like sound In general , Hornby have built up their Railroad range by using existing tooling. In a number of cases they have cut their commercial risks by bringing out new models of more challenging subjects "to Railroad standard" , not "full-fat" models. But I'm very struck by the fact that Hornby choose to produce their ex Lima Railroad 31 far more often than they do their own high-spec "full-fat" 31 . This suggests strongly that it sells in much higher volume and generates more profit as a use of the production slots. Similarly , for all the outrage at Hornby's tactics in launching a slew of Railroad 66s against Hattons' high-end model , the fact remains that the Hornby models sold and continue to sell. Again the budget market looks bigger and stronger than the high end market Given that - why would Hornby spend money and retool their 31 to compete with AS? The AS 31 will not compete with the RR 31 - which seems to be Hornby's bigger seller Hornby have form here - they quietly failed to respond to Lima's diesels in the 1990s after a couple of head to heads. Instead they just kept producing from their existing tooling. Eventually it was Lima that went bust One of Hornby's best investments of the last 20 years was the money they spent tooling new motor bogies and chassis frames for the ex Lima models . Everyone shook their heads at it at the time - but the all wheel pickup , DCC ready mechanisms that run very sweetly has kept the Lima models commercial for 20 years (For 1, 2 , and 3 car multiple units the little Limby 4 wheel motor bogie is a very good mechanism) The rest of the model is tooling they effectively got thrown in for nowt as part of the Rivarossi sale So , in the first instance I reckon Hornby will simply keep producing from their existing tooling. They might remove working fans and seal opening doors to cut production costs, but that would be all. We are surely due a re-run of the SR Maunsell EMUs - I bet they will sell for much less than the new Bachmann 158. There would still be a modest investment in new tools. At some point the Lima tooling will start to wear out - that will be the time to do a new 47 and perhaps 37 , Railroad but with a centre motor mechanism and an accurately shaped bodyshell . The TT120 models allow Hornby a dry run to get the body right. Hornby need a decent Modernisation Plan DMU - the Bachmann 101 is flawed and the ex Lima tools won't last for ever. Again Hornby can develop something for TT120 , then tweak any faults and upscale it to OO Again - Hornby could do the Southern U people keep asking fior. The Bachmann N is an old model now, and a U would be a little different. And it looks like a GW Pannier tank is definitely coming at some point A diet of modest gap=plugging with limited new tools , and regular revivals from their existing tooling bank looks like the formula Whether that deals with any overhead issues they may have, and whether the varients and liveries they choose to run are the best choices are different issues. But a future based on working the tooling bank, design clever, and a strong budget range looks like their course in OO Bachmann can't play that game cos they don't have the historic tooling bank. Their decision to keep retooling the 37 and to retool all the post-privatisation DMUs not upgrade them shows the path they have chosen. They are now the highest priced of the major manufacturers with no obvious alternative to chasing the tooling arms race into higher prices and lower volumes. It's reached the point where I would seriously consider building a wagon kit instead of buying a Bachmann wagon, and the prices for new tooled coaches are getting prohibitive. For a simple livery like BR maroon, I would have to seriously consider Comet sides on a donor vehicle if we are talking about £75 a vehicle or rising At what point will Bachmann hit £100 for a newly tooled mainstream coach??

I did remark " The only players who made any headway in that enviroment were those offering budget ranges." And I note that the only player making a serious attempt at offering a budget range is - Hornby . Who in multiple ways over a number of years have attempted to back away from the arms race on detail, leading to prohibitive prices. (See Design Clever). Similar comments about affordability have been made in respect of the TT:120 range (Piko did it by producing in China, not Europe . A game that is now played out. I won't be touching some of their stuff with a bargepole - SNCF Corails that look as if they've been squashed against the wall - one scale in height and width, a very different one in length??? When Hornby produced short Mk3s , they did at least get the shape of the windows right..) We can debate the success of their attempts, but trying not to go down that plug hole has been a sustained theme at Margate for over a decade. The Pendolino , the 800, the Javelin were all declared to be good Railroad standard, not full fat go for broke in the Rapido/Accurascale mode. Bachmann don't even play in that market... More pertinently - look at Mk1 coaches . Their Mk1s were long one of the jewels in Bachmann's crown. They now have an RRP of £54. Hornby were long derided for their vintage Mk1 model - when it was replaced by the current respectable Railroad offering the reaction was very much ho-hum. They have gradually extended the range , year by year. A recently tooled Railroad Mk1 costs £43 RRP. And the recently tooled Bachmann Bulleid stock has an RRP of £75 ! Hornby are building a significant Mk1 range, slowly, and they can tool up a new Mk1 and sell it significantly cheaper than Bachmann can manage to produce from 15-20 year old tooling which must be largely paid off. In some respects it may even be easier to source a Railroad Mk1 than a Bachmann Mk 1 (Oh and the TT120 Mk1s are selling for £32.49, and to my eye they look a pretty good model: certainly much closer to the quality and presence we expect in 4mm than the N gauge Mk1s I've seen) Hornby have built up an extremely strong portfolio of coaching stock in OO over the last 15 years. Something that is frequently overlooked while criticising their efforts at Grouping era stock in the 1970s and carping about their aircon Mk2s and the GW autotrailer (about the only comments that are ever made about Hornby's coaching stock) This won't please those egging on the arms race in detail, in pursuit of the "definitive Class 37" . Hence Hornby will be derided for refusing to play the game... But Hornby are positioning themselves to be the producer of budget/affordable OO while others chase the "museum quality" high price/low volume trophy model. Continental experience suggests that approach could work. Expect another RR Mk1??

