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Salmon Wagon updates


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11 minutes ago, Foden said:


May I ask what the response was in regard to what they need paperwork wise for the refund?

Just Name and address, invoice number. I just went on my footplate account and printed off the order. Shows everything on there.

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I've just reluctantly spent £8.95 on insured return postage, so they're gone. I can only get to a Post Office on a Saturday and next Saturday would have been close to being too late to return them.

As many people have also said, I would have been happy to work with them if there had been some sort of communication about a possible remedy, but the silence meant I felt I had no option but to send them back.

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It’s a bit frustrating because the nice gent was pretty open with me about what had gone on, how they felt about it and fingers crossed what will happen in the future. Just some of that transparency put into a statement would have helped tremendously. But it’s not up to me to suggest what they should do. It’s up to them. 
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What I don't understand is why those who have stated that they are not happy with the product are waiting for a statement from Flangeway.  What do you expect that statement to say and why does that influence your decision as to whether to return an expensive wagon that you are not happy with?  I also don't see any immediate 'remedy', so I don't see that as a reason to wait.  Surely you are either willing to keep the models or you are not?

 

Mistakes happen, but this is not one that is easy to rectify.  It's not a printing issue like a couple of recent Hornby locomotives, where Hornby were able to get a few body shells made with a corrected livery that were available to those who contacted customer services to complain.  There isn't anything Flangeway can do to make these wagons okay, bar offer a partial refund to those who have already made a purchase in the hope that they will keep them.

 

The problem that the company has is that they have had something like 4,000 of these wagons produced and they were hoping to sell these at £50 each.  That therefore means that they were expecting around £200,000 of income from the sale of these wagons to set against the tooling and development costs that they have already incurred.  They therefore need to try to recover as much money as they can from this batch to minimise their losses.  It's therefore reasonable that they don't want to shout 'we f'd up - please just send them back to us or you can keep them for a tenner'.  They need to try to sell as many as possible at as high a price as possible to minimise their losses.

 

The only remedy is to produce a new batch, but since that will involve new tooling, it will neither be quick (ie more than a year) nor cheap (ie a six figure sum).  It might seem easy enough to say that they should just make a statement that a new batch of correct length will be produced in 2022, but being a relatively small company, they probably can't commit to that.  Who will finance the next batch?  My understanding is that they were intending to use the money from this batch to pay for the production of the next batch which would include more recent bogies and I think also a crane version.  If the company has to have a fire sale to get rid of these models, and they have no comeback on the factory because they had an under scale model in their hands in the UK for approval, then it could be years before the company can afford to produce a corrected batch.  Presumably the research and CAD work has some value, but it's effectively back to the start on development of a correct length model.

 

Perhaps the closest equivalent I can think of is when Hornby produced their first batch of the MHA Coalfish wagons with the wrong number of ribs on the body.  I don't recall Hornby making a statement or recalling the wagons.  The magazine reviews were critical and that prompted Hornby to create a new body tool for subsequent batches.  However, the first batch of incorrect MHA still turn up on second hand stalls - I've got a couple so that I can scrap the body and fit one of S-Kits replacement bodies to represent the later builds.

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I am also disappointed, I already have the rail lifting cranes assembled and painted (I can't remember - was it a Genesis kit?) and have been eagerly awaiting these

It is also very curious how this could happen.

Assuming the wheels are still correct at 12mm, and using that as a yardstick; looking at the drawings and the EP - they seem to be around 240mm long = 60 feet.

1168180245_salmondrawing.jpg.c422f074551f4a2a19916ca48b56abea.jpg

353139396_salmondrawing2.jpg.ee38aeccdc56ec0f8f842638ab7e83bf.jpg

So it looks like everything was going correctly up to the EP stage. Hopefully if the error is with the manufacturer they will have insurance of some sort. 

I guess unsatisfied customers will return their purchases and we will all wait and see if they are happy to start all over again. I hope they do.

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22 minutes ago, letterspider said:

Assuming the wheels are still correct at 12mm, and using that as a yardstick; looking at the drawings and the EP - they seem to be around 240mm long = 60 feet.

1168180245_salmondrawing.jpg.c422f074551f4a2a19916ca48b56abea.jpg

353139396_salmondrawing2.jpg.ee38aeccdc56ec0f8f842638ab7e83bf.jpg

So it looks like everything was going correctly up to the EP stage. Hopefully if the error is with the manufacturer they will have insurance of some sort. 

 

Okay, but the prototype wagons are 62' over headstocks, so if your scaling implies a 60' deck, then that would imply that there was an error with the Engineering Prototype (EP) - ie it would be 8 mm too short.

