I am only speaking from personal experience and anecdotes I heard in the 80's and 90's and know nothing about Hornby's more recent products but I know that many serious railway modellers shunned Hornby products because they simply were not good enough. Hornby never seemed to shake off its image as being a toy for children and did not strive to equal the quality of foreign manufacturers. In particular, their buildings and lineside accessories often did not look realistic and the locomotives did not respond well to controls. Several serious modellers opted for American, European and later Japanese prototypes because the quality of models available was so much better. Having said this, I still have a great deal of affection for Hornby. I once collected Hornby Dublo three rail items and one day may do so again.
To forward to 2023 the financial situation of the company is now way worse. It's now 16GBX, the lowest it's ever been and the price keeps going down. A long way down from the 290GBX of 2007. Where I live it seems the distribution systems have failed and when new stock comes in the resellers are forced to set higher prices. Quality control is also lacking, trains being unboxed with build errors. Just sad to see it all imploding.
Every now and then You Tube surprises us with something you'd actually like to watch. I'm very pleased to have been directed to you! I've devoured ½doz videos already and back to back too, I'm enjoying them so much, thank you. I'm hoping that given the direction of travel of all these toy stories, can we hope for one on Meccano please?
Hornby's Zero One was the world's first commercially mass produced DCC system in 1979. I've been running it since then and it works fine. I repair units and even repair modules as the Mk.I single BD139 transistor early modules had a habit of burning out the DC isolation capacitor next to the black wire terminal when confronted with a Wrenn, Hornby Dublo or Triang power bogie's start off current demands. It is easily replaced by a 100 pF. capacitor and works fine afterwards. Master unit keyboard membranes have the silver contact paint wear off over time. Gluing on tin foil to the membrane pads fixes this problem. The units & modules were produced for Hornby by Hammant & Morgan, who also sold their own parallel & compatible system. The dual BD139 transistor chips are more resilient to the high current demands of Wrenn & Hornby Dublo locomotives.
I love Hornby trains, when I was young I want to get all the trains and train sets and make a big train set with loads of trains, carriages, props and so on, shame some sets are discontinued but seeing the Flying Scotsman is still around, I have the Queen of Scots and Smokey Joe train sets, I wanna get more but waiting until I have a chance to do so
The price for the Zeo 1 slave controllers was criminal, as all they contained was a rheostat slider and a two way switch! All the electronics were already built in to the master unit! I bought just one slave and added two further rheostats and switchis into that case. :-)
Random recommendation. Except Frank and my great grandfather were best friends and he lent him the money to start Meccano. Theyre buried next to each other in our local church.
My first train set was a Lima with a car transporter and a container lift. I added Hornby bits and pieces when I could. The best place to visit for trains and Lego and Action Man was Victor Rainey’s shop at Long’s Corner in Belfast.
Brilliant video. It's great you have done this during their 100 year celebrations. I have brought a few models off them and waiting for the new Stephensons Rocket model to arrive which is one of the limited edition anniversary trains coming out.
As a side note, there is, or really, was, an "American OO". 1:76 scale trains on 1:76 scale track. HO track is 5/8" wide, American OO track is 3/4" wide. Lionel and Scale-Craft were two major makers of the scale before WWII. HO scale existed alongside it, and before the war, it was a toss-up on which scale would become dominant. The two were so close in size most felt it would end up being one or the other. Manufacturing advances made possible by the war effort helped ensure the slightly smaller HO won out. In short, "American OO" needs its own scale track. "British OO" uses HO track. Our hobby does have an interesting history!
That is why, in the 1970s I started conersion to eighteen millimetre EM gauge which is not exact but much closer to scale appearance than 16.5mm OO gauge. It does mean one has to scrap most of the motorised parts and wheels off proprietory bodies and buy new wheels and axles for all rolling stock.
Brilliant Thank You! Remember Zero 1 system i think you also had to solder the chips into the electronics of the loco. Thank you for the shot of the Inter city 125. Great Video. PS i think Mamod steam models would be a great topic. :)
Never, ever, trust Wikipedia pronounciations, it's "oh" and "double oh", most if not all will agree to it, as you either pronounce each letter and number (O-16.5, On30, HOn3, etc) or you group conjoining letters that are the same (OOO, OO, OO9, etc)
@@flyingtardisOfficial the Europeans have called it Zero since day one as it originally was. Prewar marklin catalogues listed 00 as spur null null. Yes English pronounce it as Oh, Zero is just as correct
While Hornby is still going strong with steamies and rolling stock, Bachmann have turned a new corner. New Thomas & Friends models, from Bachmann, will be on the shelves either June or July 2020. So Thomas & Friends are due to make a successful comeback, for all us Thomas Fans.
