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I'd say they are very dated, lacking the features of the newer steam age stock from both Bachmann and Hornby, and only command a high price by virtue of being the only game in town. Hornby should be able to knock these out at Railroad pricing as the tooling will be long amortised, dates from Margate production. A lot hangs on how good the OR mk3 product turns out to be; we haven't seen them attempt a coach yet, and it hasn't been plain sailing so far on their other models.

That said the most recent wagon is competent: looks and runs well; the brakegear error easily corrected, and this error is on a par with boobs which Bach and Hornby have committed on equivalent product. If their mk3 project - which I believe commences with the loco hauled types - achieves this standard or better, then it is potentially something of a game changer as OR's pricing is competitive to win them market share.

 

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QUOTE (stuartp @ 8 Oct 2016, 17:09) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>On inherited or long outdated product maybe, but I don't think either of them have managed to get an entire wagon side the wrong way round yet. I'm struggling to think of any recent steam era issues with any significant errors.
Bachmann have cheerfully hung incorrect brake gear arrangements under their 16T minerals with some regularity, and their fairly recent BR cattle wagon is a scale foot wrong in length. Hornby have more recently blessed us with the 'Blue Spot' fish van, and given the roof too small a radius. Considering how early on we are in Oxford's journey into OO, in which they are having to break into a market now operating with a much higher standard of expectation than prevailed when Bach and Hornby started on their 'better stuff' from 2000, I feel they are doing reasonably well. (I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn from their principal that it is tougher going than he expected; diecast model vehicles an order of magnitude less challenging than similar scale model railway vehicles in my opinion.)

The specific OR wagon I am looking at as evidence of improvement is what I believe is the most recent, the LNER design 6 plank. This is far and away the best I have seen from them, and sits alongside kit built models of the same vehicle very happily; the simple correction of unplugging the brake gear, moving one set to the other side, and adding a morton clutch representation if desired sorts it (and a spare set of brake gear goes in the spares box).

 

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It will be straight up 'interesting' to see how Oxford perform on the mk3s. I hope their principal realises that he is jumping into the bear pit with this choice of product. The mauling given the Heljan class 86 - a model in my opinion no worse than their manifestly wrongly proportioned class 47 with which they entered the UK market - shows how expectations grew over the first decade of the all newly tooled Chinese sourced products. The mk3s have got to be right in all significant respects. It's potentially a big win if Oxford succeed...