 

I find it very difficult to believe that the EP was accurate but the models from the production batch are not.  I suspect that the basic dimensions of the EP were simply not checked by Flangeway when they received the EP and that Flangeway's checking process was limited to looking at the fit of the different parts and whether the model ran okay.  It captures the look of the prototype, it runs okay, the fit of the separate components is good, so let's just approve it and get the model into production.  I therefore very much doubt that it's a production line issue.

 

It's very disappointing for all of us who were looking forward to these, but I can only assume that the company are gutted as well.

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Has this Salmon wagon been produced to HO scale by mistake, at the factory? 20mm short would about right for 3.5mm scale, and might also explain the short bogies? Can somebody check the width and height please? A factory producing for customers worldwide, would regard HO as the norm, compared to the British 4mm scale.

                                                           Cheers, Brian.

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2 minutes ago, Kirby Uncoupler said:

Has this Salmon wagon been produced to HO scale by mistake, at the factory? 20mm short would about right for 3.5mm scale, and might also explain the short bogies? Can somebody check the width and height please? A factory producing for customers worldwide, would regard HO as the norm, compared to the British 4mm scale.

                                                           Cheers, Brian.

That's already been discussed and the answer is no it isn't HO.

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3 hours ago, Pteremy said:

Is this the biggest 'unforced error' since the Oxford LNER cattle wagon? 

That was only 20% of the selling price of this one. An hour or so of modelling with the scalpel and a few scrap bits of Evergreen made a respectable 10ft WB version.

I corrected the error on the side as well but it wouldn't really matter as you have difficulty in seeing both sides at once.

 

This seems to be more like Trix scale than 00 or H0. Their 10ft WB was closer to 9ft.

There's a Cambrian one in my kit stash so I'm going to build that now.

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3 minutes ago, Kirby Uncoupler said:

Has this Salmon wagon been produced to HO scale by mistake, at the factory? 20mm short would about right for 3.5mm scale, and might also explain the short bogies? Can somebody check the width and height please? A factory producing for customers worldwide, would regard HO as the norm, compared to the British 4mm scale.

                                                           Cheers, Brian.

 

As has already been discussed in this thread, the answer is no.

 

The prototype wagon should be 19,938 mm over buffers.  If you scale that to 00, then the wagon should be about 262 mm in length.  If you scale it to H0 then it should be 229 mm (ie 33 mm shorter than 00).  @freightliner_bond_57007 posted on Monday that the wagon is 240 mm in length, so while it is 22 mm too short for 00, it is also 11 mm too long for an H0 model.  It simply seems to have been produced to an indeterminate scale that is somewhere around 1:83.

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1 minute ago, Dungrange said:

 

As has already been discussed in this thread, the answer is no.

 

The prototype wagon should be 19,938 mm over buffers.  If you scale that to 00, then the wagon should be about 262 mm in length.  If you scale it to H0 then it should be 229 mm (ie 33 mm shorter than 00).  @freightliner_bond_57007 posted on Monday that the wagon is 240 mm in length, so while it is 22 mm too short for 00, it is also 11 mm too long for an H0 model.  It simply seems to have been produced to an indeterminate scale that is somewhere around 1:83.

Thanks, I'm glad someone has done the sums, I just did a bit of quick mental arithmatic. This is very sad and unfortunate, it's ended up nearer HO, reminding me of British Trix on 3.8mm scale/ft.       BK

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18 minutes ago, hmrspaul said:

The wheelbase of the bogie should be 5ft 6in. Is that a preferable datum? The wheels were 2ft 9in nominally. 

 

I suppose that would be good to know.  If the bogies are correct, then Flangeway would only need to retool the deck, whereas if the bogies are incorrect, then everything needs to be retooled - ie nothing is salvageable.

 

I also note that if the wheels on the prototype are nominally 2ft 9 in, then the model wheels should be 11 mm diameter (which would explain why Cambrian recommend 10.5 mm wheels) and that means that @letterspider's assessment above indicates that there was indeed an issue at the EP stage that wasn't picked up.

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2 hours ago, Dungrange said:

What I don't understand is why those who have stated that they are not happy with the product are waiting for a statement from Flangeway.  What do you expect that statement to say and why does that influence your decision as to whether to return an expensive wagon that you are not happy with?  I also don't see any immediate 'remedy', so I don't see that as a reason to wait.  Surely you are either willing to keep the models or you are not?

