AndyMac1707817969

As you say 3 months may be a bit late for some and not others it’s all subjective. Maybe Hornby’s crystal ball was broken and they were not able to predict world events to make these predictions more accurate when they compiled their catalogue. As Hornby is no longer in control of their own production and unforeseen corrections etc may mean they miss a production slot items will be delayed and better that that errors getting into the final items. As for duplicates you only see what was produced not wasn’t or what plans were changed. If your competitor is going to get to market first with their product then it’s going to be a big advantage and is going to hurt your sales and you have to reevaluate. The competitors will be purchased first and for many even if the later production is better the money will have been spent and people may not want two. This is only more likely to happen if you keep everything a secret. If you are not part of a very select few who are in the decision making process as to what actually goes into production then you don’t really know. However it is not illogical to assume if you are in the early planning stages for a model then it may be wise in some cases to delay or abandon the project in favor of something else that may ultimately sell better. Cash flow is paramount and having stock unsold because the market is saturated can destroy an otherwise viable business. Any business will always want to avoid unnecessary competition and needs more than belief to succeed. As for the final point, there are items you have to buy but don’t want to and items you don’t have to buy but want to. How you market these, create anticipation and demand is very much dependent on the item you are selling so no you can’t tar everything with the same brush. A new model of car may well be announced in advance to prevent potential customers going for an alternative out of ignorance of your pending product. Hornby are running a business it’s not a hobby to them they have to make decisions on what is best for their business. I doubt they delay items on purpose. As items have to be paid for upfront in China before production will begin. If Hornby’s sales are down and they are predicting fewer sales for the rest of this year and next then it seems the smart thing to do to delay production especially if that production is paid for not from reserves but from credit. Last thing Hornby needs are warehouses full of unsold product, might suit the buyer to get items cheap in the short term but hardly for the hobby in general and those whom Hornby employ. Unfortunately nowadays it seems many people can’t look at anything from anywhere but their own perspective as an end user. Hornby have to do what is right for the business after all when the product eventually arrives it is usual for all delays to be forgiven, ‘worth the wait’ is quite often a phase you hear.

Whether you announce something with the intent to manufacture it or wait till you have manufactured it and are ready to sell does not make it arrive any faster. In the latter case the buyer is just in the dark for longer. There are many advantages over the way Hornby do things An item is announced by Hornby and I can preorder it and get it at that price. After all Hornby can always honor pre-order prices they still make a lot more selling direct than at trade prices to dealers. I get the item at the today price, if there is a wait of 12 to 18 months till it’s manufactured before announcing it then it’s going to be at an inevitably higher price. I can budget for it and have the money ready when it is expected due date or there after. I can simply have the pleasure of looking forward to the item and seeing it going through its development stages. Preorders allow a company to get feedback and gauge perspective demand and not just have to make an educated guess. Beneficial if you cannot just suddenly require a second batch if you have underestimated demand. If companies know what other companies are intent on producing it helps stop duplicates for which there may end up being insufficient demand for two different productions. They are estimated delivery dates in catalogues and are never set in stone so I don't see why so many people throw their rattle out the pram over things being a bit late. Once they arrive you forget about any delay.

I am sure Hornby are pushing things back to 2023 for various reasons. No point in producing another APT run that was originally scheduled for September 2022 when only one item (the NDM) from the original batch has yet to sell out. The release dates are only estimates as they have to reply on production slots and much of this may be out of their control. Hornby I am guess have historic debt from years when they have made big losses, Accurascale have not so Hornby may need a bigger margin on items as they have higher overheads. Bachmann are generally more expensive than Hornby for nearly everything, Hornby MK1 coach £40 Bachmann £60 You have to remember too that moving production to countries such as China in the paqst had a big benefit, it cued the ‘British Disease’. Production may have been in Britain, did not mean they made an awful lot.

China is a very big country with an awful lot of people to keep happy and employed in the lifestyle many are getting accustomed to. China needs the west as much as the west needs China, its internal market is nowhere big enough to sustain its own population. As to blaming a country like Britain when you really should blame the people but then again personal responsibly died a death a long time ago. There is no political gain in telling people you have to buy British at twice the price, no one is going to win an election on that. You might as well say you can’t fly because of climate change, will win no votes.

