Spares - the worsening situation

[PeterBal]

For many years,.I could no longer easily get in or out of it , my  hobby was my 1970 restored MG midget. Despite the fact that production of midgets stopped in 1979 I never had any difficulty whatsoever in acquiring spare parts, nor to the best of my knowledge is there any difficulty in doing so today.

This month my wife bought me a new Hornby unrebuilt West Country loco for my birthday. Unfortunately I have managed to damage the tender foot ladders. I have checked with Peter's Spares and other outlets and apparently non can source the replacement chassis part containing the foot ladders. Looking through Peter's Spares website the situation is exactly the same in respect of the equivalent parts of a rebuilt West Country. I would lay odds on that similar situations exist in respect of other locos in Hornby's current catalogue.  If Hornby are to make good on their intentions to turn over a new leaf this is a situation that is not tenable. I am hopeful that someone from Hornby will see this letter and make a suitable response.

[Chrissaf]

I am hopeful that someone from Hornby will see this letter and make a suitable response.

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Very unlikely. You will be better off writing direct to Hornby to raise your concerns. HRMS review the 'RailMaster' forum section. Forum Admin sometimes review the 'Website Feedback' forum (but less so these days since the Community Moderators were introduced who now advise Admin, where appropriate, of website issues that are raised). And occasionally 'Tim at Hornby' responds to his product area in the 'International Brands' forum. But that is about it.

[atom3624]

There are often many different Hornby Bulleid Pacific tenders for sale on Ebay - one may be suitable as a replacement or to scavenge parts.

 

Failing that, RT Models produce many aftermarket lost-wax parts for Bulleid Pacifics.

 

https://www.rtmodels.co.uk/rt_models_024.htm

 

Al.

[96RAF]

Having seen the multiplicity of parts required for a model in The Engine Shed it should be a reasonably simple task for Hornby to add to the production order a percentage of product to be supplied as parts.

 

It would then behove Hornby to either sell these on by prior arrangement with say Peters Spares who would bag, label and market as separate parts or Hornby do it themselves. That would require a hi-level decision at Hornby to invest in the funding and resource to support the effort along with setting up an onward agreement with the spares retailers If that was the chosen route to market.

 

A third option could be the spares retailers liaise with Hornby to essentially pre-order, fund and own the spares as unassembled models as part of the production runs.

 

The above would of course also mean that the parts listings would require amemdment to suit. This in itself is not a quick or cheap option.

 

The current parts situation for model railways is widely deplorable across several manufacturers. Imagine if your local Ford garage flogged you a car but failed to back that sale up with spares to service or repair it. The fix for model spares is simple in principle but more complex to execute.

[walkingthedog]

I can’t remember the last time I purchased any spare parts apart from a loco body that I melted with a soldering iron. I have recently added steps to five 9F's but I made them from plasticard, much cheaper than buying them, if they were available. 

 

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[VESPA]

It is a diabolical situation that Hornby can sell such expensive items and not supply spares for the delicate easy to break parts. Have you tried looking at other models to see if there is something similar that will fit just as well. Bachmann have comprehensive spres lists and you may find something suitable there. Good luck with your search.

[The son of Triangman]

I have been saying for years the spares situation with all the main makers is bad, the lack of spare bodies and the cheapo can motors used today in particular.

[Jeff Mennell]

A close friend expressed the wish to buy me a nice loco for my birthday. My response was 'don't buy a new one cos you cannot get spares'. Hornby will know about the situation but presumably don't give a flying fig.

[walkingthedog]

I get the impression that I have been very lucky regarding spares as I haven’t needed any, apart from the body I melted. I guess I must treat my models far more carefully than some, all 103 of them.  😉

[NWR-Gordon-4]

There's nothing worse in this hobby when you want spares. The parts you want don't exist on their own and all the spares are the parts you don't want. If Hornby do release a part, I find the stocks don't last long and there's not a great chance of anymore being released. I wish the spare parts choices for all locomotives would be better than it is.

 

GNR-Gordon-4 (HF)

[walkingthedog]

I wonder if things will improve. 