 

I can't speak for others, but for me it's important to distinguish between being happy with the model, and wanting an immediate refund. It didn't take too long after becoming aware of the scale issue for me to make my mind up that I wasn't happy with the model as I purchased it, for the price I'd paid, and I wasn't waiting for an email asking me if I wanted to accept a XX% refund, let's be realistic, that's not the way it works.

 

What I didn't necessarily want to do was pull the money I spent back out of a small business IF there was a chance things might be able to be corrected. I own a small business, I know how important cashflow is, and whilst I have no idea what Footplate's accounts look like, I have been in a position where I've been unable to offer a service to a client as expected due to a third party, and had the client at the time demanded an instant refund, it would have had very dire consequences for my business, such is the risk we take.

This is my hobby, not my industry, so I might be naive in my assumptions, but I thought it reasonable not to make a knee jerk reaction to the disappointment without knowing the facts and reasons behind it. I don't know how much Footplate/Flangeway did on their own, and how much was subcontracted to others, so therefore have no idea where the burden of responsibility lies with the mistake, and what rectifications could be made.

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Mine turned up this morning,  sad thing is the standard of the model is superb as is the paint job , but unfortunately they are noticeably short.

I'm going to keep them as my layout can never be exhibited so if I want to play pway yard shunt its just for me

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On 27/01/2021 at 21:18, cctransuk said:

A flaw in that argument - those who are "blissfully unaware of the size discrepancy, who will therefore keep their models" are surely a potential "demand for further production runs"?

 

Whilst that is true, how many existing purchasers are going to add to their rake?  Perhaps despite the compromised model, there may be enough demand for a further production run, but I don't think I'd be taking the gamble if I was Flangeway.  I think I'd simply focus on trying to get rid of as much of the first batch, for as much money as possible. 

 

The point that I was trying to make about the lack of demand for subsequent batches is that I doubt anyone who was holding off for a model from the second batch is going to be that interested anymore.  I was waiting for the version with the ASF bogies, but if I was willing to overlook the fact that the model is too short, then I'd also be the sort of person who would be willing to overlook bogie details and therefore would simply have bought models from this batch.

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2 hours ago, Foden said:

This is my hobby, not my industry, so I might be naïve in my assumptions, but I thought it reasonable not to make a knee jerk reaction to the disappointment without knowing the facts and reasons behind it. I don't know how much Footplate/Flangeway did on their own, and how much was subcontracted to others, so therefore have no idea where the burden of responsibility lies with the mistake, and what rectifications could be made.

 

Like you, this is not my industry and I don't even run my own business, but I'm not convinced that I'd be rushing to issue a public statement if I was the business owner of Flangeway.  I suspect that I'd look at the fact that I commissioned 4,000 units and I'd sold around 3,500 of these at £50 per wagon before I became aware that there was an issue with the length / scale.  I think it's fairly obvious that nothing can be done to rectify the fact that the model is too short. 

 

Rather than rush to issue a public statement, I think I'd wait a few weeks and see what the response from the public is.  Will 250 models be returned from unhappy buyers, or will 3,000 be returned?  As a business owner, I think I'd want to know that, so that I could calculate how much money I stand to lose before deciding on a way forward.

 

@Phil Bullock and @russ p have indicated that they are willing to keep the models that they have purchased despite the models being a little short (and they know that).  There will be others, and there will be modellers who are blissfully unaware that there is an issue (and therefore presumably happy with their purchase).  What is unknown is what percentage of sales to date have been made to such individuals?  If Flangeway wait to see how many are returned, then they will have a better understanding of the answer to that question.

 

I therefore think that if I was the owner of Flangeway, I'd be waiting a few weeks or even months and then issuing a statement to confirm that due to [unspecified] 'production issues' with the first batch of Salmon the next batch of models has been cancelled and that they [Flangeway] will be making [unspecified] amendments to the tooling before a new batch is produced.   I'd then highlight that these new tooled models probably wont be available until 2023/24 and that more details will appear on the website nearer the time.  Why point out the issues to those who are happy with their models and maybe prompt them to return their models?  That would only be more likely to create a cash flow issue.  If there are a lot of returns, then the answer would be to reduce the price and see what people are willing to pay.  If there aren't too many returned, then just have a 'sale' in a few months to dispose of the models that didn't sell at £50, or as has been mentioned earlier, dump some of them with one of the 'box shifters'.

 

I don't expect a statement from Flangeway any time soon, but perhaps that's just me.

