Ravenser

I think there's some SMP and possibly some C+L on the little test track DOGA take to shows . From memory it features most of the available types of commercial OO track

Having seen this in a Sainsburys  but having no need for an A4 .... I'll get interested at the point where it offers something not available RTR . Which may be never if all they are going to do is knockoff clones of existing RTR through laser scanning.

Assuming it gets that far the first items of even potential interest would be - remotely the Jinty (perhaps motorised with any available cheap Hornby 0-6-0 chassis ) or Butler Henderson - though I'm not clear how you'd motorise that short of buying a Bachmann D11 - at which point you might as well not bother with the mag.

Now if they cared to scan a few Ks kits (MR Spinner, Beyer Peacock 4-4-0T) or a Kitmaster Stirling Single or a GEM Precedent it might get more interesting

In the meantime it may provide a useful source of LNER tenders and raw material for B17/6 , P2 and W1 hacks for others

But that was planned in advance, so customers could plan accordingly.  You don't exactly plan in advance for something at Dawlish cutting your capacity in half.

I don't think anyone planned the situation yesterday , with the GW route out north of Exeter due to a blockade plus flooding in Somerset and FGW trains being diverted via Westbury and Yeovil, the Waterloo -Exeter route out at Gillingham with flooding and trains diverted from Salisbury up to Westbury and then back onto the route at Yeovil , and the Yeovil/Exeter section only just reopened after a landslip at Crewkerne with a speed restriction in place.

East of Exeter there are multiple routes, resiliancy and work-arounds . West of Exeter there aren't

It hasn't just been Dawlish - though that's the worst weather disaster to hit the railways in the SW. What must be hardest for those on the ground trying to restore services is that the blows keep raining down on them , with multiple additional route blockages needing to be dealt with and the problems  deepening and extending. (On top of the above the Bristol and Exeter route is now unprecedentedly flooded at Bridgewater, and likely to be out of action for a while with severe damage to signalling equipment, and at the other end of the route the whole of the first 50 miles out of Paddington under threat in the Thames valley and that situation likely to deteriorate throughout the week with sustained additional rain ) 

After a week of enormous effort from those on the ground and the situation still getting worse not better it must be pretty disheartening

Another point that needs to be considered for any alternate route.

 

Many on this thread have pointed out that the trains in Devon and Cornwall are already overloaded.  That means any alternate route needs to be able to handle the current service levels (at least of Exeter - Plymouth ignoring intermediate stations).  If you can't run a full service level, then the TOC is going to be turfing people off trains onto buses anyway, at which point it may as well be everybody so there is less confusion.

 

In other words, a "cheap" re-opening of a single line with passing sidings is unlikely to be very useful during a diversion.

The Waterloo-Exeter route seems to have been rather useful during the current blockades and mayhem. I trust you are aware that it is only "a single line with passing sidings" west of Salisbury?

Except that the story is now that the Okehampton hasn't even been chosen as a diversion route, and that "a further study will be conducted to look at the pros and cons of alternative routes".  In other words, politics entered the equation.

 

The realities are that the Okehampton route has no financial case as a diversion route.  Devon County Council (in the Devon Metro document) makes it clear they have no desire to fund yearly costs of the Okehampton rail route, and there is no way that Network Rail can afford to pay the yearly costs of maintaining a line that is used at best a week a year, and that is assuming that the TOCs can even be bothered to deal with the hassles that the Okehampton line would impose.  Central government won't fund that yearly costs, they have made it clear they want to decrease rail subsidies (excepting capital costs) and have the fares pay more of the costs, and it is hard to have fares pay for Okehampton when there are no trains running on it.

 

Any route that is opened (either new or re-opening) will have to have a reasonable daily usage that can cover the yearly costs of maintaining the line.

 

North Devon does not have the population to support a rail line without subsidies, which leaves running Plymouth and Cornwall based services over the line all year.  This is certainly possible, mainly by chopping Exeter off the line and running a bypass connection at Cowley Junction (which may have the added benefit of eliminating the flooding there as an issue for Plymouth/Cornwall services).  Exeter could then have a parkway station, or be serviced only be services from Waterloo, though I doubt Exeter would be happy about this.  A likely side effect of this though would be that the Dawlish line would become economically unviable given the very high cost of maintaining the Dawlish segment, likely ending all south devon rail services.

 

The only way to have either a replacement for the Dawlish line, or a second line that is viable economically without creating an uprising in Exeter and South Devon, is to do a variation on the GWR plans.

 

The wild card in all of this is who is responsible for maintaining the Dawlish sea wall even if there are no trains.  If Network Rail is stuck with it, the cost difference between a sea wall with trains vs a sea wall with no trains may not be significant, and may change the economics of the various options.

 

I wish the above wasn't true, but there is no way to get around the economics of the issue.  For use today the LSWR Devon line is badly located, both in going through lowest density part of the county and having useful access to Exeter in today's single railway (and it would be interesting to know if the Southern Railway viewed it as a mistake with hindsight as it would appear that it would have struggled financially even back then).

 

Now if someone can come up with a plan to move 150,000+ people into the North Devon area in the next decade....