Yes, and some of their diesels are far better than Hornby's, like the Class 37, Class 47 and of course the Class 66. The problem with Hornby isn't moving to China. Bachmann did the same and look how they're doing. Hornby's main problem is that they've decreased the value for money of their trains over the years. Even it's Railroad range is expensive compared to Dapol or Bachmann.
I'm one of those younger generation you mention. I'm 18 and refuse to buy anything from hornby. Quality across the range is lacking when compared with the asking price. I dont think that not many younger customers are coming into the hobby but that they are shopping elsewhere. Like I shop at either bachmann or heljan for the right price.
I've been really enjoying your productions, rather pleased at how professional the productions are. I must admit thoroughly enjoying the toy ones. And a big thank you for correctly pronouncing it as gauge zero, as it started out and remains today on the continent. As the advent of "double oh" in 1938 evidences, zero had already started to become oh in the years proceeding. Marklin, whom did the first 00 in 1935 (TTR and Bing were "table top"), pronounced it as spur null null, gauge zero zero. Unfortunately the examples of Henry Greenly's letters I have explaining the origins of OO (there was a whole lot more than just the motor size fyi) he fails to indicate OO or 00, the letters to the press we know are authored by Henry Greenly, but typed up by whom? to give an indication Lionel's early catalogues saw the ad department stating 2", 2 1/4" and 2 1/8" through different year catalogues to describe exactly the same track size. O and 0 may have ended up solely the prerogative of whomever set the typeface....
@@LittleCar you are very good with the available knowledge. and to be honest I just read the Wikipedia entry for the gauge and really could and should get redone. it's confusing, relatively uninformed, no real reference material, and some real off the wall bit about regional manufacturers using their own gauges for O which would appear to have no basis in reality. in fact all the wiki references seem to be light coffee table reading. Anyway, well done big car / little car.
@Amtsf yeah, it's about Hornby. The size gauge can still be 0 or O. Seeing as Dublo was Hornby tradename all 4mm scale models have to be oh oh then? HO is in a bad way then: it'll have to be hoe seeing as Hornby owned the aitch oh name.
Excellent. What about Märklin - I remember when I was a kid these were the Rolls Royce/Mercedes Benz of toy railways. We were not rich enough, but I got a badly made battery train set that I was not very happy with and this ruined my love for small railways.....
@@LittleCar Hornby really broke my 9 year old heart with their varying standards. After finding their track was weak & failed regularly (this was the height of the 70's brittle plastic era) I saved my pocket, Christmas & birthday money for a year & ordered as much of the beautiful track from Fleischmann as I could afford. Excitedly I set it all up, only to find that the flanges on all my Hornby locos and stock were too deep to run over the points! I was so disappointed I sort of lost real interest in the hobby after that.
Actually no, it's always been zero gauge and still is for the last 125 years on the continent where it originated. sometime in the early thirties the English started referring to it as Oh gauge, (you can see the changes in the catalogue typeface) and hornby's 4mm system was of course "double oh", even though the originators of commercial OO, Marklin, referred to theirs as spur null null, I.e gauge zero zero. it's unsure as to how long the US has been referring to it as Oh. Ives began off in 1901 with it, and added gauge 1 in 1904, so we could presume that it was said as gauge zero. the other manufacturers were predominantly with gauge II with the exception of Lionel. possibly from the 1915 advent of the small gauge from Lionel it was Oh as the only other gauge was standard, neither being a number of course. catalogue typefaces would appear to support this.
@@muir8009 I have always heard it said O as in the letter from people in Australia, UK etc even if historically you are right that it came from a moving down of the number 1....
@@muir8009 in Chinese language in Taiwan at least we borrow the letter O rather than use the Chinese language number zero too so not only in English that it is called by the letter, not number.