[Jeff Mennell]

Now, if I worked for a company like Hornby I would be curious enough to visit the company forum just for a nosy and maybe take some notes. So presumably nobody in the company has the slightest interest in how their products are perceived to do this one simple thing?

[ColinB]

I mailed Hornby about valve gear for a rebuilt West Country locomotive, and was told ask again in a months time. I have been looking down the spares lists for lots of Hornby models and it amazing what spares you cannot get, it seems to be for all the newer models. It wouldn't be so bad if on a lot of models you have to take the loco body off to fit the DCC chip. It was whilst trying to do this on my West Country that the valve gear broke, the body was so tight on the chassis, that even though I was very careful it just happened, I later found out they had made the DCC socket too wide hence the difficulty. The newer ones with the chip in the tender are a bit easier, even then the idiots make it so tight that there is a danger of the tender top cracking. One previous post was on about making your own valve gear, yes tried that, looked perfectly OK until it ran. Anyway that is not the point these model retail at nearly £200+, it is no longer a case of just buy another one or make your own. My brand new West Country had all the fittings for adding a speaker except they had forgot about the wires for the DCC socket, so when I added the speaker in the space Hornby designed for, there was nowhere to run the wires, when I mentioned it on this site, an even bigger joker suggested I cut a slot. As I pointed out to clueless, yes I am full capable of doing that, but that is not the point on a £200 model. Hornby need to "wake up", how would you feel if you had to scrap your 3 year old car because you could not get an oil filter. It is a sure way to lose your business. I read an earlier post that you can buy a second hand one off EBay, have you tried that? For my valve gear, I would have had to buy the complete wheels plus valve gear and the cost was about 3 times the cost of the valve gear. Sorry about the rant, but it annoys me when companies are so short sighted, and some people on this site seem to accept it. I buy a ton of stuff off a well known sound decoder site, because they are always helpful and seem to care about return business, also they understand the need to move forward. Do you know I can get more spares for my 60 year old Triumph motorcycle, than I can for my 4 year old Hornby model, if it was only £30 I might understand. Perhaps if they did "outsoucing" sensibly they might get somewhere.

[ColinB]

Has anyone checked on the spares situation for Hornbys latest two models, the Terrier and Class 66. As these two were Simon's pride and joy, according to the James May program, and with all new tooling, then spares should be readily available, there is no excuse.

[ColinB]

Having seen the multiplicity of parts required for a model in The Engine Shed it should be a reasonably simple task for Hornby to add to the production order a percentage of product to be supplied as parts.

 

It would then behove Hornby to either sell these on by prior arrangement with say Peters Spares who would bag, label and market as separate parts or Hornby do it themselves. That would require a hi-level decision at Hornby to invest in the funding and resource to support the effort along with setting up an onward agreement with the spares retailers If that was the chosen route to market.

 

A third option could be the spares retailers liaise with Hornby to essentially pre-order, fund and own the spares as unassembled models as part of the production runs.

 

The above would of course also mean that the parts listings would require amemdment to suit. This in itself is not a quick or cheap option.

 

The current parts situation for model railways is widely deplorable across several manufacturers. Imagine if your local Ford garage flogged you a car but failed to back that sale up with spares to service or repair it. The fix for model spares is simple in principle but more complex to execute.

 It is law that automotive manufacturers must supply spares up to a period of 10 years after production, after that you are on your own. I am not sure if is UK law or EU law, but defintely that is why. I think the issue with Hornby is "outsourcing", they do not control their build process, plus they probably think that if they don't provide the spares you will buy a new one (how many firms have gone bust with that one, ask Whirlpool), and no I don't understand how this quote function is supposed to work.

[Chrissaf]

Unfortunately like most Hornby software. Rather than take something off the shelf that has been fully developed by others and is already fit for purpose, Hornby chose to use custom software (I do know the name of the SW house it is outsourced to, but my memory fails me just at the present time).

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So using the quote function efficiently is not particularly user friendly. But I will try and give a few tips. These tips assume a Windows PC as the platform being used.

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TIP 1 - How not to get your cursor trapped inside the buff quote box.

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After clicking the 'blue quote button' do not put your cursor inside the buff box. Doing that, will end up 9 times out of 10 with your cursor trapped within the quote box (see TIP 2).