Most of the network in Britain is subsidised to a degree. The re-opened service to Corby is subsidised, most London commuter services are subsidised (I think the GE main line is about the only major commuter route were the TOC is paying a premium not recieving a subsidy - the Cambridge line doesn't wash it's face) . The Waverley route will be subsidised, the Settle and Carlisle passenger service is subsidised, the Waterloo-Exeter route is subsidised, the Barnstaple line and the Gunnislake branch are subsidised. Extending the Gunnislake line from Bere Alson to Tavistock will result in a subsidy, though it seems Devon CC may hope the subsidy will be less than now, someone else will pay the capital cost and they would certainly get a lot more transport "bang" for the revenue subsidy buck

I don't think anyone for a moment believes that Devon CC is going to be expected to fund the approx £400 million capital cost of reinstating Exeter -Okehampton-Plymouth - any more than Boris Johnson is funding Crossrail. The question is whether national government may now be interested enough in "resiliance" and improving transport in the SW to fund the capital cost of a second route (as it has decided to fund electrification from Bristol and S. Wales to Paddington, or Manchester/Blackpool , or various other things). If central govt now comes to the party to fund the capital cost, Devon CC might well be more interested in chipping in towards revenue - but the overall rail subsidy comes from central government funds - it isn't paid by local authorities (Scotland and Wales recieve block grants from Westmister)

As for some of the comments in that newspaper report, they're deep into the realms of hysteria and absurdity. Since Plymouth is the main traffic objective in the SW, the idea that anyone is going to re-route London trains away from Plymouth and send them through Launceston onto a high speed route to the middle of nowhere (well' central Cornwall anyway) is literally incredible. Or should be to a sane person . Nobody is suggesting closure of the railway through S Devon - that would be crackers . Resiliance means having a second route between Exeter and Plymouth which generates local transport benefit and can act as an emergency backup.  It doesn't mean leaving rail services west of Exteter still hanging by a single thread - just a different thread 

Nobody is suggesting that the route be rebuilt so it can be mothballed for 50 weeks a year. The suggestion is that diversionary use might be the extra benefit that tips a desirable rural reopening scheme with a high capital cost over the edge into happening - and that circumstances may now have arisen in which national government is interested in chipping in to see it happen

The time penalty at the Exeter reversal would be quite heavy as most trains are only booked 2 minutes station time and trains have to retrace their path to Cowley Bridge.

At Plymouth the situation is somewhat different, there is a longer stretch of running where trains have to retrace their path. However set against that 5 out of 14 GW HSTs terminate at Plymouth anyway, and 13 out of 16 XC services terminate at Plymouth, and of those that go forward to Penzance one is booked 11 minutes station time.

 

edit

And of course there have been 10 planned HST reversals a day in each direction at Exeter since 18th Jan due to the planned Whiteball Blockade

cheers

I did suggest earlier that you might terminate Paddington services at Plymouth (and presumably XC as well) , with passengers for destinations west of Plymouth changing to a Plymouth/Penzance shuttle. This would eliminate one of the reversals and the longer piece of double running: whether cross platform interchange would be possible at Plymouth in such circumstances I don't know?

This is on the basis that Plymouth is the main traffic objective west of Exeter anyway. Passengers for Newton Abbot and Paignton might be catered for by a shuttle from Plymouth.

What was running on the GW lines might then look very similar to what is being run at present - but with the crucial difference that it would be connecting at Plymouth into an hourly InterCity service to Exeter and Paddington running via Okehampton, and there would be rail access for stock movements in and out and return to maintenance depots (The same obviously would apply during any planned engineering blocades in South Devon)

With all the talk from national politicians about thorough investigations  and rigourous assessments, it strikes me the one study/consultant's report that really should be done now is a very thorough structural survey of Meldon Viaduct by civil engineers, coupled with detailed costed assessment of the various options such as reconditioning, new alignments and anything else that professionals think might be a practical approach in engineering terms.

With that done, it would be possible to make a clear assessment of the cost and practicality of re-opening the ex LSW route between Exeter and Plymouth in any form

There seems to be about £100-200 million floating about at the moment as a political "lubricant" to "ease the pain in the SW" - spending £5-10 million on such an assessment of Meldon  (perhaps covering any other structures on the route that could usefully be examined at small additional cost)  seems a good use

of some of the currently available time and money

 

 

As this route would be part of NR, public money would be spend on re-instating the route and alterations to improve its usability for Cornwall-bound traffic. Whatever the cost is, it'll be a heck of a lot cheaper then tunnelling a new line via Dawlish.

 

donning tin hat, heading for nuke shelter

Informed comment earlier in the thread suggested that the costs would actually be roughly comparable - the reason being that a Dawlish deviation would be about 8 miles whereas the gap in the LSW route is currently 22 miles and significant upgrades to the infrastructure on what's left either side of the gap would be needed as well.  

But I'd agree that there must come a point when rising traffic and capacity constraints on the existing route supports the case for reinstating a second route (Chiltern from Marylebone to Birmingham offers a parallel)

Agreed so far...

 

 

 

 

 

That then presumably wouldn't handle (for instance) 25.5t axle weight wagons so that freight traffic wasn't disrupted (or to allow engineers trains access to both ends of a blockade.) - that to me is a fairly critical need of any diversionary route, as you can't just get the freight to transfer to a bus for a short section of it's journey.

 

It also means I suspect, a lot more infrastructure than most folk think. For example, the present Okehampton service takes just over an hour to do Crediton-Okehampton-Crediton, so for instance if you had a loop at Okehampton and (for instance) an hourly Exeter-Plymouth via Okehampton local service then you have filled your line capacity already (and I think you have the same issue between Crediton and Exeter, I think it'll handle 4 tph with some careful planning, but 6tph (2 Barnstaple, 2 Plymouth locals, 2 diverted HSTs) sounds unlikely to me...I think you're into needing reasonable chunks of it rebuilt as double track, making it not quite such a simple cheap railway...

