Modern units & wagons

[DCC395004]

I am part of a large scale discussion on a rail forum about product availability and we have come to a conclusion.

The key conclusion is that model railways have become limited to old men, simply because the models available are mostly old steam or diesels and very expensive versions of.

There is a huge interest in modern traction, almost none of which is available to buy and in particular modern wagons, DMUs, EMUs and HSTs. On eBay, Railroad FGW mk3s sell at £85 (they were £20 new). Old Lima bogie wagons sell at £20+ and Freightliner Container wagons often hit £80 each!

So what about picking on some easy to reproduce low cost models such as the Railroad HST in many liveries, old Lima modern wagons made via Hornby? 

Then for new, there's almost nothing made for modern multiple units / trams but you squabble over steam locos, old big 4 stuff that caters for a dying market. 

My kids want what they see at the local station, nothing else so come on, move with the times!! 

My oldest son wants a class 387 - that would cover half the UK populations local station with variants. My youngest wants something modern that looks fast & modern without bits falling off. I want a loco, such as a class 66 or 37 and several bodies for it so I can swap liveries rather than buying another loco.

With eBay prices in outer space for anything post BR, there clearly is a market for this.

[DCC395004]

Nobody makes any trains that run out of London Bridge (although you did a 466 years back), Victoria, Blackfriars, Waterloo (exc Bachmann 450), Paddington (exc hard to get 800), Liverpool Street or Fenchurch Street, you only cater in part for Euston, Kings Cross & St Pancras.

I have no idea for Northern cities.

If you want the market for the future, make something that actually still runs on the network!

[LCDR]

It will also depend upon what you mean by 'modern'.

 

Even the Lima 'modern' wagons are now obsolete, Apart from the Iron ore rotary tippler which Hornby has done in the past none of these can be seen nowadays on the modern railway. They all belong to the later BR days 1980 to 2000. The same can also be said about Hornby and Bachmann air brake wagons, nearly all of which date from that era.

 

With the demise of the generation of electricity by coal huge fleets of wagons have now been scrapped. The Merry-go-round (HAA) type of which there were over 11,000 are all gone, apart from a handful preserved on the Chasewater railway.

 

Most of the freight nowadays passes in containers on the back of a variety of container carrying wagons. The number of trains of chemicals and petroleum products in tank wagons is increasingly rare.

 

Passenger trains too are changing with the 800 series taking over on the GW and LNE main lines, the HST now being re-deployed on secondary duties and the Pacer series vanishing fast. The Pendolino is still with us but what future is there for the Voyager?

 

Fortunately Hornby has taken on a model 800 series which is a useful modern model, but the local service stock has yet to appear. This will however be a difficult period to get this right because the rail indsustry hasa just announced a de-carbonisation policy which undoubtedly will spawn a range of new rolling stock.

 

[Tony57]

Hi

 

There is an interesting article in the latest Hornby Magazine (Jan 21) on modern train formations 2000 -2020 most of the frieght wagons shown are already made by other manufacturers or made for box shifters, as well as the passenger train formations (ok some are Hornby)

 

The other issue as I see it is there are at least 8 companies making OO scale rolling stock so it is becoming a very crowded UK market place with new smaller entrances, pushing their way in also, just read the modelling magazines, with the detail standards becoming higher that major retailers are comissioning and selling models of their own.

 

Is there still a demand for more remakes of remakes of already made locos carrages and wagons by the big makers and smaller makers, is there still the demand for one off makes like the GT3, should the big makers talk to each other to avoid duplications and which eras they are going to concentrate on each year?