Given that the general consensus seems to be that nothing much beyond a few liveries on existing tooling will be announced, and none of it is likely to be delivered in the course of 2023 , I expect the announcement will be a lot more interesting than the consensus in the thread thinks it will be. (the thread will of course be sprinkled with postings declaring that they will believe it when they actually see it, anyone can do Photoshop renders, only the naive would believe any of this will actually happen in 2023, and Hornby may not survive long enough now to get these models to market... See the TT:120 thread.) I can also predict that at least one element of the announcement will spark outrage amongst many, and there will be postings declaring that because of this the poster will not be spending any money with Hornby in 2023 in protest. Accompanied with groans of regret at everything that is announced as new tooling , on the grounds that they wanted anybody but Hornby to do that coupled with confident assertions that Hornby will make a pigs ear of it , and that it's not worth buying at the price. Along with the expression of hopes that HJ/AS/Rapido/Bachmann/Hattons/KR/ AN Other will launch a rival model that will be so much better and cheaper and ensure the commercial failure of Hornby's effort. I sense that some are gearing themselves up to declare that Hornby have blown their last chance , and this announcement seals their fate and consigns them to future collapse. That the announcdement betrays a total failure to understand the market, and clearly demonstrates Hornby are now doomed. Some of the ideas being floated are I suspect more about setting up benchmarks , things that Hornby can be declared finished for not annoiucing as new tooling , rather than models anyone actually wants for themselves. We'll see. I don't for a moment think Hornby will be delivering a RTR C12, or a Class 114 or an LNER/LMS push pull set, or a Class 01 or anything else I might rush out and buy. But then I doubt if RTR revolves around my personal interests and requirements. (I've managed to get through the last 20 years without buying a new Class 37 , even though to many a Class 37 is the central focus of OO RTR) P.S What is striking is the lack of interest in discussing what Hornby might actually announce, coupled with the focus on possible retooling of models already available to a modern high -spec. That speaks volumes about how far OO is a saturated market now

Given that some of this might be spooking some folk reading , in areas far outside the hobby, it's worth pointing out that: - The Goverment price cap on electricity will rise to £3000/year on "average" households from April 2023 and remain until April 2024. The £400 support grant will stop. While this is still an increase , it equates to £250/month - just half the alarmist forecast you quote - Some US media outlets have acquired a very bad reputation for their poorly-based negative reporting of Britain in recent years, the New York Times being a particular offender. For many US media outlets and journalists, neutral objective reporting is not the game any more - there is an agenda and you need to get behind it and "build the narrative for change" . I would not rely on any US media organisation's reporting of Britain against our own eyes and ears and experience. Many of their reporters would struggle to locate anywhere in Britain (other than London) on a map, quite a few have never been here, very few have ever set foot beyond the M25 - German gas storage levels were at unusually low levels in the spring, possibly connected to the storage facilities then being controlled by Russian interests. The German govt has taken back control , and in November they were nearly full. The Russian gas restrictions have been in place for nearly 6 months now, much of the gas Continental Europe bought came from non-European sources, and so far as I'm aware Putin has not actually turned off the last 20% of the flow - which is surprising and interesting. Next winter may be more difficult than this winter - but this winter is looking quite a bit better than we were warned it might be , and next winter may very well be perfectly manageable . Assuming Russia is still able to conduct an offensive war next winter, which is not a nailed-on certainty - I'm not at all clear what you mean by the Govt here "siding with energy companies and using them as tax collectors". A windfall tax is in place - evidently negotiations to cap the charges from electricity generators who don't use gas and aren't already on a fixed-price contract failed

