Hornby Model World : TV Programme

[37lover]

Bulleidboy,

Yes, I saw that in the TV episode but didn't see any reason for the wrong wheel spacing; ColinB has suggested the Designer may have wanted to "carry over" the old designed chassis. I'll have to see if I can watch the episode again as I thought the Designer had mentioned a "compromise".

[Brew Man]

Without watching the episode again, I seem to recall there was reason given for the inaccurate wheel spacing but can't now remember what it was. Helpful eh! grin

[DC-345471]

This obsession with 'new tooling' for minor improvements with big price increases is something that modellers need to knock on it's head and stop buying them just to gain hardly noticeable changes to what are already pretty good models. Lets see investment go toward something new or really old that actually cries out for improving.

[Bulleidboy]

I think a lot of the "new tooling" would have been internal - flywheel, 21-pin decoder in the case of the 9F. I recall the original wheel spacing was carried over from the old model - cost saving - but they then realised everyone would pick up on it - RMweb would have had a field dayjoy

[ColinB]

RMWeb probabl;y would have had a field day, who cares they are not the only people that buy locos, seeing as that fix I am sure added £50 to the retail price. By changing the design from the original version you have in Engineering a worse case scenario where you have two sets of valve gear and con rods that look the same but are different in places by a few fractions of a mm. I doubt the designer wanted to change the design as he probably realised the issues involved for future maintenance. Just imagine how much extra the tooling cost for that one simple change. Changing from 8 pin to 21 pin was not an issue it is just a different PCB which in reality was just a "carry over" from the design they used on the Duchess many years ago. A PCB that size from China cost fractions of a $1. In fact the 21 pin PCB is easier to solder to, as the person who designed it did a really decent job. I only wish you could buy that PCB at a reasonable price, I would convert all my tender DCC locos as the PCB is so much better than the 8 pin one they use. Sadly Simon is fixated with RMWeb rather than the more important issue of quality control, perhaps if he did Sam wouldn't have reason to give a really good loco a "crappy" review.

[atom3624]

Quite interesting tonight.

Next week it's ..... the Black Five !!

Finally!

Al.

[The Doc]

I've yet to see the programme but I believe the wheel spacings were incorrect on the original 9F/Evening Star models (dating back from the early 70s) because the actual loco has its 5 pairs of driving wheels very close together, and wheel flanges on model locos in the 1970s were pretty big, so the flanged wheels had to be spaced further apart (whereas the distance between the centre pair and the 2nd/4th pairs could be closer together since the centre pair are unflanged as per prototype.

Until this topic was brought up I had never even noticed the difference in wheel spacing on the earlier Hornby model, despite having owned several in my time. A quick scan of internet photos of actual 9Fs reveals very few with the loco sideways on, so it is impossible to notice whether or not all the wheels are equally spaced in reality. But then again, I'm definitely not a rivet counter and maybe others have a keener eye than me!

[Topcat2018]

I was mildly amused when they were taking great care to get the details of the TT scale A4 correct, then stuck handrail knobs on it that were presumably the ones used on OO gauge stuff and decided that they looked OK. If they were the same as the ones on some of my later Hornby locos they would be about 0.9 mm diameter, equivalent to about 4.25 inches diameter on a TT scale model.

[atom3624]

Must admit TC, I thought precisely the same thing!!

Al.