 

I'm sure similar issues would be present between Bere Alston and Plymouth too where you'd need to allow capacity for Gunnislake trains...

 

So, I reckon knocking up the Okehampton route as a cheap-ish 'Sprinter railway' is a decent idea, with some big benefits locally - but you'd need to heavily over-engineer it for that role if you want to also make it useful (beyond overnight stock moves!) in this kind of situation.

 

And it still doesn't help anyone heading to/from South Devon.

I'm not sure quite how they intend Bere Alston handling Plymouth -Tavistock trains and Gunnislake trains reversing in the station unless there are two lines through the station , so presumably a loop and perhaps a bay platform to handle reversal . So a loop at Bere Alston as a minimum with both main line platforms back in use and perhaps a section of double track through the station (say half a mile to a mile as a "dynamic loop")  would seem to be pretty well inevitable - if not already mandated by the Tavistock proposal?

As far as I'm aware there are still two tracks between Coleford Jnc and Crediton, which could be adapted back into a double track section which might go a long way to solving the capacity problem ? Would doubling between Cowley Bridge Jnc and Newton St Cyrs be needed as well?

The section from Meldon to Crediton is presumably carrying 25.5 tonne axle load wagons already, albeit dead slow in certain places. Not being an engineer I don';t know if the work required to make Meldon viaduct capable of taking an HST at 25 mph would be adequete to allow 25.5T axleload wagons to pass at a similar speed. How much worse  is the state of Meldon viaduct than Ribblehead was on the S&C - which posed similar issues?

I agree you'd need to have capacity for 2 trains per hour each way through Okehampton , and 3 trains per hour each way between Coleford and Exeter and also from Bere Alston to Plymouth .

Under "normal" conditions you'd have an hourly Plymouth-Exeter service , comprised of a limited stop 158/159 service from Waterloo every 2 hrs , calling Crediton/Okehampton/Tavistock/Bere/Plymouth , and  an all stations Plymouth-Exeter local every 2 hrs calling at some additional small stations (these would probably the stations serving the walker / National Park visitor traffic). With diversions in force, the Waterloo trains terminate at Exeter , giving up their path to a Paddington HST, the stoppers remain , and the second path each hour is either a Plymouth HST or a freight

Whether the budget of £400 million + that the Stationmaster was suggesting would indeed cover enough infrastructure to do that  I don't know

My experience is that a lot of trains west of Plymouth are nearer 160% full

Noted, but are these the local services, XC, or the London trains? My comment was specifically about the Paddington services - presumably the typical HST has plenty of seats spare once it's west of Plymouth? 

Looking at this with due diffidence as someone from outside the SW:

- Clearly the main line to Plymouth has to be reinstated asap - though that's certainly measured in weeks if not months. Abandonments west of Exeter are simply not credible in the short or medium term , and nor is letting Dawlish be lost to coastal erosion. One way or another that sea wall must be reinstated

- When it comes to alternative routes to the sea wall at Dawlish , there are two games in town: a diversion of the existing GW route around the back of Dawlish in some version of the 1930s GW proposals , or reinstatement of the missing part of the ex LSWR route . (It';s an unusual element of the situation that not only is there a possible alternative , there are 2 of them, well developed, reasonably practical, and with some credibility, though with question marks about economic viability) 

- The 1930s deviation proposals would require heavy engineering works , and leave rail services in Devon pretty much where they are today

- Reopening the LSWR route would restore rail services to two decent sized market towns (Okehampton and Tavistock) and benefit a third (Crediton) significantly. Devon suffered severely under the Beeching Axe - very large parts of the county are many miles from any surviving station - and this option would expand rail coverage and provide potentially useful railheads for a wider area 

- From informed comments both options would be in the £400-500 million bracket, and probably 20-30 times more expensive than repairing the existing main line

It seems that it's already pretty well accepted that reinstating Bere Alston - Tavistock is more or less justified in its own right. So we are effectively talking about reinstating Tavistock-Meldon, and strengthening Meldon Viaduct and possibly one other viaduct

- It is extremely  doubtful that the ex LSW route could compare in journey time or capacity with the current route

What might be a credible package would be to reinstate the ex LSW route as a basic rural railway for the regional transport benefits , but with infrastructure capable of acting as an emergency diversionary route in a restricted way.

In other words abasically single track railway with some loops /double sections , a 60 mph line limit, and Meldon Viaduct strengthened to permit an HST to cross at 25mph.

If the Dawlish Warren route were closed, reduced FGW InterCity services could continue to Plymouth via Okehampton and terminate, with passengers for further west changing to a Plymouth/Penzance shuttle service . I doubt if trains are much more than 60% full west of Plymouth? So 2 Voyagers might cover you and terminating through services at Plymouth would get round the need for extra sets and crews? Plymouth passengers would face a longer journey time , though perhaps still less than rail replacement buses, but would be spared any need to change. Passengers west of Plymouth would have one change , to another train, not two bus /train changes

For the other 51 weeks of the year, the LSW line  would survice on its local traffic - and here access to the north side of the Dartmoor National Park could be an important commercial factor if vigourously promoted. If this seems commercially dubious - there's a parallel with the S&C . Settle , Appleby and Kirkby Stephen must have a smaller combined population than Tavistock, Okehampton, Lydford and Crediton , and the S&C is much longer and far more sparsely populated around the other stations  . In the 1960s the few S&C stoppers seem to have carried single figure numbers of passengers for most of their journey . But look at it now. Dales Rail showed that walkers in a national park will use rail access , if it is promoted (they're happy to leave the car behind)

