[Ravenser]

I have to say that on the diesel side at least , the move to China has brought a huge improvement in the standard of new models. The haulage capabilities of the new generation models with their centre drive to both bogies, massive weight, and 8 wheel pickup are light years ahead of the old stuff made before the move to China.

I've not heard any complaints in modern image circles about the running of the new stuff or the slightest suggestion that the motors burn out . In fact quite the opposite :

[from the Model Rail thread - Graham Plowman]
QUOTE FWIW I have two Lima 'Westerns' and a Hornby 'Hymek'. I spent much time on super detailing them to a good standard. But then I bought Heljan versions of the same things. Now I have the Heljan models, the Lima/Hornby versions are redundant.

And that's a very common story throughout D+E modelling, as the collapse in second hand Lima prices and the mountains of the stuff available testify. It is the inferior mechancal performance of the older models that invariably dooms them to be sold out of service at the first opportunity

I have a Triang Hornby 37 in a cupboard. Mayby it will be butchered into a Baby Deltic, maybe I will stick an Athern mechanism under it and rebuild it as a 37 . What's certain is that the original mechanism will go in the bin - despite the attentions of 2 model shops its barely able to haul 3 coaches

This is before we get onto subjects like the greater accuracy and detailing of the body, the crispness and definition of the printed finish etc

I've no doubt quality control is more difficult in China than it was in the UK, but I'm not personally aware of a high level of defects on Hornby models - it's not the impression I get from my local shop or at the club. (Bachmann kettles are the usual source of internet discussion on this one, but I've no particular evidence of problenms there myself).

Similarly the huge abundance of every kind of spare that used to be available from Margate has certainly reduced - but I don't think spares availability is any worse now than the availability of spares from other manufacturers in the past, and I'm not at all sure this can be described as an aspect of quality.

As far as the question of extra cost is concerned, one approach might be to contemplate the Rivarossi saga. This was a company that could not cover its costs and survive producing in Europe. I don't think there was any particular Chinese competition - it just collapsed under its inability to produce at a reasonable cost. Hornby , having bought the tooling and moved it out to China re-introduced the Jouef range at prices about 20% lower than pre-bankrupcy levels - and are clearly making a decent margin in doing so

Or compare the Lima and Bachman 20s. One was self coloured plastic , picked up from just 4 wheels, when fitted with all wheel pickup stuggled with a single VGA van and had serious inaccuracies in the body. It sold for £60 at the end. The Bachmann 20, with a super mechanism , runs beautifully , hauls well and is very accurate and highly detailed. Nothing has broken off. You can get them for £40

I suspect the economics of Chinese production for Hornby look pretty similar. Certainly the cost of producing tooling out in China seems to be dramatically lower, making shorter runs cost effective

The Caley single has not been reissued as far as I'm aware? In any case singles are inherently problematic - and both the Dean single and the B12 are 45 year old tooling. A complete replacement of the B12 with a modern model is well overdue

 

[Ravenser]

Hornby currently have a range of very mixed origin and we need to discriminate quite carefully before generalising.

Firstly, I do think the haulage qualities of Triang are being viewed with rose tinted spectacles .

I've just looked up Pat Hammond's books , which reproduce the original Rly Modeller reviews for many of the items.

Cyril Freezer's review of the Lord of the Isles (RM Sept 61 - Hammond, Triang p153) notes "the locomotive , once it was run in, could handle 4 coaches on the level and 2 up a 1 in 20 test grade" This was on nickel silver rail. The motor fitted was in fact the XT60. This model has never, with any chassis, been able to haul much

CJF's review of the EM2 (RM Dec 61 - Hammond , Triang p 155) says "on nickel silver rails it will comfortably haul 4 coaches without extra adhesive weight". This confirms my recollection of the Triang Hornby 6 wheel motor bogie as totally gutless. A Co-Co that can only manage 4 coaches is dire - new generation Hornby Co-Cos like the 50 , 31, and 60 will haul many times that

Of the original Britannia , RM had this to say ""the load haulage , however being limited by the adhesive weight. It will of course , haul the shorter trains that are normally found on proprietary layouts" (RM Aug 60 - Hammond, Triang p151)

In contrast , Doug's review of the new Hornby Britannia shows it hauling 15 coaches [Sticky , above]

Of the L1 "On test we found the usual trouble with 4-4-0s in model form was present to some extent and the adhesion was insufficent to enable the motor's full power to be usedHowever the locomotive could haul 5 coaches on the level and 3 up a grade of 1 in 25". (RM Sept 60 - Hammond p149)

No comments on the haulage of the B12 are given , but I do struggle to credit thetriangman's claim elsewhere of 25 coaches using a vintage mechanism

As far as the modern models are concerned, the Limby rereleases are open to a degree of criticism but it can easily be overdone. The new 4 wheel motor bogie runs very smoothly and is capable of far better slow speed running than the old Lima pancake. It's certainly better engineered . The DMUs (and I believe the 73) have all wheel pick up and running across pointwork and less clean track benefits accordingly. The rereleased models come DCC Ready