Honestly Hornby and many other model train manufacturer's are completely responsible for their financial problems themselves. Of course new people aren't entering the hobby when the average price for a single locomotive is 120 pounds and anything under 70 is a miracle, and that's just for a locomotive, you'd still need to buy rolling stock, a controller and rails seperately. They're also hampering themselves by making no modern train sets whatsoever. Kids and young people have been completely priced out of the market so of course it's basically only pensioners who are customers these days. It's not like there's a lack of interest in trains among younger generations in fact I'd argue the opposite, games like Transport Fewer and Train Simulator are doing amazing and you get entire facebook group dedicated to public transit. I'd say that the younger generations not only have interest in trains but care about them politically, trains are better for the environment and socially and younger generations see that. These manufacturer's need to get their head out of their ass and realize that they need to reduce prices seriously or they'll be going the way of the dodo, the people who are their customers now didn't get into the hobby on 120 pound trains. And I refuse to believe that it actually costs this much to manufactur these trains, they're made of incredibly cheap components like plastic and electric motors and the detail level is not that high. If LEGO who is generally considered expensive when it comes to toys can sell a complete train set with rolling stock and rails for 70 pounds (and it's LEGO so you can highly customize it) then Hornby can damn well figure out to take some old tooling and rerelease those trains for at most 50 pounds but really under that. And perhaps also make a few more modern trains like high speed trains and modern electric. Seriously these traditional model manufacturers are being put to shame by other companies.
Let me just remind everyone that for 50 pounds you can get a brand new computer game. For 200-300 pounds which some of these trains go for you can get a new high end graphics card, now I refuse to believe that a plastic train is as hard to build as some of the most advanced, cutting edge technology out there.
@@hedgehog3180 I would guess there's a fair degree of licensing issues, but I totally agree with your points. Making a replica model that's accurate should be easier that it's ever been before at any time in history. Fair enough there's moulds to produce, but every product has set up costs. It's exactly the same situation with model kits, the pricing on these has shot to astronomical levels, with the quality of product not justifying these prices (to me). As you said the net result appears to be the only people capable of maintaining use of these products are generally the older age groups. Must of seemed like a clever marketing decision at some point - target the ones with real spending power, but ultimately shot themselves in foot as cheap kits a kids would pick up just to mess about with and maybe take up the hobby as a result are practically gone now.
yeah and no. I think you're still looking at the railway hobby as being a kids thing and it's too expensive for young folks to get into. A bit of an analogy to what you're saying is you mention a high end graphics card for x amount. Now, I could add how expensive is it to make a graphics card? few wires and bits and bobs- $10 for the bits? and sell it for how many hundreds? We'll talk British here... early triang was marketed at exactly that demographic that you speak of, however years go on, customer realism demands are increasing, costs tooling and money. Hornby had that dichotomy when they went to tender drive ringfield to try to emulate the high quality expensive European equipment, but with Hornby quality. where it went wrong was to make the decision to still market it as entry level and price it accordingly. Tillig realised that continuing with the low to high end Berliner range wasn't going to be successful, so tt is now nothing but expensing end quality equipment. Can you sell a quality graphics card to someone in their mid fifties for hundreds of pounds? they'll be a few but bugger all, why would they want one? different markets, different age groups. Some youngies are interested in trains, most not. how many young people do you see in a c class Mercedes? bugger all cos they can't afford it. but they want one and when they're grey in the hair and they've got some dosh they'll put their order in. bit like getting a marklin.
Hornby had a chance to dominate the digital command control (DCC) market with their Zero 1 controller and receivers. The Zero 1 was leaps and bounds ahead of competitors, right when DCC was set to take over the scale model market. The marketing decision to require their DCC system if you wanted to run DCC was a disastrous mistake. Large swathes of scale model layouts still ran straight DC in 1980, so anything successful would have to allow for DCC and DC locomotives to work on the same layout. This error made it so the US National Model Railroad Association, which was establishing DCC standards in the late 80's, to eliminate Horny from the running. By that time, Hornby had already filed for bankruptcy, and they simply didn't have the money to fix some of these issues. Digitrack in the US and Marklin in Europe soon came to dominate the DCC business, and Britain.
well, they had a trainset from their beginning, but far from inventing the trainset: most likely issmayer decades beforehand, if one includes sectional track as being a prerequisite of being a trainset.
@@muir8009 thanks for your response, I'd never heard of Issmayer until now but a Google search later and I'm now better informed. Much appreciated. I think what I was struggling to get across, albeit nievly was that the modern train set as we know it today owes a lot to Hornby. Please forgive my fumble, I'm fairly new to this, but on the other hand thanks for the heads up on Issmayer.