If in a few years time some 158s are going spare after northern electrifications, then perhaps 4-5 could be cascaded to SW Trains , to allow them to resume operating west of Exeter but this time via Okehampton, with perhaps a train every 2 hours running through to Plymouth (After all 2-3 car 158s are what are used on the Leeds -Carlisle locals) With through services to London further traffic possibilities open up and you can vigourously market "Direct to Dartmoor" and journey possibilities to E Devon, Yeovil and Salisbury

There does seem to be strong political pressure for the government to be seen to be doing something significant, there are a lot of Lib Dem seats in the West Country and reinstating the LSW route would be a lot more sensible, modestly priced and beneficial to a much wider area, than many political gestures (the Humber Bridge comes to mind here) . It would also show that new railways aren't just for the Scots and the Welsh but that the English can have something too. 

I can see national political considerations pushing this one forward 

Hi Rob,

 

In that case you may be interested in these kits from C&L -- currently only in P4, but kits for 00 and EM are promised:

 

 http://www.finescale.org.uk/index.php?route=product/category&path=346_384_390_537

 

Martin.

Leaving aside the cost and the assembly required, the problem is that they've been promised for several years now. I don't for a moment want to be flippant about the health problems of Len Newman and others, and I'm sure people would want to wish them all the best, but the awkward fact is that these OO and EM point kits have  been "brochureware" for a while and are likely to remain that way for some time - for reasons that those involved in producing them must regret more than anyone else.

While you'd hope that economies of scale would make the OO kits cheaper than the P4 ones, any form of kit is simply going to have a small effect at the margin. It won't have any really significant impact . I

It's just the same as saying that there's no need for Bachmann's L&Y tank because London Rd Models do an etched kit  ( I remember someone,did say exactly that when Bachmann announced the model). We all know that only a few percent (perhaps 1-2%) of those who buy the RTR model would ever manage to build and finish the kit

I mentioned a few posts back that there are probably 80 000 or so self-identified "OO Modellers" but something like 75% of them are more to the collector /trainset end of the scale.......

That leaves a potential market of about 30 000, including a number of converts to the new track range

there are huge problems with that loose phrase "

something like 75% of them are more to the collector /trainset end of the scale.......

 

 

Let's start by picking apart that term "collector" - as opposed to modeller. The "collector" is a fabulous beast , much invoked when arguing that railway modellers as we know them are just a pimple on the backside of the Great Unwashed and the tail mustn't expect to wag the dog....

The archetypal collector is the man who buys models to put them in a glass case and gloat over their rarity condition and rising investment value. The folk who keep everything stored , mint boxed.  I think there are a lot fewer of these folk than is widely believed. I remember the Stationmaster suggesting that the hardcore "every R-number" collectors may be no more than 1000. It's a potentially very expensive pastime , with not a huge amount of result.  I also suspect the numbers are falling - limited edition Lima hasn't exactly been a great investment, and with the current economic crisis and pressure on incomes, buying lots of models you don't intend to use is aquestionable luxury. 

The fallacy and sloppy thinking  is in asserting that these people are an important part of the market for 16.5mm gauge points , and will buy Peco Streamline in preference to any new OO point 

These folk don't have a layout. They never run their models. They don't buy track:  they buy glass cases . They aren't really part of the track market - they don't represent a significant part of the sales of Peco points because they don't buy track  they aren't going to keep buying Peco because they don't buy it now.

A second, and probably much larger sector of the so-called "collector market" is what I'd call the unintentional or involuntary collector. We all know the phenomenon - someone is "modelling Steeple Bumpstead in 19ZZ in 4mm" What this means is they are collecting a large pile of stock, usually RTR , which is going to run on this layout when - one day - they have time and space to build it. All too often after 5-6 years they then  decide that actually it would be better to model Great Snoring in 19YY instead, much of the collected pile is suddenly inappropriate and they start buying mode RTR that fits the new theme better . I have a theory that most of the Lima Limited Editions ended up in these piles of lovingly hoarded stock

These people don't see themselves as collectors - even though to the manufacturers and ebay this all looks like collecting. These people don't buy track either - they haven't started building the layout. So they don't represent significant sales of Peco Streamline. And the way they have been willing to buy high-spec modern RTR to "upgrade" and replace  their stored Lima and old Hornby suggests very strongly that if there was better OO track available then they'd buy it in preference when the time came to start the dream layout. In a few cases if the product appeared that might actually spur them to start the layout.

So again these people don't represent a significant part of the track market that wouldn'tybuy OO points - quite the opposite

The final element of the collector market is what we all do - buy models because we like them even though they have no possible role on any layout we have or might build . I suspect alot of Kernow's Beattie well tanks went into this sector (I have to admit to a Bachmann O4 63601 for which I have no use whatever - but I felt I ought to have one, and if I ever modelled the E Lincs line in the last decade before closure it would be ideal...) 

I mentioned a few posts back that there are probably 80 000 or so self-identified "OO Modellers" but something like 75% of them are more to the collector /trainset end of the scale.......

That leaves a potential market of about 30 000, including a number of converts to the new track range

The trouble with that argument is that it comprises a "statistic" plucked out of the air without evidence bolted onto some very loose language and sloppy thinking with some dodgy maths and capped with a casual and probably false assumption about motivations and attitudes 

"something like 75%" is a guess without any evidential basis. It might be 50%, it might be 66% , it might be 75% it might be 80%. There's no obvious evidence which one of those figures is correct. Turned the other way -is the potential market for better track 50% of 80000, or 20%?