You could just play sound files on your phone if the sound is not synced to the actual movement of the loco it would be easier. Lots available on t'Internet like here http://www.greatwestern.org.uk/sounds.htm

I have Peco code 83 Number 8 electrofrog turnouts / points which are 322mm long which would be about correct both for length, track spacing and rail height. I think they are the longest commercially produced ones

Hard to understand in this day and age why most DCC controllers look like something from the early 1990s with a single black LCD display with little more than the ability to display a few numbers. It was one of the reasons I went for a Digitrax Zephyr Express (along with Loconet) with a colour display that did not look 30 years old. Hard to understand why even this at £200 is high when you can buy a touch screen tablet for a lot less. I guess it’s down to manufacturing volume. Just don’t trust a single company such as Hornby were a DCC controller is a small part of their business to drop it should it become unworkable, still have my Zero One stuff in the attic from the 1980s. There is a whole world of model railways out there and a product aimed at just one manufactures items to me is a bad idea. Hornby would have been much better to develop DCC products under a separate name and, wait for it, for once accept that there are other manufactures products it must support and work with too.

What is the fixation with a Hornby Elite, lots of alternatives out there and many would say better.

Wonder will they do Tiger at some point as well as Lion

All that work does not seem to have gone to waste a new R30323 Lion Train Pack is on its way I see. Due autumn I see but just artwork for the box, no images of the contents, I guess some alterations are required before we get to see that.

Found this for anyone thinking of a skewed girder bridge https://www.traincat2.com/d_plategirder2.htm Also a couple of other nice ones that don't look too American https://www.traincat2.com/d_whitford.htm

To be accuate even with a girder bridge the structure needs to be skewed too, this is one done properly https://www.trainboard.com/highball/index.php?media/skewed-n-scale-truss-bridge.130548/full Sticking a straight one at an angle just does not look right. Peco do a truss and plate girder sides. For the plate girder you then just need a wood base which forms a parallelogram. Nowadays it seems they often do not even brother with skewed bridges, they just build a square box and lay the track diagonally over the top like the new Bletchley Flyover https://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/box-structure-flyover-saves-gbp-70m-and-speeds-up-east-west-rail-by-six-months

I would probably take the lazy route, take a block of wood (or several would be easier), build a jig to hold it at the correct angle, screw the wood to it, clamp the whole lot in a vertical / pedestal drill and try going through it very carefully with a hole saw. Glue and screw each laminate together and sand the arch smooth. Could do it in one piece of wood if you had access to a vertical milling machine

If you have ever done technical drawing then it’s just really the intersection of a rectangular block (the bridge) and a semi-circular tube with a rectangular block beneath. Used to do things like this in school many, many years ago.

Possibly the overnight York to Shrewsbury or Aberystwyth TPO mail train it had a BSK or BCK for some passengers but I have no idea what livery the coach would have been. I think they stopped in the late 80s. Much more likely Hornby just made it up, never seen any models other than BGs / NEAs produced in that Royal Mail livery.

If I was that worried about accuracy I would not be using code 100 track

There were 2 headstocks for that set, the smaller R8774 Headstock Sub Station and the larger two piece headstock R8956 Mine shaft building R9628 Mine Shalft Headstock 2 They come up on eBay fairly regularity R8774 is the most common, the rarest bit is R9628. I thought I saw R8774 come one Bay the other day but it was poorly described and does not come up with any obvious search terms

If you were looking to build your own then this might save you a good bit of work with the circular rails and electric contacts for the bridge https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/363860972004

A better starting point might be to look at the Fleischman turntable and how it works, it does not rely on the gear to pause between tracks. If you did not want to start from scratch then broken ones do come up on eBay for a lot less than a new one. Apart from detailing bits missing the usual problem is a lack of controller but you can make your own, maybe this might be of help. https://modelrailmusings.weebly.com/controlling-the-fleischmann-turntable.html

