ColinB

I will answer a couple of the questions. As far as I know the new version of the class 43 has the original couplings, I asked that originally on another thread and nobody has said they have changed. As to the guarantee of price, if you pre order with a retailer, no that doesn't stand. I ordered the Hornby Dublo Merchant Navy from Bure Valley. It came out after September so it had the 10% price increase. Bure Valley phoned up to confirm that they had got the pre order but told me under Hornby's latest terms and conditions they could not honour the original price. Bure Valley are generally pretty fair so I have no reason to dispute what they said. Of course if you ordered it off the Hornby site they do currently honour the price, how long for I don't know, but they are full price. So if you ordered the P2 when it was first announced, then if Hornby honour their prices then you will effectively get 20% off. That is why I wonder if they will still honour the prices. I wonder if that was another reason Rails stopped dealing with Hornby, generally if you pre ordered off them the price was fixed.

Thank you rvinalaff that was the information I wanted. So they did do it.

Yes Fishmanoz I found the Service Sheet on the Hornby Website but no DCC socket. I must admit I have never seen a DCC socket on a Ringfield motor, although I generally avoid tender drive like the plague, too many issues with pickups and valve gear on previous setups. I have contacted the Seller, it appears there is no instruction sheet so he was waiting information from his mate.

I have just looked at my Harveys Brewery Wagon and stamped across the bottom is "Made in Wales", I am amazed, I thought everything got made in China.

Well if if was me Fazy, probably easier to get them made in China or Eastern Europe. Being so small you could air freight them. Commonise up on some of the parts, Hornby already do this but I am not so sure they realise it, seeing as they use different part numbers for the same thing. If you ever get time count how many types of stepped bolts they use on tender draw bars, lets face it they are never going to be to scale so why bother just use one type. I have got M2, M2.5 large heads, small heads, different shoulder lengths.

Thanks Tony57 thinking about it, the Harveys Brewery wagon specials I got at the Bluebell Railway were also made by Dapol. Obviously they must do a line for all the preserved railways. I thought it was reasonable cheap when I bought it.

Hattons have a photo of the box along with text saying that it is DCC compatible but not DCC ready with a Ringfield motor. It seems that there must be a printing error on the box. On the Hattons one and the one on EBay they both have the DCC ready logo, but are obviously not.

I agree Going Spare, that is along the lines of my thoughts. I will have another look at the insert sheet. It is a shame that there isn't a better photo of the loco itself. Thanks for the info though.

Airfix is mainly an automatic job, a machine probably makes it all. So either the machine is in China or the UK, I doubt it takes much labour, a machine can even put it into the box. Model Railways take a bit more effort, but it is all about sub assemblies and modern production techniques. I build a lot of Hornby locos from parts and if you have the right assemblies set up and they are new rather, than the secondhand ones I use it doesn't take long (less than 5 minutes) and I am not the sort that is very good at repetitive tasks. So given the number of locos Hornby produce it would cost more in labour but possibly not as much as people think. As I keep saying Hornby doesn't have the capital to consider changing anything, so they will continue on their present trend, so the argument is academic.

Forget that last post of mine, well the first part I was getting confused with tender driven locos, which I have been having issues with. Just change the speaker to one from Road and Rails, the super thin ones fit under the weight.

Initially on my very old tender driven Flying Scotsman I put the 8 pin socket into the loco and did the opposite of what Hornby do now and connected them together using the 4 pin lead excerpt the socket is in the loco and the wire comes from the tender. If you change the speaker to a sugar cube there might be enough room at the back of the ringfield, or if you use a Road and Rails super thin one at the side where the brushes are. What you have to do is bin the Hornby supplied speaker generally in most cases and use a smaller easier to fit one, which incidentally sounds better anyway.

Does anyone know if Hornby R2457 Anzac is Tender Driven or Loco Driven. I have looked on the web and everywhere it is listed as 5 pole Ringfield motor, even the Service Sheet lists it as that. The advert on EBay shows the front and side panels as having the label "DCC ready" but surely Hornby didn't make "DCC ready" locos with ringfield drive. I have looked at the Service Sheet and there is no DCC socket and lead listed. So has anyone any idea whether this is loco or tender drive or DCC ready? I have a Firth of Tay that has an R number just greater that this one and it has a completely different mechanism. So did they upgrade this loco without changing the part number (yes I know, but it was at about Hornbys difficult period).

I know that they are brand new. A renumbered A4 lets say, is using the same chassis and body that it has for the last 12 years, the Hush Hush is brand new with associated new tooling costs. They are both virtually the same price unless it is the Railroad version.

Thanks Vespa, I didn't realise that their wagons were made in Wales. Yes it is so easy to get dragged into the high detail stuff. I recently bought the Hornby High Spec teak coaches. I bought them second hand as you can't get them new any more but they were still expensive. When I look at them verses the Railroad ones, the paint job is much better and I like the little stickers on the windows but when on the layout they probably don't look much different to the Railroad ones. I wanted a set of GW Clerestory coaches,Hornby had released a new batch. I watched Sams trains who was doing a review, he basically said it was the old ones (1990s vintage) with a slightly better paint job and better wheels. So I bought a pair of old decent ones second hand and changed the wheels. He was absolutely right.