(Not to mention that 80,000 looks too high to me. If the hobby is 100,000, it simply does not ring true that 4 out of 5 modellers are working in OO. I'd accept 65-70% working in 4mm - some of whom are also modelling in other scales. A large majority of those in 4mm are in OO , but I would be cautious about claiming that much more than 50,000 or the 65-70,000 4mm modellers are in OO)

25% of 80,000 is 20K not 30K

More seriously 30,000 has to be far larger than the market for code 55 N gauge track - but that is certainly a commercially viable product , even as a comprehensive range

Is Peco Streamline all Flat Bottom rail? It's been a long time since i've seen it....

 

Best, Pete.

In a word, yes

Anyone who is thinking of making an investment will want to know what sort of return she is join to get for her capital. This return will be in main proportional to the number of items that can be sold. The price, by and large, will also be dependent on the volume of sale, especially if injection moulding is involved, i.e. the bigger the expected volume the lower the price that can be charged.

 

These particular products, British outline OO gauge pointwork, will be going into a mature market. By that I mean that just producing these points is very unlikely to increase the number of people building OO layouts. As a consequence each set of new points sold would be a substitution for a set of points in an existing range. Some of these may be from the set track ranges, but most are likely to be from Peco's streamline range. So what the investor really needs is to know is the volume sales of Streamline points. From this information of volume sales of the new points can be seen as a proportion of sales of existing products, and a target of say 40 or 50% of streamlined sales could be set for the new points.

 

Of course she could ask Peco but they are likely to see her as competition and not give her an answer. As an alternative she could ask wholesalers, such as Guagemaster or box shifters such as Hattons. If she asked enough of this type traders then she would be able to form a good estimate of the volume sales of these points. Not only that, but traders are likely to give her much more information about the market for points and also tell her whether they were likely to stock the new points. This would give a good indication of what the initial sales are likely to be.

 

However there is a large risk should borne in mind. That is, because sales are being taken from just one company, i.e. Peco, then it is possible that between the time that a commitment has been made to new tooling and the new products on the market, Peco could bring out their own rival range, and so negate any investment made by our investor.

The market is mature but not necessarily entirely fixed. New OO points might attract a few people to model OO where they had chosen some other gauge because Peco Streamline was a deal-breaker. We've seen comments like that in this thread from andytrains, trisonic, Kenton and others. It might divert a proportion of those handbuilding - out of necessity - into buying the new product.

And though the number of people building OO layouts might not increase much , it's likely that the number of OO layouts being built would rise in the short term - some people would build a new layout because the new product was available and they liked the look of it..

I agree the sales volume of current Streamline is a key number, though speaking to large wholesalers and mailorder disounters is not the only route to approximating that number (Some of the retailers may not want to disclose their Streamline sales volume for various commercial reasons...) 

I also think that the biggest issue now is probably going to be retail distribution. Without that, the product is dead. However I don't share your assumption that the traditional retail distribution model through lots of high street shops who all need to be persuaded to stock the product to achieve critical mass, is the only route that can be taken 

We've seen perhaps 6-8 mail order discounters with a heavy duty online presence come to dominate the RTR retail market . We've seen most of them move into commissioning their own exclusive loco models from exclusive tooling - some pretty esoteric subjects . And we're seeing them go directly to the factories in China in their own right . We're seeing Hornby selling direct like companies such as Rapido, Austrains and Eureka have done with niche RTR for a decade. Nearly the whole of the specialist trade has sold direct through websites and mail-order for a decade or more - Mousa Models doesn't rely on persuading model shops to stock your stuff

I think that's the route that this will take - a big mail order retailer with national presence commissioning it direct from a factory to sell as their exclusive product. They wouldn't need to worry about getting retail distribution - their existing operation would be a nationwide retail distribution   

RMweb currently has 21,542 Total Members

 

A fair proportion of these are 00 modellers

 

So the figure of 10,000 in total must be far too low, even if all the railway modellers were members of RMweb.

 

 

 

Also if the sample is small in absolute numbers as it is here. One vote going a different way can affect the result by nearly 1%. 

That is a significant variation when deciding whether to invest thousands of pounds in what looks like a marginal business venture.

For what it's worth , my rough estimate for the size of the hobby in Britain is 100,000 people

That's based on adding up the known or reasonably estimated circulations of the magazines about 5 or 6 years ago, and allowing for considerable overlap with people reading 2-3 magazines each month. It's also borne out by the attendances at the major shows - Warley gets a gate around 18,000, Model Rail Scotland is supposed to be as big, York is understood to be about 15,000, and I think Ally Pally is around 11,000-12,000. It's very unlikely there's much overlap betwwen the gate at Ally Pally and Model Rail Scotland (so there's 30,000 to start with) and a large majority of the hobby doesn't attend either show... RMWeb has 21,500 members

Hornby , in a Daily Telegraph interview a year or two prior to that, had floated a figure of 250,000 which seems too high - but they may have been including the trainset and collector markets. I doubt much of the trainset market buys the modelling magazines or attends the big exhibitions - but then they clearly aren't going to be part of the target market for this product either 

What proportion of that 100,000 is in 4mm is difficult to say, but looking at shows, magazines and this forum, it is not difficult to believe that 4mm is at least as big as O , N and the non-commercial scales combined (and shows and magazines probably overrepresent the other scales, relative to the hobby as a whole). 4mm could be as much as 2/3rds of the hobby.