And on the other side , during the pandemic the hobby swung from going to shows and buying new RTR which sat in boxes - to building modest sized layouts at home. That will have given Peco's sales a big boost. The fact that track has been in more or less short supply throughout the pandemic signals increased sales volume. ~If Peco were using their capacity on "government work" early in the pandemic - well that will boost the bottom line too. Given the repeated claims that the "collector" market forms a large slice of RTR sales (a claim I am a little sceptical about) , increased sales of track are not a good proxy for increased sales of RTR . They might go in opposite directions : more layout building = less collecting. I repeat a previous comment . I'm reasonably confident about the long term health and survival of 4mm railway modelling (A bit more so than 5-10 years ago) . I'm much less confident about the future for OO RTR manufacturing, especially based on a business model of repeated retooling of existing models to a higher and higher spec, in the face of steadily escalating production costs. On the Continent , once the HO market became saturated and prices hit the pain barrier , sales volumes fell by over 25% (in cash values ) . Given that prices had risen sharply too, the fall in unit numbers of models made/sold must have been 33-50% over the period . The only players who made any headway in that enviroment were those offering budget ranges. New toolings from the main players largely dried up: not surprisingly when everything had been done , at least twice , the main players were on the edge of bankrupcy, and whatever subject you chose someone else already had partly-paid for tooling for it in their tooling bank. We are not quite there, and I'm sure Hornby will still have a few new toolings up their sleeves for the Jan announcement. One possible option: two or three new-tool scale GWR clerestories. Hornby have a very strong track record with coaches over the last 2 decades but pretty well every significant type of post Grouping coach has been done, and we are now into pre-Grouping stuff. GW clerestories are as good a choice as anything. we've now reached the point where arguably retooling Caley 123 and a couple of Grampian coaches to modern standard looks a better use of investment money than tooling up yet another OO 37

The British range was not the problem that brought down Groupe Riva ..... The problems were Jouef, Elettrotren, Rivarossi and Arnold. Bluntly - Rivarossi bought a grab bag of medium sized brands and totally failed to integrate them . The couldn't even manage to centralise production in one factory, they were still trying to run multiple seperate production sites across Europe until very near the end... Lima's British OO range was obsolete. But the real Achilles heel was mechanical. Riko's obsession with the collectors' market and dismissal of modellers as unimportant meant that the British range had archaic crude drives with steamroller wheels because the British importer kept saying that the buyers would never run their models and the British market wouldn't pay for a decent drive train as they would never use it. The fact that almost the whole loco range has remained on sale for 20 years , having been given a reasonable DCC ready mechanism with decent wheels , suggests the real issue There is a market there for reasonable budget models , and Hornby are almost the only people whpo p;lay in it. Why retool the Lima 66? The thing still sells, probably in bigger numbers than the Hattons and Bachmann models

Remove opening doors and the fan . That would be as far as it's sensible to go. No real reason to tamper with the mechanism, and the lighting might as well stay. At the end of the day who actually cares about working doors and fan??

That is slightly more informative , and says "I' am sure these dates can be improved" A second email speaks of being "overly cautious" rather than "overly optimistic" and says that 2 or 3 [TT120 ] locomotives are now ahead of the 50 and 66 in the queue. It is stated that the TT:120 Class 50 and 66 are effectively designed and they will be going out for tooling quotes straight after the Christmas break It starts to look as if everything under development has been marked as "Winter 2024/5 " until they have established who is tooling what and what the priority list is. Therefore it's likely the Black 5 will be earlier than currently shown. I can well imagine this is another class where numerous varients are involved - an issue mentioned with the 66

I can find the question on their page (that post is given as 5h old), but I can't see any reply from SK I would be slightly surprised if the message had recieved an official confirmation within the hour (as your message's timing implies), but if such a confirmation was in fact given ,it now seems to have been deleted.... No comments on this in the TT120 thread,. where it might have been expected...

Talyllyn is spot on for OO9. at 2'3" Its all the 2' stuff that has a gauge compromise. Also decent models of the locos have been done by Bachmann as part of the Thomas range. Anything 3' would be more likely to come from Hornby at some time in the medium term , as OOn3 on 12 mm track is the accepted solution , and Hornby have committed themselves to 12mm gauge.. Simplexes might have potential though