@@antman5474 dude, what an awesome response! I do apologise if I came across a bit patronising :) It would appear that issmayer did the familiar sectional track, and probably trainset as such. In the 1880's companies were supplying strip rail (generally copper strips about 6' long that slotted into provided wooden sleepers) but issmayer started the more familiar sectional track. marklin scored heavily in recognising the trainset as being part of a larger system and providing separately available track for set expansion. Where Hornby really struck out was in the superlative presentation of their trainsets with Hornby's flawlessly gleaming paint and imitation leather boxes. So for what one would consider the "commonwealth" Hornby could be considered the inventor of the trainset. albeit they were never cheap, we had to wait for triang for that
Actually, I think Hornby are starting to get things right. The problem is that they fell a long way and lost a lot of expertise from the business along the way. You’ve only got to follow them online to see that they are trying hard to update, but there are a lot of people working there for whom it’s a job.....they have no actual interest in model railways and this starts with the gift shop staff and runs up towards the PR folks. Some decent products coming out now though! I’d love to see them use Arnold to take on the UK N scale market, and create a truly budget range using the old Lima tools. My kids are almost at model railway age and they need a £40 rather than £100 plus tender engine or double bogie diesel and carriages for £15 rather than £40 each.
Originally gauge zero, and still gauge zero for Europeans where the gauge originated. Zero is just as correct as Oh. It's not a good thing to say "never..." without having a bit of knowledge behind you :)
@Amtsf No it's not. How many comments on here are saying the pronunciation is wrong and it's not. And all you're doing is just adding to this by trying to shut the door on any further enlightenment. If comments were written as being "...think it's normally pronounced Oh..." rather than "...it's never zero..." which is patently wrong.
![Stromae, Pomme - “Ma Meilleure Ennemie” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Visualizer]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1F3OGIFnW1k/mqdefault.jpg)
I am only speaking from personal experience and anecdotes I heard in the 80's and 90's and know nothing about Hornby's more recent products but I know that many serious railway modellers shunned Hornby products because they simply were not good enough. Hornby never seemed to shake off its image as being a toy for children and did not strive to equal the quality of foreign manufacturers. In particular, their buildings and lineside accessories often did not look realistic and the locomotives did not respond well to controls. Several serious modellers opted for American, European and later Japanese prototypes because the quality of models available was so much better.
Having said this, I still have a great deal of affection for Hornby. I once collected Hornby Dublo three rail items and one day may do so again.
To forward to 2023 the financial situation of the company is now way worse. It's now 16GBX, the lowest it's ever been and the price keeps going down. A long way down from the 290GBX of 2007. Where I live it seems the distribution systems have failed and when new stock comes in the resellers are forced to set higher prices. Quality control is also lacking, trains being unboxed with build errors. Just sad to see it all imploding.
Hornby catalogues of the early 70's had those beautiful Terence Cuneo paintings on the covers.
Every now and then You Tube surprises us with something you'd actually like to watch. I'm very pleased to have been directed to you!
I've devoured ½doz videos already and back to back too, I'm enjoying them so much, thank you.
I'm hoping that given the direction of travel of all these toy stories, can we hope for one on Meccano please?
Hornby's Zero One was the world's first commercially mass produced DCC system in 1979. I've been running it since then and it works fine. I repair units and even repair modules as the Mk.I single BD139 transistor early modules had a habit of burning out the DC isolation capacitor next to the black wire terminal when confronted with a Wrenn, Hornby Dublo or Triang power bogie's start off current demands. It is easily replaced by a 100 pF. capacitor and works fine afterwards.
Master unit keyboard membranes have the silver contact paint wear off over time. Gluing on tin foil to the membrane pads fixes this problem.
The units & modules were produced for Hornby by Hammant & Morgan, who also sold their own parallel & compatible system. The dual BD139 transistor chips are more resilient to the high current demands of Wrenn & Hornby Dublo locomotives.
Those old ads with Bernard Cribbins were great for their time.
Left Past Saturn - Agreed. As a nipper I dreamt of being ‘Hornby-sized’!
Great video but you missed the factory in Margate and the fact they have a visitor centre there now that is brilliant
Yes, I cut this. It's in the Wikipedia article.
I love Hornby trains, when I was young I want to get all the trains and train sets and make a big train set with loads of trains, carriages, props and so on, shame some sets are discontinued but seeing the Flying Scotsman is still around, I have the Queen of Scots and Smokey Joe train sets, I wanna get more but waiting until I have a chance to do so
3:50 Teddy Boston there, good friend and neighbour of Thomas creator Rev W. Awdry.