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Instead, scroll the reply box down so that the small space (one clear line) is visible below the buff text box and place your cursor in that clear white space.

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With your cursor in that clear space start typing your reply.

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With the reply typed.......now you can go back and put the cursor inside the buff quote box and delete any excess text from the quote that is unnecessary, amend and edit it if required etc. In most cases, it is only necessary to quote a very small section of the original quoted post, so removing excess text should be something done with nearly all quotes, else it gets tiresome for the reader to have to re-read the whole quoted post again. Members then have to compare the follow up reply with the quote to see what part of the quote the reply refers to. Therefore it is much better to redact the superfluous non significant part of the quote to make it easier to read. Or better still just don't use the quote function at all.

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TIP 2 - How to get your cursor out of the buff quote box should it accidentality get trapped inside it.

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This is an easy fix...... as the cursor is already inside the buff quote box, just click the 66 icon in the reply text box tool bar. The 66 icon is the third one in from the left between the italic icon and the list icon.

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Clicking the 66 icon will remove all the buff box highlight. You can then re-edit the whole post as required to separate the quote from the reply part of the text. Removing excess quote text as required. Once you are happy with the editing. Then drag the cursor over the text lines that you want put back into the buff quote box and click the 66 icon again. This will re-instate the quote buff box but only around the previously selected text.

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You can also use the 66 icon to create a brand new quote box as I have done around this sentence of text as an example. Useful when you have copied and pasted a line of text from somewhere else that you want to highlight.

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TIP 3 - How do I get paragraph gaps to show in the published post?

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The forum software for some inexplicable reason strips out 'carriage returns'. But only the first one. When compiling your reply, type two consecutive carriage returns where you want a paragraph gap to appear in the published post. The first one will be stripped out, leaving the second one behind to be shown in the posted reply. This post has numerous paragraph gaps showing (as emphasised by the inclusion of a period (full stop) at the start of the paragraph gap). My personal choice, but I include a period so that I can see where the paragraph gaps will appear when I am writing or editing my post in the creation / edit box.

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TIP 4 - The formatting of the post can be layered using the tool icons in the tool bar.

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For example Bold or Italics or Bold Italics

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Lists can either be bulleted lists or numbered lists using the list option tools in the tool bar

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• Item A
• Item B
• Item C
• Item D

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1. Item A
2. Item B
3. Item C
4. Item D

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These lists can also have layered formatting using the other tool icons in the tool bar.

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• Item A
• Item B

• Item C

• Item D

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1. Item A
2. Item B

3. Item C

4. Item D

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TIP 5 - How can I extend my 10 minute post edit time?

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When answering a post, or creating a new post. Do so in a new browser Tab or Window. For as long as this Window / Tab is open and showing the 'blue' edit button. The post is editable. Close or refresh that Window / Tab and the ability to edit further past the initial 10 minutes is lost. I have kept my replies open for hours using this method. You can leave this editable post open whilst you use a different Window / Tab to navigate to other pages and sites using the browser.

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So as you can see, the tools are reasonably powerful if one takes the time to learn to use and experiment with them.

[walkingthedog]

Now, if I worked for a company like Hornby I would be curious enough to visit the company forum just for a nosy and maybe take some notes. So presumably nobody in the company has the slightest interest in how their products are perceived to do this one simple thing?

I don’t agree. They gave us this forum for us to discuss things. They don’t interfere with what we say. If you want them to know your views on something, contact them.

[RB51]

We know for a fact, because they sometimes leave a comment, that Hornby Staff members do drop in on the forum as their duties allow. As WTD says though the primary function of this forum is for like minded folk to debate and discuss this hobby. I'm not sure that any one particular Hornby staffer is tasked with reading the forum on a daily basis to elicit product reviews. R-

[ColinB]

