[Adrian Swain]

Hi Folks
....Clearly Kristopher will be filling the blanks on the coaches but I do have to congratulate Hornby on their current coverage of coaching stock. The only fly in the ointment has been the Gresley and Thompson livery fiasco on the last (CURRENT ??) batches. Clearly the corridor Gresley stock body profile leaves a lot to be desired and this is partly due to the fact that Hornby have to cater for the Train set sector with Radius 1 and 2 curves. This affects almost all model coaches with visible channel solebars but has been a particular problem with these LNER coaches. They are the longest in the range apart from the almost flat sided Hawksworths since all the Colletts, Staniers, and Maunsells are not only shorter overall but many have shorter wheelbase bogies than the Gresley design.
....The solution adopted for the 12 wheel LMS diner is hardly attractive and the original spare chassis option no longer exists. It would have been possible to include clip-in sections in an accessory pack if a little more thought had been given to the design. An alternative solution might have been to have "Dummy" wheels at one end of each bogie which did not touch the rails or solebar. By reducing the wheelbase to 6' 3" on the remaining wheels the track radius would have been a far smaller problem.
....There are continual complaints about the ex Airfix "B" set and autocoach but if Hornby were to fit the newer bogies to them that would be a major improvement. Bearing in mind that some newly introduced 4mm RTR coaches are nowhere near as accurate as the "B" set it seems hardly fair to complain about them when the newer models are given glowing reviews and almost all of the serious errors are ignored.
....Kristopher will no doubt highlight the serious omissions but with the huge variety of coaching stock designs the best we can ever hope for is coverage of the principal body types and a selection of coaches covering the most useful diagrams. There have been many "False starts" such as the corridor clerestory stock without any panelling and the panelled versions where neither correspond to actual prototypes. A huge amount of tooling expense has been appllied to generic designs which are now being replaced with their accurate equivalent. Tastes have changed but the ability to make accurate coaches existed decades ago and it was short sighted management that preferred generic models to accurate ones and this has now come back to bite Hornby on the backside. Fingers crossed they survive to release the Maunsell dining car !! Hornby's wagon range is another matter altogether.

 

[Adrian Swain]

Hi Folks It is not exactly Hornby duplicating the Bachmann SR van as, in fact, the Hornby van is ex Dapol ex Airfix and was designed, in part, by my late friend Ray Chorley. He did a lot of research to assist Airfix and, before they went under, they made duplicates of some tooling in case they ever wanted to move production back to the UK or another factory, possibly in China. Quite a number of wagon tools were duplicated which is why both Dapol and Hornby have the some identical bodies although Dapol had to make a new chassis for theirs. Presumably that had not been duplicated.
....The bad news in terms of duplication is that although not all available from Hornby at the moment Dapol are proposing to do the Rudd, Clam and Tope which will put another nail in the coffin. Quite why they wish to duplicate models of this type I fail to understand. Hornby have rather let Bachmann and others wipe out much of the pre Modern image scene, some being really excellent but even these are being duplicated in some cases by Oxfordrail (PO 7 plank and the new 5 Plank wagons) There seems to be a complete lack of original thinking much of the time giving modellers very little additional choice of accurate wagons.
.....As I have said more than once, Hornby Dublo had a much more sensible approach to freight stock when first launched. 4 tank locos in the Big 4 colours each available in a set with one Mineral wagon, one 5 plank, one van and a Brake van. Each was correctly decorated and lettered for the appropriate region and, available separately, a Cattle or horsebox a special box van and a selection of petrol tanks and bogie wagons. Not a PO 7 planker in sight rather surprisingly in view of the tinprinted bodies they mainly had. I assume the war put paid to PO wagons and when production restarted PO wagons were old hat with all the new BR liveries.
.....Clearly Hornby's current financial difficulties prevent them a) being able to keep product in stock for more than a very short time and

only being able to do a few small batches of new or existing wagons per year. The situation seems likely to remain like this for some time unless they can move back into profit.

 

[Adrian Swain]

Hi Folks At the time the plastic mouldings used on the Hornby Dublo models were of a much higher quality than Triang and way better than Trix. They suffered from one serious problem, no doubt imposed by management, in that no new scale Diecast chassis was produced even though it could have been used on the majority of ordinary wagons. This was to have long term rather sad consequences insofar as almost all new wagons were forced to be made about 2mm wider than scale to suit the old diecast base. When a new chassis was finally made it then had to suit the newly produced over-width bodies and it too was wider than scale. Today there are still close on a hundred Dapol wagons all suffering from the same problem even though there is now a new plastic chassis. The assembly and manufacture has been simplified which was one of the reasons Hornby Dublo was overpriced in the early 1960s and this pricing was a major factor in the downfall of Mecanno in 1964. Today the quality of the tooling is still on a par with the best in 4mm RTR and the tools are apparently still churning out large numbers of models but NOT in the Hornby range. They passed first to G & R Wrenn and are now with Dapol, a major competitor of Hornby. Yet another management mistake which is no doubt being sorely felt. Whilst not Spot-On (another management misjudgement) these Dapol wagons could have been a far better range than many of the current Railroad wagons. Hornby have been punished a number of times for these sorts of mistakes and gone bust and now seem to badly need a fairy godmother.

 

[Adrian Swain]

Hi Folks One of the problems faced by Hornby is the apparent need at the moment to shift all new stock out to retailers as fast as possible rather than maintain a working stock level for at least a year. If you are new to the hobby it would take some time to realise that there are hundreds of items no longer available from Hornby but which are still in stock by retailers. Looking at the catalogue many items are listed as pre-order and some as Sold -out but even the note about checking with stockists may make it quite difficult to find what interests you without trawling through various websites or Ebay. It is a pity that there is not an easy to access "Back Catalogue" for perhaps a 10 year period since many items would still be obtainable once you have realised they did exist.

 

[Adrian Swain]

Hi Folks The other very big advantage of Hattons website is that their pictures show models from different angles once they are available. This may be unfortunate in some instances as some of these views may not show "The best side" which manufacturer's pictures might not "by accident" have shown. Perhaps Hornby ought to cooperate with Hattons and have the same arrangement although if the models have not been released that clearly is not possible from Hattons. Hornby often show models some time before release and could easily upload such views when they are sure the model is finalised. This latest catalogue seems to have been compiled by someone using out of date pictures which has made some people think that some retrograde steps may be taking place. Hopefully it is just that, and not that coaches such as the Gresley corridor stock are reverting to the original inaccurate graining on the doors and mis-positioned waist beading. However with Hornby you cannot always take that for granted.

 

[Adrian Swain]

Hi Folks I am sure one of the Hornby aficionados will know this for certain but I thought the Gresley FULL BRAKE in Teak livery came out AFTER the fiasco with vertically grained door panela and also after the wasit beading was moved down to the correct position. If that is so, how come the illustration on the Hornby catalogue 2018 New Models website has a picture of the full brake with both beading and graining wrong. This model came out sometime after the other coaches and I was sure it was the first with both corrections.