The vast majority of that is OO - so the OO market should be between 30,000 and 50,000 people

I can't be sure from the pic, but the Marcway one appears to have been built using 3.3mm wide sleepering strip, instead of 4mm wide timbering strip. Hence the light narrow-gauge look. Can anyone confirm?

 

The price comparison is a little unfair -- one is supplied ready to use, the other is a kit which is supplied with plain rail to be filed and shaped. More a pack of materials than a kit.

 

Martin.

Just measured mine , and while a dial-calliper on ballasted track isn't going to be a measurement accurate to 0.1mm, I got 3.6mm wide

 

I thought some of you may like to know the response to my communication with Peco, received this morning:

 

Dear Mr. Sharps,

 

Thank you for your letter regarding a more prototypical OO track range. We have looked at this on a number of occasions and we haven’t seemed to have been able to come up with compromise that keeps enough people happy. We have, in the meantime, been working on making efficiencies with our tool making that could allow us to make more specialist track efficiently. So we are actually in the process of drawing up some plain track with the correct sleeper spacing. We will have to see where this leads... but I am hopeful we can achieve a satisfactory compromise.

 

Thank you again for taking the time to write and if we can be of any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us.

 

Kind regards,

 

Ben Arnold

Engineering and Development Director

Pritchard Patent Product Co Ltd.

 

Very interesting indeed. (I must admit I thought the recently introduced bi-bloc track must be a very specialist item). An improved code 75 wood sleepered FB flexible track would make some sense now they've upped their game with the code 75 concrete sleepered flexible 

You don't get to tell 00 modellers either.

 

This is a forum. Everyone can have their say, but nobody need take the slightest notice of it.

 

Martin.

As a OO modeller , I'm an interested party when it comes to OO track. People who don't model in OO aren't. I'm not quite sure what's controversial about the idea that the people whose opinions finally matter on a gauge-specific issue are the people actually working in that gauge?

Put it another way . You or I may have opinions on who should be US President but we don't get a vote . So our opinions are irrelevant. However US citizens do get a vote - so they decide who actually is President

The Peco small radius point with OO sleepering looks like something from round the back of the gas works because that's what it is. An awful lot of people are in OO because the space they have for their hobby forces them to use tight radii - tighter than were found in real life . Those committed to guages which simply exclude such tight radii have accepted a constraint on their modelling so long ago that they never think of it and can't  grasp the idea that the constraint would be intolerable to many.

A point that looks like a real point in industrial sidings is a marked advance on a point that resembles nothing you've ever seen. Especially if it's used in the sidings or on an industrial layout.....

If gradually replicating Peco geometry, I think you'd start with medium radius, then do large, and leave small radius till last. But the sharp small point would still be better than today's Peco. Especially as you could then use genuine OO flexible track without jarring the eye

I have 2'6 radius Marcway on one place on the layout, and I regard the look as much better than Peco.

Picking up t-b-g's point about a generic coach , that's exactly what the Triang-Hornby clerestories were and are (they don't accurately match any GW diagram), and they've been very useful to the hobby. The Ratio GW 4 wheelers and even the MR suburbans have been used in a similar way.

The point is that 16.5mm track is decades behind every other type of 4mm RTR 00 modelling. If we're talking coaches , track is currently at the same stage as early 1950s RTR coaches - lithographed tinplate , or crude representational efforts in plastic. We are suggesting politely that OO track should move on to the same level as the early 60s Triangf "scale Mk1s" or the clerestories 

To be honest , t-b-g has effectively demonstrated why this discussion is really for those actually working in OO, not those committed to other gauges.Those not in OO don't get a veto on what happens in OO . I don't get to tell N gauge modellers  what they should and shouldn't do... 

Well lets see, If 20% of Peco's sales are in the UK and 20% of 00 modellers would be interested in this new track (which seems to me generous) then the potential sales would be of the order of 4% of Streamline sales. Sorry, but I can't see Peco seeing this to be worth their efforts.

I'm going to bite here, and say that with respect these assumptions are wildly wrong

1. Although I've never spoken to Peco myself I've spoke with one or two people who have, and I understand that a couple of years ago Peco did admit in private that a majority of their track sales are in Britain.

It has been very much in Peco's interest as a business for many years to have it thought that the UK market was not very important to them, precisely because it has enabled them to deflect the demands of their British customers by deploying exactly the argument you have outlined. So they will always downplay the significance of British sales 

There are some slight complications in the argument , in that some sales of Streamline outside the UK are to British outline OO modellers in Australia, Canada and elsewhere, who would form part of the market for a genuine OO ready made point , and some of Peco's UK sales are to British domiciled modellers modelling US or Continental prototype in HO , who wouldn't. Its reasonable to say, as a quick approximation, that the two groups roughly balance each other and therefore Peco's UK sales roughly equate to the UK market for reasonable OO track

(The market sector which wouldn't even consider buying such a product - the train set sector - is largely covered by Hornby track and Peco Setrack. Nobody believes Setrack is a big part of Peco's 16.5mm track business : it's Streamline 100 not Setrack that is the big Peco presence on retailers shelves (including the late ModelZone)) 

So the potential market for ready-made OO points, realistically, is 55-60% of the market for Peco Streamline - not 20% . And there is evidence to support that statement. 

2.  20% is unrealistically low for the proportion of the market who might actually buy a better OO point . 