The seems to be an emerging view that power is not really the problem with this little motor bogie - the issue is adhesion , and that it needs more weight than it gets out of the box

(See Sol's thread on the 73:
class 73

I don't think it's especially suitable for locos such as the 73, though 50g is a pretty small amount of extra weight to add. As a DMU bogie its perfectly reasonable and I'm happy enough with my 156

But it is the same price as a Bachmann 108, the mechanism isn't as refined and it doesn't have lights

On the other hand the Limby 66 clearly won't pull the skin off a rice pudden , and actually costs more than the excellent Bachmann 66 which will pull anything you hang on the back of it . This is a model Hornby really should not have released

Then there's the Pendolino. Hornby don't have their own centre drive Bo-Bo mechanism so they've reused the old Eurostar motor bogie. It runs well enough , has 6 wheel pick up but there must be a question mark about the ability to shift 9 coaches. On the other hand , without this model the WCML post 2002 could not be modelled. There seem to be no real complaints about the mouldings or accuracy. It's the same price as a Bachmann Voyager , the mechanism is inferior , but if you want to model our most important group of main lines , you need a Pendolino and this is the only game in town

However the question is whether we should benchmark Hornby by their new stuff (eg the 60, the Gresley Pacifics , Britannia and the M7; or this year's Scot and 56) or by the Lima rereleases , which were more or less thrown in for good measure - they bought the Rivarossi tooling for the Continental stuff. Or by models developed a decade or more ago (like the 91, 86, 29, VDA) . Or by vintage stuff like the B12, Dean Single and 37 - all 4 decades old.

A bit of a curates egg, Hornby. But I would not accept that the newly developed Chinese stuff is worse than what they were producing a decade or two ago.

Their prices are a little bit higher than Bachmann, across the board - except for big new steam [ And how many times has it been said on here that British models are too cheap and that locos should be more expensive?]

As far as coaching stock is concerned the Maunsells will be priced at £20, and the Bachmann Mk1s are excellent value

Ref BritHO's comments - I believe the issue with the cheap can motor is that it is a sealed unit so there is no access to replace the brushes when they wear out. This is certainly fitted to the cheap 0-4-0Ts , and evidently to the Terrier. What they have fitted to the old chassis under the Single and B12 I don't know. But the prestige new steam engines use something completely different as do the diesels - all of them , whether pancake or centre drive or Limby. It's misleading to suggest that the disposable can is Hornby's standard motor

 

[Ravenser]

If it would only haul 3 coaches then there was definitely something wrong with the model. There should be little or no difference in performance between Clan Line and Dougs Britannia - same wheel arrangement , manufacturer, design of chassis etc. One pulls 15 , the other 3...

If Hornby Pacifics could only manage 3 coaches everyone would be up in arms , so I can only assume a defect somewhere

 

[Ravenser]

If we are talking economics for a moment..

According to0 the Government statistics site , the traditional British measure of unemployment (number claiming benefit ) is currently 910,000 and falling (Jobs available 635,000) . The night we left the ERM 16 years ago it was well over 3 million . The current Government's preferred measure (based on a survey) produces higher figures of 5.5%. We've had 15 years without a recession - unprecedented in my lifetime.

When I was growing up in the 70s there was a general belief that the country was probably finished as a result of accelerating and irreversable economic decline, which might even lead to some kind of state of emergency and the suspension of democracy. 30 years on we seem to be doing quite nicely and the sky is not falling nor showing real signs of falling

While loss of manufacturing base is a worry (I'd quite like our trains to be built at Crewe, Derby , and Washwood Heath not by Siemens and whoever builds Pendolinos ) the end is not nigh. So far from everyone being on the dole in ghetto estates, we have hundreds of thousands of Poles coming here looking for jobs . Especially in the South East where there is full employment

Hornby were at Margate in the South East - that said, East Kent is one of the poorer parts
of the SE

So - coming back to model trains.

The Bachmann range grew out of models made for Airfix and Mainline from the late 70s - made in Hong Kong and eventually S.China by Kadar Ind. who owned the tools. In the late 70s they were significantly better than the Hornby models of the time (Hornby had previously had a near monopoly) and widened the range of models available. They gave the UK hobby a real boost - and HK was a Crown Colony

In 1990 after the demise of Airfix and Mainline and various twists , Kadar set up Bachmann Europe , and started using the tooling to produce the models for sale themselves. The range developed - it had better wheels better mechanisms and and better detail than the competition(Hornby and Lima) and offered a steady stream of new models . Through the 90s Bachmann set the pace

Lima were made in Italy , and carved a niche in modern image at a time when Hornby only scratched the surface. Their products were low quality , with crude 3 pole pancake mechanisms using plastic gears, limited pickup , a pretty free interpretation of body detail and profile, and a crude finish of unpainted plastic (often not quite the right shade) and basic spray paint. They never improved anything. They fobbed off the UK modeller with a product substantially inferior to that which they made for any other market. They may have been nasty but by the end they were'n't especially cheap. The collapse of the Rivarossi group finished them , but I reckon Bachmann and a revived Hornby would have sunk them within a couple more years anyway. Their demise was the one of the best things to happen to British OO RTR. Sorry, but that's what they made themselves - an obstacle to progress.