Yes I probably did mean Genesis coaches.

I like that one 96RAF. I had one of those before Christmas, had a Hornby Seagull up for sale. It was actually the chassis from my original, but I couldn't get rid of the chassis so I bought the bits to make it into a loco and made it DCC ready. Guy bids, eventually gets to £44 and is sold, first I get "oh I thought it was a Mallard", surprisingly I have a Mallard body exactly the same as the Seagull from another chassis I want to sell. So I said I could change over the bodies, after a week mailed him as him hadn't paid. Comes back with I will pay you in a weeks time, when I pointed out he was late and how could I be sure he wouldn't return it with half the bits missing seeing as he hadn't been that reliable up until now. He got every so upset, so I just cancelled the bid, disabled him from ever bidding again on any of my stuff and re advertised it. I eventually sold it to the other bidder. I have to admit he is the only one that has caused me issues, everyone else has been great.

I know 96RAF my old firm used to do it all the time, sometimes implemented to use the bin full of high spec items that they couldn't get rid of. Yes, we used to get the "just" jobs, worst place to sit was outside the bosses office. With Hornby obviously their budget only allows them to retool certain locos so they pull out the old one with just a different number and name. I wanted a West Country Winston Churchill, even before the price rises they were super expensive (I suspect something to do with the partnership with the Railway Museum). I realised that it was virtually the same model as the same one twenty years ago, so I bought one of those second hand. Ok the new one was DCC ready the old one was not and the DCC socket was in the tender, but that was easy to fix. I think the old one was about £120 cheaper. Hornby don't even sell their old rehashed ones cheaper and given their new marketing policy Retailers aren't even allowed to discount them more than a certain amount. Anyway the market will have the final say, if it is as someone said that Model Shops are having preorders cancelled then that is the proof. The new retooled Bachmann DMU I was thinking of buying looks nowhere near as expensive as before.

I don't think the wagons are so much of an issue, it is when you get to something like a class 43 at £364 and Dapol ones are still very competitively priced. As I have said in previous posts I compare them with Bachmann's current pricing, generally the detail is the same, Bachmann's mechanics weren't quite as good but currently these models are cheaper. As to bringing production back here, they don't have the capital to do it. There are in vicious loop, reduced sales so the price per unit goes up so they make less and the price goes up. Sales reduce even further and so on. So they have to design models that nobody else has made before, as then they can charge a high price and be guaranteed to sell all of them. Trouble is you still have the rest of the range many of which haven't changed to close to 20 years, so if you sell one you make tons of profit, but most people already have one.

In the end I bought a couple of packs of ParkSide Models Coach Seating packs and some plasticard I had left over from A4 conversions, and made my own. They came out quite well, I am just about to add passengers. So I assume 81F you designed your own on CAD and got Shapeways to print them.

Added some seats to some old Hornby LMS clerestory coaches the short early ones. To be quite honest I forgot I had them. They are to go with my Bachmann Caledonian 812 loco, sadly no one at present makes suitable coaches, but these now look really good. I am also adding seats to the early 4 wheel short Hornby Caledonian coaches. It is amazing how much better coaches look with seats.

Well unless they have fixed it, with my Hush Hush, it was two weeks from it getting into their warehouse and getting it to me. So don't hold your breath. I had a mail from Hattons today explaining that there will be a delay in my Gemini coaches, apologising, telling me the reasons and exactly when to expect them. That is the way you are supposed to do it.

I did wonder if it would effect model shops, that is the true guide. I was horrified about 6 months ago when I bought a rebuilt Merchant Navy, only because Amazon were doing a special deal, only to find it was virtually the same as my one from twenty years ago. Admittedly they had moved the DCC socket to the tender, but I had already done that on my old ones as there was no room in the loco.

Sounds very similar to my experience with a Bachmann decoder, erratic behaviour then puff it bursts into smoke. Just in case you had better check that you don't have a short between pickups and motor, that kills decoders. What I would do is take the body off, put in a 6 pin DC header ( guy on EBay does them) then try it on DC. Once you are happy put another DCC decoder in.

Are you sure it is not the decoder? There have been lots of posts about erratic behaviour with Bachmann decoders. I have a couple that I removed because they didn't run very well. Replaced them with an equivalent Zimo decoder and they work perfectly. Not saying this is the only reason but it is not always the loco.

The problem for Hornby is that most people have a finite income, so the prices go up so they buy less. Add to that, eventually we come out of the pandemic, there will also be less demand. Given their quality issues of late, the only way I can see that they can maintain momentum is to have to develop more obscure models like the Hush Hush. I have a lot of A4 locos, I have just recently I have been grafting Railroad chassis onto old "Tender Driven" locos that you can't get in the new tooling. To be quite honest other than some don't have sprung buffers, with a change of valve gear they look very little different to the new ones but are half the price or less.