Bachmann OO Summer 2022 Announcements inc. OO9

[JackB95]

Great to see RES and EWS 90s join the list. Two very demanded liveries from what I've seen here. My wallet didn't think so, and is now sulking in the corner again courtesy of 90030...

I've had a few conversations with Bachmann Spares (who are bloody fantastic by the way) about the BSI couplings becoming readily available, and it's a most-welcome announcement. 3 packs of them please!

[AY Mod]

17 hours ago, Global said:

Hopefully the INTERCITY Saloon is a pre production model as they appear to have done the white stripe in executive light grey? Or did this carry a different version at some point - the photo on Flickr from 1993 looks to be white as would be normal. 

 

Bachmann have responded to this point:

 

"I am pleased to confirm that the model will correctly have the white band as per this photo. The photographs published as part of yesterday’s British Railway Announcements were of a pre-production model that had been produced without the white band in error; this has been addressed and the production models are correctly finished as you can see."

 

I've replaced the image in the first post with this corrected image.

 

 

[GordonC]

1 hour ago, Legend said:

 I dont really think there was a lot of hype , unless you count people reminiscing on bin collection days 

 

Seems a reasonable update to me , you cant have brand new tooling every month . 

 

Is there not often a lull in the Summer announcements after Chinese New Year?

[Matt]

10 hours ago, 2750Papyrus said:

Is there any update on the availability of spare couplings, which has become a problem in my programme to reduce the wagon kit backlog? 

what type of couplings are you looking for?  I must have literally hundreds of NEM tension locks from my programme to convert to Kadees... happy to send you a few if its what you are after?

[Pete the Elaner]

6 hours ago, GordonC said:

 

Is there not often a lull in the Summer announcements after Chinese New Year?

 

I don't see why. Chinese New Year is in February & even after a holiday period & a delay for the time it takes to ship the models, that should still be well before summer.

[Butler Henderson]

These are only the additional announcements for summer; steam wise there are 4575s, LYR 242Ts, Std 3 tanks, Std 4 moguls and 64xx's due from previous announcements.

Edited May 5, 2022 by Butler Henderson

[Dagworth]

On 04/05/2022 at 09:28, AY Mod said:

36-074 OO Functional BSI Coupler (with NEM plug) (x10) £16.95

 

These look really interesting!

 

Andi

[dj_crisp]

10 minutes ago, Dagworth said:

These look really interesting!

 

Andi

 

They do! I hope they do well as better couplers is certainly something as a hobby we need more of.

 

Not my scene but the 90s look terrific

[GordonC]

14 hours ago, Pete the Elaner said:

 

I don't see why. Chinese New Year is in February & even after a holiday period & a delay for the time it takes to ship the models, that should still be well before summer.

 

I thought it was quite common in previous years for the regular supply to reduce over summer. Chinese New Year is in February, but it sounds like everything stops for that and factories have a high turnover of staff then where lots go home and dont necessarily return. So allowing for manufacturing time for a production run and 3 months shipping time it would certainly tie up with our summer

[Ian J.]

A plain blue, unnamed workhorse 08 - that'll be on the 'to get' list then 🙂

Edited May 6, 2022 by Ian J.

[Roy Langridge]

4 hours ago, GordonC said:

 

I thought it was quite common in previous years for the regular supply to reduce over summer. Chinese New Year is in February, but it sounds like everything stops for that and factories have a high turnover of staff then where lots go home and dont necessarily return. So allowing for manufacturing time for a production run and 3 months shipping time it would certainly tie up with our summer

 

The effects of Covid in China are far outweighing the Chinese New Year impacts at the moment. The amount of travel in China was apparently significantly down this year as a result of the virus, in part through enforcement and in part through a desire of people not to risk taking the virus home, often to an extended and elderly family.

 

Certainly some parts of my family in China are facing measure far more extreme than we saw here.

 

Roy

[woodenhead]

13 minutes ago, Roy Langridge said:

Certainly some parts of my family in China are facing measure far more extreme than we saw here.