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31 minutes ago, Dungrange said:

 

Like you, this is not my industry and I don't even run my own business, but I'm not convinced that I'd be rushing to issue a public statement if I was the business owner of Flangeway.  I suspect that I'd look at the fact that I commissioned 4,000 units and I'd sold around 3,500 of these at £50 per wagon before I became aware that there was an issue with the length / scale.  I think it's fairly obvious that nothing can be done to rectify the fact that the model is too short. 

 

Rather than rush to issue a public statement, I think I'd wait a few weeks and see what the response from the public is.  Will 250 models be returned from unhappy buyers, or will 3,000 be returned?  As a business owner, I think I'd want to know that, so that I could calculate how much money I stand to lose before deciding on a way forward.

 

@Phil Bullock and @russ p have indicated that they are willing to keep the models that they have purchased despite the models being a little short (and they know that).  There will be others, and there will be modellers who are blissfully unaware that there is an issue (and therefore presumably happy with their purchase).  What is unknown is what percentage of sales to date have been made to such individuals?  If Flangeway wait to see how many are returned, then they will have a better understanding of the answer to that question.

 

I therefore think that if I was the owner of Flangeway, I'd be waiting a few weeks or even months and then issuing a statement to confirm that due to [unspecified] 'production issues' with the first batch of Salmon the next batch of models has been cancelled and that they [Flangeway] will be making [unspecified] amendments to the tooling before a new batch is produced.   I'd then highlight that these new tooled models probably wont be available until 2023/24 and that more details will appear on the website nearer the time.  Why point out the issues to those who are happy with their models and maybe prompt them to return their models?  That would only be more likely to create a cash flow issue.  If there are a lot of returns, then the answer would be to reduce the price and see what people are willing to pay.  If there aren't too many returned, then just have a 'sale' in a few months to dispose of the models that didn't sell at £50, or as has been mentioned earlier, dump some of them with one of the 'box shifters'.

 

I don't expect a statement from Flangeway any time soon, but perhaps that's just me.

 

I'm not saying I disagree with you there, and I'll stop short of speculating on what constitutes a good business case versus good customer rapport, it's not necessary here.

I'm content with my decision, and I'll keep my eyes peeled for any future (corrected) release, if they're as nicely detailed as these are, they'll have my business again for sure.

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1 hour ago, Dungrange said:

Rather than rush to issue a public statement, I think I'd wait a few weeks and see what the response from the public is.  Will 250 models be returned from unhappy buyers, or will 3,000 be returned?  As a business owner, I think I'd want to know that, so that I could calculate how much money I stand to lose before deciding on a way forward.

 

@Phil Bullock and @russ p have indicated that they are willing to keep the models that they have purchased despite the models being a little short (and they know that).  There will be others, and there will be modellers who are blissfully unaware that there is an issue (and therefore presumably happy with their purchase).  What is unknown is what percentage of sales to date have been made to such individuals?  If Flangeway wait to see how many are returned, then they will have a better understanding of the answer to that question.

 

 

I was about to order and now haven't. But, had I ordered, I would have kept them and jiggled some track panels to make them look right.


Roy

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2 hours ago, Dungrange said:

I therefore think that if I was the owner of Flangeway, I'd be waiting a few weeks or even months and then issuing a statement to confirm that due to [unspecified] 'production issues' with the first batch of Salmon the next batch of models has been cancelled and that they [Flangeway] will be making [unspecified] amendments to the tooling before a new batch is produced.   I'd then highlight that these new tooled models probably wont be available until 2023/24 and that more details will appear on the website nearer the time.  Why point out the issues to those who are happy with their models and maybe prompt them to return their models?  That would only be more likely to create a cash flow issue.  If there are a lot of returns, then the answer would be to reduce the price and see what people are willing to pay.  If there aren't too many returned, then just have a 'sale' in a few months to dispose of the models that didn't sell at £50, or as has been mentioned earlier, dump some of them with one of the 'box shifters'.

IIRC there were concerns over some incorrect details in the KMRC gated stock. At least some of those problems seem to have been addressed in the EFE Rail re-release. I haven't followed the issue closely, but no admittance that there was a problem in the first place.

 

In software parlance, this is what's known as a 'silent upgrade'. ;)

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On 27/01/2021 at 21:24, rob D2 said:

I’d imagine the first review in a mag. TBh I don’t buy anything new these days without looking here or seeing a review 

 

Good advice re checking on RMWEB which is why I'm now in a quandry over which Class 45 to give for.

 

However as far as magazine reviews go I'm a bit skeptical, whilst there were pages and pages on here of views on Oxfords Intercity and ScotRail livery, the reviews I saw in magazines of the Oxford Mk3s glossed over the 50 shades of grey debate.

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