Hornby Spare Parts

[ColinB]

Does anyone have an ear at Hornby, that can find out if they intend supplying spare parts for their newer locos. I read on this site and from experience that it is impossible to get spare parts for a lot of their locos, even their current ones. To make things worse, you seem to be able to get parts for their older models but not the new ones. I have a couple of older Brittanias and I want to add DCC sound, on their newer locos they put it in the tender, so I thought if I could buy a latest level tender bottom, I could do that ( I know I have to change the connector). It saves the risk of breaking the valve gear when trying to squeeze the electronics in the loco. Surprise, surprise, I can buy the old tender bottom as a spare part, but not the new one. It is not just that, you cannot get valve gear for certain models, pony trucks for Schools class. Do what the car industry does, charge a premium for the parts, but at least supply them or long term, you lose business. I know the die hards on this site like the challenge, and yes I have successfully fitted it in the loco, but it makes maintenance a pain when I want to fix anything. If a loco costs £50.00 you fill a bit bad if you have to throw it away, if a loco cost £200.00 you feel robbed if you have to throw it away.

[walkingthedog]

I'm sure their spares section on here is getting bigger but of course they are bound to not have the bit you want. 

[96RAF]

Have you tried a formal approach to HCC about lack of spares rather than hoping they will react to forum posts.

 

Initial provisioning of spares against a project is common practice but seemingly ignored by Hornby.

[ColinB]

I did send an email to Hornby about 3 to 4 months ago when I was looking for Rebuilt Merchant Navy Valve gear. All I got was an email asking me to enquire in a months time. I assume standard answer, for not knowing when, if ever they were going to supply them. Even if they manage to turn around the company, I suspect it will be another 3 or 4 years before they are back to normal. It really needs one of their big retailers to give them grief over it, because eventually it will hit sales.

[walkingthedog]

You could be right although so far the only spare I have purchased is a loco body from Bachmann. Melted the original body with a soldering iron. 

[ColinB]

I did the same when heatshrinking a couple of fixed DCC wires on my unrebuilt Battle of Britain loco. I had to buy a very expensive one off EBay. I now use tin foil around the body when I do heatshrinking.

[walkingthedog]

At least you were working on your loco Colin, I wasn't, I dropped the iron on it. stupid boy. 

[flyingfox4475]

With Hornby only having limited production runs of new models. It is hard for them to produce spare parts as the production is in China. In the good old days they could make the spares when required at the factory at Margate. I had a new B12 which withing days of purchase bent the conecting rods due to lose screw on the wheels. I phoned Hornby and was told they dont have any spare parts for the new B12 and would have to wait a year.  They suggested I try Peters Spares. They did not have the correct conecting rod.  I ended up buying a replacement loco. and will keep the broken one for spares. The tender has been used to repair a B17. 

[ColinB]

Actually it is not, they have to produce sub assemblies to make the locos, how do you think the car industry works. I know a car is much bigger, but in China someone makes the valve gear, someone makes the wheels and so on, then it goes to production to put them together, So no difference whether it is Margate or China. The bigger reason is they probably don't want the hassle of organising it and more importantly they would have to catalogue them and store them. That costs extra money. Given their previous management, it was a cost they probably didn't want to cover, if you saw the James May program they didn't even want to store the tooling. As I said in my earlier post, if it was an older model, it would not be cost effective to make new spares, but if it is a current model then no issue. 

[walkingthedog]

You'd better get round there and sort them out Colin. 

[ColinB]

I suppose the other issue is from what I gather they don't actually make the stuff they "outsource" it. Some people think this is a really cheap way to do things, it is until you want something different and of course you have absolutely no control of the process. So if you want extra parts it costs you a premium. When they made the locos in Margate they were in absolute control of the process, so making spares was no issue, you just schedule twice as many sub assemblies. Most firms make all their profits from the customer changing their specification after a cost has been agreed, I used to work for a small firm that did exactly this ( quote low, wait for them to change the spec. when it is too late to find another supplier). I also heard that there are issues in China with the cost of wages increasing so it is no quite as low cost as it used to be, so finding a cheap manufacturing source is getting more difficult.

[Plumloco2]

I have a LNER J36 DCC Ready. Recently I decided to put in a TTS decoder and found it wasn't DCC ready. There was a short between the lower motor terminal and the right side pickups which was OK for DC but no go for DCC. I had to take the motor out and insulate the terminal to fix it. The motor drive is a 3mm long universal drive shaft which then decided to vanish when the cat sat on it. An email to Hornby and there was a new drive shaft at no cost in the post. So they do have some parts for the new stuff. Great service thanks Hornby although the motor problem should not have been there in the first place.

[ColinB]

I had the same thing with my Elite a couplr of years ago. I bought it second hand and the big red stop key had the end broken off, they supplied me with a brand new one for free. I suppose it might be the same as what used to happen in my industry, when parts get made the engineer gets a few samples before it goes to production, so if you lucky and you talk to the right person you get one.