Talking of station announcements, the annoucments on the train, the infamous 'All change for Hawes' when the branch line from Garsdale was still up and running. Got a chuckle from many a passenger. There is a Rail Announcemnet Generator here https://roycurtis.github.io/RAG/

If the body is tight, if you angle the wheels on the none powered bogie you can get a small screwdriver in to push the side out from the inside and then insert a thin piece of plastic to keep it apart. I use glue spreaders as they are nice and thin, old credit cards etc are often a bit too thick. As ever there are videos on YouTube for a lot of things like this such as this one

I don't understand why anyone would lug a load of stuff to a train fair to sell it for less that they could get for it elsewhere and then to have to lug it home again. Might suit the buyer to think this but a doubt few sellers do, you could end up costing you more than you make. If buyers are not prepared to pay the asking price at fairs then I guess sellers will simply stop going. The idea they will suddenly start flogging it off cheap to them is wishful thinking. Best to just stick it all on eBay as a buy it now, it can sit there it costs you nothing and takes zero effort with an audience a thousand times larger than any train fair could ever hope to have. It’s really a no brainer, though I don’t have much experience in the market of selling old bits for locos made 50 or 60 years ago, I would not even consider it worth the effort photographing and listing them. Prices can temporarily fall, just leave it listed until they rise again or put it back in the cupboard for 6 months or a year. It’s a pretty safe bet that most things will be worth more in a years time than now. The mean old man customer for me is best avoided, might be more than their fair share of them on this forum. I mean just look at the thread on the Queens Platinum Jubilee Loco. Mostly people complaining about the price and how they don’t like the colour while at the same time the initial 1,500 sell out in days and Hornby increase the production run by 1,000. Good job Hornby marketing ignore this forum else all they would make would be traction tyres for old Tri-ang locos. I think the previous posts make ait a lot more likely the train fair has had its day rather than eBay and the internet is here to stay, things are not going back to the 1960s.

Colin I buy a lot on eBay and I sell quite a lot, well several thousand items bought and sold over nearly 20 years. Over 99% of people are fine to deal with but I think a lot of this is down to the type of item you are selling and the type of people you are selling to. I would not sell any other item other than model railway and books. You learn to take most of it in your stride, the odd bit of negative feedback you just ignore, it’s an occupational hazard. Yes I have sold items I did not realise some very small bit of detailing was missing but some rivet counter thought I should have known about but I never got bad feedback from them as I always sort out my mistakes. Worst one of all was getting two parcels mixed up, one destined for Austria and the other Australia. That cost a right penny to sort out. You always end up with negative feedback from people whose parcel was stuck in the post, those who think you manufactured the item and decide to review it and not the seller. I currently have one negative feedback for not responding to messages from a buyer who never actually sent any, what can you do. Things that are out of your control, you just ignore them, they don’t affect your ability to sell. If someone wants to buy something that’s great if they don’t because they don’t like the asking price, fine they are not the only buyer in town, someone will come along and buy it sooner or later. Of course you get the odd rude person who thinks someone has died and left them in charge of ‘Model Railway’. You get potential buyers trying to scam you and buyers whom you just want to avoid, like someone asking about a £200 sound equipped loco and then asking questions like how do I make it go. Learnt from a real world business many years ago, there are customers you want and customers you don’t want and good business means attracting the former and avoiding the later. Yes the average person as a customer might like to think that a business should bend over backwards to pander to every whim but the reality is if are going to end up losing money on a transaction then better to have no sale at all. If 1% of your customers cause you 99% of your problems then you want those 1% to go off down the road to your competitors and make their life a misery. Same is with eBay you have to make sure your products attract the right people, stay out of the budget end of things and wait for the right buyer to come along, it’s a lot less hassle in the long run. As for Rip off Britain as with most things, by the time it reaches the mainstream media then it’s probably been round for years. Scamming people is fairly easy, if you are telling them something they want to hear they will just believe you. Tell them something they don’t want to hear and they won’t believe you. Whether it is true or not in either case makes little difference. Greed gets the better of most people sooner or later.

