New Hornby Class 56 breaks cover

The point I was trying to make was slightly different actually - to a small specialist trader , stand rent is a massive item, and an expensive venue makes the exercise pointless. To Hornby , stand rent at Warley is a bagatelle - an element in a sub-heading of the marketing budget . On the other hand 18,000 people through the door means huge market penetration. Release the loco at Warley and 10-15% of the whole hobby will see it. Hornby don't even sell anything off their stand I think , so the whole exercise is simply a promotional cost.

dbclass50:
QUOTE Maybe the 56 should have been at Warley but why Warley & not elseware ? Since Warley I have spoken to a number of traders who did attend & a few of them are of the opinion that Warley is now past it's prime & is getting to be too much trouble for what they actually get out of it.

For Hornby , numbers through the door are all that matters - I suspect that if there's less than say 10,000 gate its not worth them attending a show with their stand. 25% on the stand rent doesn't matter - 25% off the gate is fatal

The small trader is trying to make a decent financial return - 25% on the stand rent would kill him. He's trying to get something completely different out of attending the show . I can see why it makes sense to release a new loco at Warley not Folkestone - at the same time I can also see why Euroscalemodels would get a far better return at Folkestone than at Warley. The two things are chalk and cheese - you can't judge one by the other

P.S.

For a "new RTR diesel thread" this one's way off topic. Never mind the market release strategy - what do folk think of the loco?

Richard:

The manufacturers have stopped releasing pre-production shots because they were seeing the model being torn to bits on internet forums and certain elements of the press for months on end over percieved inaccuracies which didn't make it into the production model.

Hornby have actually been quite clever with this release - they've snuck under the radar and got it out without months of heated threads about whether the cab roof is right or wrong or whether its angular enough , complete with declarations that the (unreleased, pre-production) model is a disgrace/"damages the hobby" and the poster won't be buying any after seeing the photo etc etc etc

Relaistically there is a huge gap in gate between the 5 big shows with attendances from 10,000 - 19,000 and the next band down with gates from 1500-3000. Hornby and Bachmann normally only do the very big shows and simply are not going trundle out every weekend to Spalding, Taunton, Leamington , Shipley, Southwold , Wigan etc etc etc [ I believe Hornby do Folkestone as it's on the doorstep, but not York and Bachmann do Hull through a connection]

As far as I'm concerned a model is released when modellers can get their grubby mitts on it

So what are the views on the model . Have they got the cabs right? Is it as good as the 60? How does it run?

So has anyone else seen one in the flesh and what do they think of it ? Does anyone apart from Hornby magazine think this is the finest ever British D+E model? Do people agree with HM it is better than the 60 (and presumably therefore better than the Bachmann 66) and if so why.

How many will it pull?

I still can't believe we are a week after the first sight of the production model, the things are winging their ways to modellers and nobody has an opinion on whether it is good , bad or indifferent

This is a new 4mm RTR Type 5 diesel, for goodness sake - it punches all the hot buttons . By this stage in the proceedings we should have had a couple of major flame wars on several forums as to its merits and the launch of several personal D+E feuds as a result result of them... Instead its like someone has unplugged the hobby at the wall

I happen to share some of pedro's views on the real things - its a 47 on steriods, and I'm most unlikely to get one personally for that reason . But still this must be the first new diesel loco in over a decade to arrive without comment