It's outside your own modelling interests so you wouldn't have reason to be aware, but (as others have mentioned) many of us have strong memories the debates in the 90s about better RTR locos - especially RTR diesels . Exactly the same argument was used again and again to "prove" that high-spec  British outline RTR locos were impossible and we should get real and stop wanting them. A central assumption was that only a limited sector of the market had any interest in buying a better product , and that (given a choice between 90s Lima and Hornby and something much better) less than a third of the hobby would pay any kind of premium price - and that the very limited niche market, even for the commonest classes,  would drive the price so high that it would wipe out most even of that demand.... 

Then Heljan introduced their 47 , at what was then a 50% premium to the price of new Lima (£90 plays £60)  and a 100% premium to the going rate for Lima a couple of years earlier. And far from nose-diving in flames , the model was a great commercial success and is still in production. And this was repeated again and again with new RTR diesels and new generation high-spec steam (and subsequently coaches too)  We found that at least 75% of the market was willing to pay a substantial premium for a better product and "old cheap and nasty" products struggled to find buyers. In fact a great many folk rushed out to  "upgrade" -replace their existing models with the new ones  

So realistically , the potential market for  decent ready made OO pointwork is 75% of 55-60%:  that is , roughly 40-45% of the worldwide market for Peco Streamline code 100 + code 75 - certainly enough to support a product

I reckon your estimate of the market is out by a factor of 10.

(And note that the breakthough product in RTR locos didn't come from the two established dominant players - but from a new entrant)

 

 

These look interesting and code 75 too.  If I stick to 00 I may have to look into them but against say a Peco 83 Line US style turnout at about 1/3 of the cost they clearly arent going to compete on price.........I would be tempted more to go with Tillig.

I spoke to a PECO rep at the Warley show in 2011 and he told me that they were to bring out a code 75 set of left and right handed super long turnouts (Hornby call them Express points but these were going to be longer) in concrete sleeper.  We didnt discuss sleeper spacing and so I assume that if or when these turnouts appears the spacing will be unchanged from other streamline products

 

 

For what it's worth the code 75 concrete sleeper points are now out. I've not seen them closer than hanging behind a model shop counter, so I can't be sure exactly what Peco have done - you'd probably need a ruler and a direct side by side comparison. But I have seen the new Code 75 concrete sleeper Streamline flexible track. And that has appreciably longer and wider sleepers than the old code 100 concrete sleeper, spaced slightly wider apart - or indeed than the code 75 wooden sleeper. As a result it looks rather better and rather more British than we are used to from Peco. I am hoping that the new concrete sleeper points represent a similar advance

Although it's not perfect , code 75 Streamline concrete gives the modern image modeller something appreciably better than we've had in the past . I suspect the spur was competition - in the form of the Exactoscale "Fasttrack" base. Since Peco are the suppliers of Code 83 rail, they probably became aware that there was a market for better concrete sleeper track than the old code 100 which was their only offering in this sector until recently - as evidenced by a sudden surge in sales of rail. So they've reacted with a new product to block any competition in this niche

This suggests that code 75 bullhead may be the direction to take - not only is suitable flexible track already available from C+L and SMP , but suddenly contemporary track in code 75 concrete sleeper is the option best served by existing products    

There is no "mayhem" in 7mm scale. There is a range of track standards available to suit different layout conditions -- shunting plank; large mainline curves; garden railways, etc., and modellers have been using whichever best suits their purpose with entire satisfaction. In fact the 0-MF standard is gaining ground as the best overall option for finescale* 0 gauge, just as 00-SF is doing the same for finescale* 00.

 

*finescale means whatever the reader wishes it to mean.

 

 

 

 

Why assume that Heljan will continue to use an incorrect dimension? It seems just as likely that their new models will be released with the back-to-back corrected to the proper 14.4mm setting. They must surely have been made aware of their error.

 

Martin.

1. 5 different track gauges (as opposed to track standards for the same gauge) looks like chaos to me. Saying that modellers change the nominal track gauge of O gauge according to what type of layout they are building "with entire satisfaction" is to smile blandly at a bizarre and chaotic situation. If this is the consequence of Slaters 7mm wheels , then it really looks to me like they've caused mayhem. Having the same track gauge is one piece of standardisation that modellers working in a specific gauge should not give up. Everyone inventing their own individual track gauge is a bad idea.

[And I'm very uncomfortable with the "Humpty Dumpty" approach to the meaning of words , because it very rapidly empties them of any real meaning. I remember some years ago, a group announcing that they were going to build a OO finescale layout and they would be using code 100 Peco Streamline. They were'nt pleased when it was pointed out - not by me - that Peco Code 100 wasn't finescale. "Finescale" is a word that needs to have its meaning more rigourously defined and commonly accepted]

2. I'm afraid it's very naive to assume that Heljan are suddenly, unprompted, going to change their B2B. It's not what happens in RTR.  There's no reason to assume that Heljan regard their non-standard B2B of 14.2mm as in any way incorrect , or that they accept that they have made any kind of error. It is extremely likely that they believe that 14.2mm B2B is the correct figure for Heljan and a good value for making OO. There is no reason to assume they accept that 14.4mm is the "proper" B2B for OO . They may well now have machine tools designed around 14.2mm (I'm not sure they accept 26mm over pinpoints is the correct length for an axle either...)   And I don't think that you or I or anyone on this forum is going to be able to persuade them otherwise , because they are a Danish company with limited direct contact with Britain, their staff speak English to a moderate level , and they don't have any real interest in the US market so needn't bother about NMRA standards - unlike Kadar. Added to which, a proportion of their models are to commission, and therefore at arm's length to the market. Unless someone like Hattons stands over them and vigourously polices 14.4mm B2B , I don't quite see how a discussion with Heljan about B2B is ever going to happen

For how much longer? Do we assume that RTR wheel improvements have now stopped?