Bachmann employ 30 people in Leicestershire and do their development work here. They have a large stand at major model railway exhibitions - helping to support those shows financially. Lima never set foot across the Channel - you could send a letter to their importers who would ignore you. Buying Lima certainly didn't put any money into British industry

Hornby , about 1999 , decided to respond to Bachmann with new improved more detailed models with better mechanisms- precisely the models being rubbished in the opening post . The move to China followed shortly. In 1999 Hornby was up for sale. Now it is flourishing

In N , we had a small British producer , Farish. The models were basic and often unreliable. Bachmann bought the company , transferred the production to China - there were 18 months when you couldn't buy British outline N , then production resumed with better finishes , better wheels , better mechanisms and development. Then Dapol, a small British outfit , decided to get into N , and have been producing new models to a higher standard than seen before and giving Bachmann a run for their money. Good luck to them

If we're being economically nationalistic I don't , frankly, see a moral distinction or moral superiority in buying an inferior Italian model and seeing 100% of the cash go out of the country as opposed to buying a better model from Bachmann and seeing part of the money stay in the country

And certainly I don't see any moral/economic grounds for refusing to buy good British outline models of the trains outside my window as somehow morally dubious and spending all the money on 100% imported Continental models of things I've never seen (whereever they are made). Quite apart from anything else a fair part of my modelling spend goes on kits and other items from the British specialist trade

I am not suggesting for a moment that people who are interested in modelling German , French , or US railways shouldn't do precisely that. They should . But please don't suggest that buying British outline models from the long term major ranges because you want to model the railways you know is somehow morally questionable

Or that the RTR of the mid 90s was somehow better and we should go back to the days of Lima

 

[Ravenser]

As far as spares are concerned - in the UK Hornby spares are reasonably plentiful, although not quite in the same way as during Margate production when literally every part could be sourced. I'm currently cutting up some Hornby Mk4 coach interiors to make seating for a kit built DMU - these were obtained as spare parts from one of the traders who specialise in Hornby spares. On the other hand I was unable to obtain the power coupling for a Pacer through the same source as the part is not available - the Pacer has been out of the catalogue for 4 years, and only for a couple of years was it fitted with a coupler carrying power between the cars

The situation on the Continent may be rather different , as Hornby are only just restarting production of the ex Rivarossi items , and they would have no stocks of spare parts - since all they bought from Rivarossi was the tooling

Supplies of spares from Bachmann at Barwell are reasonable , if occasionally erratic

Rivarossi did not go bust because of Chinese competition. They went bust because of their own inefficiency and mismanagement, with production scattered amoungst half a dozen small factories across Europe , allied to sometimes mediocre products and a lack of new development in the last years of the company (There seems to be a feeling amongst French modellers that Jouef had rather lost its way and fallen behind ; British Lima certainly did) .

Having gone bust - if Hornby had not bought the tooling it is quite possible it would have gone for scrap and the ranges would have disappeared perminently . I'm not aware there were any other potential buyers. Would we be better off without these models ?

In the case of the Lima Deltic and the Limby 66 , probably - in the case of the 156, 101, 73 and CCT we're better off having the models . I really doubt either Bratchill or DC Kits would have done the 156 as a kit , the kitbuilders haven't touched the CCT, the 101 is DC Kits earliest effort , and it is an interesting question how long we would have had to wait for a resin 73 from Silver Fox or DC Kits and what exactly would have gone under it as propulsion . Most of the rest of the British Lima range has been replaced by much better models from Bachmann, Hornby and Heljan - with much better mechanisms. Who wants a Lima 47 when you can buy a Heljan 47?

In French outline , the loss of Jouef seems to have left big gaps in HO coverage , compounded by the temporary loss of Roco. There is no sense other manufacturers were coming forward with better replacements to fill the gaps , except possibly a few very expensive prestige limited edition "coffrets"/boxed sets . (I'm no fan of the "museum quality" limited edition 500 euro loco . Dare you weather the thing???) If the Jouef range had not returned , French HO modelling could have become a lot more difficult

To return to the original issue , the running quality of British outline models has improved dramatically in the last decade and the Chinese made models have to a very large extent led the way. The level of detail has improved as well and the standards of finish are very high. The Limby 156 runs much better than old generation Lima DMUs with their 3 pole pancakes and limited pickup. The running of new generation models like the 60 and 66 is superb

Things have got much better , and the quality of the models we now enjoy, as working models , has never been higher

 

[Ravenser]

I suspect the answer may lie in dbclass50's topic headed "Spam Spam and Spam". If other retailers are also getting 500+ spam messages a day , email as a means of communication may have ceased to function for them