I also get the opinion that the Hornby staff don't really know their product very well, not suprising seeing as they have been near bankcrupcy for a long time (best staff leave). I wanted to add tender pickups to my Tornedo as it didn't run that well on my track (I admit it was my track). Anyway I mailed Horby's technical department to find out if there were any spares that would fit to make job easier (pickups etc), you can buy "aftermarket" ones but generally they don't work very well as they weren't designed for that specific model. I just got a generic reply, basically, no there isn't and they design each model sparately, which I know they don't in the case of tenders. Fortunately someone on this site had done exactly the same thing and pointed me to a spares entry in a Welsh Model Shop (very good firm), the bits fitted perfectly in the places in the tender that Hornby had not populated. I did mention to Hornby that perhaps they might want to add this as a kit, for people to upgrade their "Railroad" models, but again a waste of time. They could have done what the motor industry does, charge well in excess for the kit and then you only have to sell a few to cover your costs. They could have even done it as an upgrade option. Do you know on another enquiry, they didn't even know the connections for the 4 pin connector on the tender. When I mentioned that they must have a drawing they design to, they seemed totally confused.

[96RAF]

ColinB

Are you talking to Hornby Technical Department, Repairs or Customer Services.

Three different areas of expertise. Unlikely that anyone at Hornby would be able to know the deepest details of every model from day 1 to now, nor which bits from the one would fit the other.

 

Nor would I expect Hornby to develop mods to make an old model run better, outside of producing a new model variant, but I would expect an enthusiastic modeller to be able to research service sheets, etc (as your fellow forum member obviously did) to see what parts from a later model could be used or adapted to fit the requirement under review. I have done this with old ringfield diesel models to get rid of traction tyres and improve pickups. 

[The son of Triangman]

I know someone who has thousands of UK made spare parts!

[VESPA]

This is a very valid topic and quite rightly so. To spend such a large amount of money on a model loco and for it to breakdown or get damaged without a decent spare part backup is just very wrong. Years back many models (if you could call them that) were robust with just a few motor derivaties. Why can't the motors, now, be more generic to various model types eg large pacifics and 2-6-0 with one style and the tiny tanks say with another style to suit their size instead of practically a different motor for every product. Sure a small pack of breakable parts should be available for each model. That is not hard to do as most come as add ons with the loco anyway. It seems that the only way to get parts is for someone to dismantle failed items to extract anything of use. My total Hornby purchases this year are practically NIL down from several hundred pounds due either to no interest in the model or not enough made. No I don't want to preorder all the time either.

[The son of Triangman]

Totally agree Vespa, there are far too many motors for models in the range.  Tri-ang had it right with a limited amount of motors that were easy to service and repair. OK the detailing wasn't much, but they were robust, easy to rpeair and service and ran forever.   I'm not suggesting bringing back the old motors, but the concept was right.  Make it easy to service and repair and supply the parts needed

 

Often the only way to get parts for today's locos is to pay silly prices on ebay for items that have been taken off models or to rummage in toy and train fair scrap bins for parts donor models.

[ColinB]

In response to RAF96. I used to work for a major automotive manaufacturer as an Engineer, and yes we did, and if we didn't we would go and see the person who designed it or phone them up. Who do you think writes the Service Sheets and I am talking about a global organisation. And yes we did service packs for vehicles, if fact, tuning kits for certain vehicles were very profitable sometimes it was just a reprograming of some software. Incidently, things like "pickups" in tenders are pretty standard, so I hate to say it but I would expect them to know it. For your information a Service Sheet is created by the design engineer telling a Technical Author what to write, they are not like the Ten Commandments magically appearing out the sky. I used to have to do it for my designs. So yes I would expect their technical department to know, most decent Ford Dealerships know which parts are common, and there are a lot more parts on a car, than a model rail tender. 

Anyway, the Tornedo is in their current range, so they should know, and they should know which parts they removed to make the Railroad version.

[ColinB]

The other issue with using Service Sheets to upgrade models is they do not contain dimensions and quite often even the shape of the part is misrepresented, so they are a poor source for in my case adding "pickups" to my tender. It is a bit like when I an rebuilding a classic motorcycle sometimes the parts in the Service Manual are very often out of scale with other parts, so again it is a nightmare to know the interchangability of parts. That is why you normally talk to the technical department. If I have an an issue with a CV on a Gaugemaster DCCDecoder I email them, and they always give me a sensible answer, because they want to sell me some more. Same with YouChoos, I ask then what decoder will with an old model, and they tell me, again because they want return business. Hornby well I think RAF96 has answered it for me.