 

If by extreme you mean monitored by robot dogs & drones, being locked into your premises, being forced to move to isolation centres, being forced to move out of your home so it can be turned into an isolation centre or simply finding yourself without anywhere to live because the nature of the job you do leaves you exposed to Covid, then yes pretty extreme compared to stay at home on 80% pay and order in everything via home delivery.

 

It doesn't help that Shanghai has been locked down, it's a major port and so much goes through it leading to backlogs and delays in the whole manufacturing and distribution network.

 

China cannot let go of zero Covid, it's placed so much emphasis on it that will not lose face and take the route the rest of the world has.  It claims less than 10K deaths from Covid despite it's populace being in billions, most believe that's down to how they count a Covid death which is different to how the rest of the world has done it.  There have been cracks though in zero Covid strategy, China knows it has to find a new route, however, it cannot abandon zero Covid.

[Roy Langridge]

4 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

If by extreme you mean monitored by robot dogs & drones, being locked into your premises, being forced to move to isolation centres, being forced to move out of your home so it can be turned into an isolation centre or simply finding yourself without anywhere to live because the nature of the job you do leaves you exposed to Covid, then yes pretty extreme compared to stay at home on 80% pay and order in everything via home delivery.

 

Yep - that is about the size of it. One of my wife's uncles manages a hotel chain. He has been kicked out of two of his hotels so they are turned into quarantine centres, is unable to return home, so is now staying at a third of his hotels, where he is locked-in and there is insufficient food for the guests, so staff are going without.

 

And then people moan about the late delivery of their model...

Roy

[MarkSG]

On 04/05/2022 at 14:55, Phil Parker said:

 

Producing ready to use resin buildings is very expensive. Your moulds won't last very long and event model is hand finished and painted. Looking at the work involved, I'm amazed they are that cheap.

 

Prices do seem to have been going up a lot lately, though. I don't disagree with what you say, but I do also wonder if at least part of it isn't the manufacturers testing the market somewhat to see what it will bear.

 

On 04/05/2022 at 14:55, Phil Parker said:

If you want to save money, Pendon buildings cost next to nothing to make...

 

Buildings and rolling stock are somewhat different categories, though. With RTR locos and rolling stock, accuracy is a key factor, and a significant part of the development cost is getting the model to be faithful to the original. Look at the posts on here when a brake level is on the wrong side! But most RTP buildings are generic or freelance, and don't have the same R&D costs associated with them. Pendon is probably a poor analogy here, because Pendon's buildings are all models of actual buildings. But the majority of layouts - and the majority of RTP buildings - are not models of actual buildings, they are models of fictional or generic settings within the framework of a real life railway. 

 

And good quality fictional is, genuinely, easier than good quality faithful reproduction of an original. I do use RTP buildings where they suit my needs and I can get them at a price I'm willing to pay. But I'm also happy to scratchbuild or kitbash buildings in a way that I wouldn't feel at all competant to do with rolling stock. And, because I don't have to worry about making it look "correct", there's also more fun in scratchbuilding a building than there is a wagon.

 

A building doesn't (usually) have to be an accurate recreation of something that actually existed, it merely has to be a plausible recreation of what might have existed. And that not only gives a release from the pressure to match up to an external measure, it also allows much more scope for creativity.

 

 

 

[Phil Parker]

16 minutes ago, MarkSG said:

Prices do seem to have been going up a lot lately, though. I don't disagree with what you say, but I do also wonder if at least part of it isn't the manufacturers testing the market somewhat to see what it will bear.

 

Well, shipping costs have gone up considerably recently, which will dramatically affect bulky items like resin buildings. Or you can stick with your conspiracy theory. 

 

18 minutes ago, MarkSG said:

Pendon is probably a poor analogy here, because Pendon's buildings are all models of actual buildings.

 

You are missing my point. The issue was price, not prototype fidelity. If you want cheap buildings, you can have them. They just don't arrive ready to plonk. 

[MarkSG]

9 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

 

Well, shipping costs have gone up considerably recently, which will dramatically affect bulky items like resin buildings. Or you can stick with your conspiracy theory. 

 

It's not a conspiracy theory. I've worked in marketing, I know how pricing works. You have to find the sweet spot between what people are willing to pay and what it costs to make the product. Sometimes, that involves experimenting with the price to see what effect it has on sales. It's all about finding the equilibrium between consumer surplus and producer surplus. And sometimes, the only way to find that point is to suck it and see.