 

In the USA some commercial models are now being fitted with the finer RP25/88 wheels, a trend which seems likely to continue.

 

Such wheels will bump on the DOGA Intermediate standard, whereas 00-SF provides support for both RP25/110 and RP25/88 wheels, and also Markits and other finer wheels used on kit models. DOGA Intermediate supports RP25/110 wheels only.

 

Admittedly 00-SF may be troublesome with some older RTR models, but the thrust of this topic is to create track of comparable quality to the latest RTR models, not all RTR models that have ever been produced. It is undeniable that the narrower 1.0mm 00-SF flangeway looks much better than the 1.3mm of DOGA Intermediate.

 

However, this topic still seems to be wandering in fairyland. The idea that a manufacturer is going to have his new track range designed by a self-appointed committee of RMweb members is just barmy. You can't begin to design it without a whole raft of information about his manufacturing capacity. For example -- what hydraulic lock and platen size are we assuming? What production run are we tooling for? The cost of tooling for a short run of 1000 pieces will be a fraction of that for 24-hour running producing 5 million pieces. It's fun to dream, but to plan sensibly you need to have sweated over a hot moulding machine.

 

Martin.

Here , I'm afraid, we diverge on philosophical grounds. To each wheelset , there is a matching track standard. To each track standard a matching wheelset. The idea of the "one size fits all wheel profiles" track standard is a snare and a delusion from which the hobby in Britain would be better if it could free itself.

To be blunt , I don't care whether some US ready to run HO (I suspect a few specialist items) is fitting wheels too fine to fit NMRA S3 track properly. I don't model US outline, or in HO and policing their standards to stop someone causing the mayhem Slaters have unleashed in 7mm is not my concern (Is it 5 different track gauges we now have in 7mm scale or 6 , as a result of people trying to adjust the track to suit a non-standard product?)   A wheel standard is what it says it is - a standard - and one thing that OO modellers really do need to do is prevent a reemergance  of significantly different wheelsets from different manufacturers . Those active in the gauge do not want it  . There are no OO RTR models with RP25/88 wheels , and I hope we never see any. This is an engineering issue , where consistancy and compatibility are paramount. Different and divergent wheelsets are a problem to be eliminated. 

We already have a divergence with Heljan using 14.2mm B2B on RP25/110 wheelsets. I wish they would get in line and use 14.4mm like everyone else , but the practical reality is that one RTR manufacturer's current production will not run through OO-SF without adjusting the B2Bs . And since they have a Beyer-Garrett and an LNER 2-8-0 imminent this is no longer an issue that can be swept under the carpet as "just a problem for modern image modellers who aren't a majority of the hobby so we can ignore it."  I personally don't have a problem with the idea of tweaking B2Bs, and no second hand trader ever checks the B2B of what he sells so it makes no difference to the resale value. But again the practical reality is that a significant proportion of the hobby will never adjust wheels - to be honest a significant proportion of the hobby doesn't know what a B2B is, never mind what value it should be or how to adjust the wheelset or source a B2B gauge. So anyone making OO track is saddled with accommodating  Heljan's current RTR as it comes out of the factory, otherwise he will get people complaining to him that his new points "don't work and are no good".

For the record, as a factual point, the flangeway for DOGA OO Intermediate is 1.2mm , not 1.3mm , if expressed to one decimal place (which implies a possible error through rounding of 0.05mm +/-), or 1.20mm subject to a published tolerance of +/-0.05mm  The actual datasheet is here, if anyone wants to verify : http://www.doubleogauge.com/standards/commercialtrack.htm

(I understand that the actual calculation is that a flangeway between 1.27mm and 1.15mm will fit accurate RP25/110 wheels.)

Given the Heljan situation, any manufacturer of OO points will need to be near the top end of that range - at which point backward compatibility with quite a lot of 20th Century RTR is there for the taking. Compatibility with a significant body of existing older models - many of them good enough still to be in production under new owners - is going to be much more important commercially than compability with hypothetical models which someone one day might make to a finer wheel standard than any RTR manufacturer in Britain has ever considered  

As far as "what production run are we tooling for" - it should be quite sizeable , over time.

Using some plausible assumptions for a "quick and dirty" calculation, let's say that the "average" OO layout has 20 points. That's an average between a small branchline terminus and a big continuous circuit layout. Let's say the hobby is 100,000 people - that is an estimate based on magazine circulations, (so it excludes the trainset market, which won't be buying this product) and I reckon is pretty close . A second, rather more speculative assumption is that 50% of those are in OO, (so 50,000) with O, N, P4/EM, OO9 and everything else making up 50%

We will now assume that those 50,000 modellers , on average each build one layout every 10 years. That instinctively feels a bit low - but then we have to consider those who don't build layouts, and those  building lots of layouts are probably building small ones. So that gives us 5,000 OO layouts being built each year , with an average of 20 points per layout - or a market for OO points of 100,000 units per annum in Britain

Assume you are going for 25% of that market , and will have 5 items in the range . That is 25,000 units , divided by 5 products , or 5,000 of each item each year. If the tooling lasts 10 years, that's 50,000 units, or 100,000 units over 20 years . That sounds plausible, and rules out Heljan-style soft tooling good only for a few thousand units  . (At this point it strikes me the current economic environment may actually be quite favourable for this venture , because with interest rates so low the discounted-cashflow figures on this kind of steady longterm product must look better than in the past)