Sales on eBay were very slow at the beginning of this month but are picking up again now, this is normal, they have been very high through the pandemic. To address a few points Shows like Rip Off Britain would be better renamed ‘Haven’t a Clue Britain’, really how many times do people have to be told not to pay with methods such as bank transfer etc or to read a contract. All a bit one sided never seems to show anywhere buyers who rip of sellers. Apparently bad if sellers ask too much for an item (subjective anyway) whereas it’s not a problem for buyers to pay a lot less than an item is worth and to actively try and defraud sellers. Have listed items which I have 2 of on both my eBay listings and the other on my wife’s. You get a message on both saying how the other has agreed a lower price and would you match it. Clearly fraud but seems perfectly OK for some. Claiming an item is broken when it arrives but unwilling to return it or provide photos of the damage, their mobile phone does not have a camera and they know no one whose mobile phone does, they just want a discount. Two months ago a guy buys a £15 book from my wife, 3 weeks later request to return it as they can’t afford to keep it. Strange how they managed to buy about another 10 items in-between all of which a lot more than £15. Seen a Bachmann coach on eBay, one of their Thompson ones which usually sell from about £50+ on for £20 buy it now or best offer. This exceptionally low price did not stop at least one person putting an offer in to see if they could get it for even less, if that is not a rip off what is. About a year ago I noticed a Hornby Murdoch come on starting bid £20 or best offer, someone had an offer in. I knew from the description the seller had no idea what they were selling or its potential value the last having sold for £800. I put a bid on to kill the best offer as I guessed the offer was going to be an attempt to steal it for a bargain. Next thing the listing has needed, the item is relisted and best offer accepted. I messaged the seller saying I hoped they got a good price with a link to the one that sold at £800. Did not take very long for the negative feedback on the sellers account to arrive from the prospective buyer who seems was prepared to rip off the seller having offered less than £100 obviously knowing full well how much it was actually worth. Overseas postage, yes anyone with any whit only uses eBay’s Global Shipping Programme. As the seller you are only responsible for the item till it arrives in their Global Shipping Centre in England, from then on its eBay’s problem with any delivery issues, they will even remove negative feedback if it concerns the delivery. Selling overseas is generally best avoided though, I do but very few items do sell this way which is good. You not only have to pay fees as normal on the item itself plus the domestic postage you also have to pay the approx 14% fees on the international portion of the postage as well. Ebay set the price of the international postage not the seller but this goes over the heads of many. On top of all of this the seller also has to cover the currency conversion fees for the entire amount of the transaction, another couple of percent. Does not stop buyers asking for discounts to help cover the cost of postage for them. Second reason to always use the GSP is unfortunately the attitude of some buyers. On top of the usual issues with UK delivery people not being in and not bothering to collect the item, not knowing their own address etc and expect you to sort this out even in countries that you do not even speak the language. There is the issue of import duty / taxes and delivery times. You will get buyers who refuse to accept the item as they disagree with the import duty their country is imposing and seems to think this again is an issue I should sort out or indeed can sort out, maybe a quick call to the foreign office I have no idea. Even using the GSP you get buyers who lodge a chargeback request with their credit card company because the item is a day overdue, again I can do nothing about postal delays but when that happens you just have 7 days to dispute this by providing proof of delivery else you are likely to lose both the item and the money. Any issues, if the seller does not have proof of delivery it’s an automatic refund. Vast majority of buyers are fine it must be said but it only takes one to make you realise how vulnerable you are as a seller in a transaction to ensure from then on you take every precaution against the few bad ones that are out there. People just see everything from their own point of view and never take the time to see it from the point of view of others. People seem to think laws and ethics only apply when it benefits them.

Never come across any conversion wiring for these, I had the same issue with a class 153. No idea if it will fit but the X7076 is the cab and tail lights cable to fit the newer board. This may fit older models or a bit of rewiring to the older lights PCB. It would also get rid of those awful copper contacts that cause so many issues. Lendons in Cardiff still have them in stock for less than £5.