 

9 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

You are missing my point. The issue was price, not prototype fidelity. If you want cheap buildings, you can have them. They just don't arrive ready to plonk. 

 

But that's my point too; RTP buildings are easier to replace with scratchbuilt or kitbuilt buildings than RTR locos and rolling stock are. The question is, to what extent will rising prices incentivise people to go down that route?

[Phil Parker]

4 hours ago, MarkSG said:

It's not a conspiracy theory. I've worked in marketing, I know how pricing works. You have to find the sweet spot between what people are willing to pay and what it costs to make the product

 

So the well known, and substantial, increases in shipping costs are not a factor, but some sort of experiment by an evil corporation is? Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. 

[Darius43]

Speaking of marketing, I knew a rep for a glazed building facade company who referred to his marketing colleagues as “sales prevention officers”.

 

Cheers

 

Darius

[6990WitherslackHall]

I was looking at them yesterday on the Rails of Sheffield website. There's a lot to choose from in N gauge.

[adb968008]

17 hours ago, woodenhead said:

China knows it has to find a new route, however, it cannot abandon zero Covid.

Use a western vaccine would be a way out, but that means agreeing to pay in region of $300bn for 3x 1bn doses of it, like we have. It also means admitting its own 50/50 vaccine was not as great as the western ones, and accepting the reluctance for uptake was because the population doesnt trust Chinese government medicine as thats why so many rejected taking it. It also has logistics issues as I doubt Big Pharma trusts China with the reciepe either…. 

 

 

Edited May 7, 2022 by adb968008

[Matt]

2 hours ago, Darius43 said:

Speaking of marketing, I knew a rep for a glazed building facade company who referred to his marketing colleagues as “sales prevention officers”.

 

Cheers

 

Darius

In the company I work for the department was officially called “Product Disposal” in the distant past. Apparently we weren’t very good at it but a rebranding and different attitude saw the company become profitable… can’t imagine why

[Oldddudders]

On 05/05/2022 at 12:00, TomScrut said:

 

Although I do wonder if the current method does spark more negativity, for example Hornby have only one opportunity per year to disappoint (in terms of "nothing for me"), Bachmann now have 4.

I suspect in the light of current sharp rises in the cost of living, modest new-product news comes as a relief to many whose budgets fear killer new models appearing right now. 

[TomScrut]

30 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

I suspect in the light of current sharp rises in the cost of living, modest new-product news comes as a relief to many whose budgets fear killer new models appearing right now. 

 

In my case my main relief when there's "nothing for me" that I have plenty on pre order anyway so the wallet is already lined up for a hammering. I buy stuff if it's announced and even though I maybe wish they had done whatever, I fully expect them to do so on due course and therefore given what I know I am going to be spending it's not a bad thing. Likewise when stuff is delayed to be honest as long as the price doesn't go up!

[The Stationmaster]

10 hours ago, MarkSG said:

 

It's not a conspiracy theory. I've worked in marketing, I know how pricing works. You have to find the sweet spot between what people are willing to pay and what it costs to make the product. Sometimes, that involves experimenting with the price to see what effect it has on sales. It's all about finding the equilibrium between consumer surplus and producer surplus. And sometimes, the only way to find that point is to suck it and see.

 

Simple point really - if a company wishes to remain in business it either has to make a profit (by increasing prices and/or cutting costs, and by innovating in its product range) or it keeps on borrowing money in order to keep going.

 

Kader , and Bachmann, chose the former route and Kader moved from losing a lot of money on its model railway manufacturing back into making a profit on it by increasing its prices to Bachmann Europe etc.   And Bachmann has innovated and added value (a good old marketeers way of adding a little additional production cost for a lot of added price).

 

Hornby has basically existed by borrowing money plus  starting to build on some of the innovation introduced under the previous management and, at last, adding a bit more.  But note they too have had to increase prices because costs have rocketed upwards - as is the case with many other things.

[Michael Hodgson]

11 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

They just don't arrive ready to plonk. 

 

We're not all plonkers!