I really feel up to date! Got the divorce, now all I need is the train set!
What a fantastic channel, thank you.
Glad you enjoy it!
The price for the Zeo 1 slave controllers was criminal, as all they contained was a rheostat slider and a two way switch! All the electronics were already built in to the master unit! I bought just one slave and added two further rheostats and switchis into that case. :-)
i remeber getting the hornby flying scotsman when i was little (i still have it today)
Random recommendation.
Except Frank and my great grandfather were best friends and he lent him the money to start Meccano.
Theyre buried next to each other in our local church.
My first train set was a Lima with a car transporter and a container lift. I added Hornby bits and pieces when I could.
The best place to visit for trains and Lego and Action Man was Victor Rainey’s shop at Long’s Corner in Belfast.
Brilliant video. It's great you have done this during their 100 year celebrations. I have brought a few models off them and waiting for the new Stephensons Rocket model to arrive which is one of the limited edition anniversary trains coming out.
As a side note, there is, or really, was, an "American OO". 1:76 scale trains on 1:76 scale track. HO track is 5/8" wide, American OO track is 3/4" wide. Lionel and Scale-Craft were two major makers of the scale before WWII. HO scale existed alongside it, and before the war, it was a toss-up on which scale would become dominant. The two were so close in size most felt it would end up being one or the other. Manufacturing advances made possible by the war effort helped ensure the slightly smaller HO won out. In short, "American OO" needs its own scale track. "British OO" uses HO track. Our hobby does have an interesting history!
That is why, in the 1970s I started conersion to eighteen millimetre EM gauge which is not exact but much closer to scale appearance than 16.5mm OO gauge. It does mean one has to scrap most of the motorised parts and wheels off proprietory bodies and buy new wheels and axles for all rolling stock.
You really should do videos on some of the American manufacturers like Lionel, American Flyer, Ives, etc. Great video!
Loved my trains as a kid 👌
Another excellent video.
Hopefully you can do the Triang story which of course included the Spot-On range.
I wish I had your level of info and footage. My kit model documentaries are not near;y so slick. Yours are very professional.
Thank you! But the scripts come from Wikipedia, so you might like to start there for your documentaries?
Very nice to see this, love it !
I remember when I was a kid having a Playcraft plastic railway set in fact I think I might have had several
Brilliant Thank You! Remember Zero 1 system i think you also had to solder the chips into the electronics of the loco.
Thank you for the shot of the Inter city 125.
Great Video.
PS i think Mamod steam models would be a great topic. :)
You know I had to have a shot of the Intercity 125!
It's weird hearing someone call O scale "zero"
See the O-scale article on Wikipedia why I called it zero scale at the start.
Never, ever, trust Wikipedia pronounciations, it's "oh" and "double oh", most if not all will agree to it, as you either pronounce each letter and number (O-16.5, On30, HOn3, etc) or you group conjoining letters that are the same (OOO, OO, OO9, etc)
@@flyingtardisOfficial If the Hornby article is wrong, I highly recommend you update it to help others in the future.
@@flyingtardisOfficial the Europeans have called it Zero since day one as it originally was. Prewar marklin catalogues listed 00 as spur null null. Yes English pronounce it as Oh, Zero is just as correct
@Amtsf Hornby called it O but the gauge can be either or. Hornby still used an existing size (Spur Null "0"), so both are correct.
Good old live steam! Love i! :-)
Excellent!
Possibly a video on Bachman or Lionel?
"Keeping the faith" - I see what you did there!
Great topic. I’m a N and G Scale modeler. 👍🏽👍🏽
While Hornby is still going strong with steamies and rolling stock, Bachmann have turned a new corner. New Thomas & Friends models, from Bachmann, will be on the shelves either June or July 2020. So Thomas & Friends are due to make a successful comeback, for all us Thomas Fans.
Yes, and some of their diesels are far better than Hornby's, like the Class 37, Class 47 and of course the Class 66. The problem with Hornby isn't moving to China. Bachmann did the same and look how they're doing. Hornby's main problem is that they've decreased the value for money of their trains over the years. Even it's Railroad range is expensive compared to Dapol or Bachmann.
3:34
Fun fact this man here is teddy Boston a friend of rev w Audrey the creator of Thomas the tank engine
I'm one of those younger generation you mention. I'm 18 and refuse to buy anything from hornby. Quality across the range is lacking when compared with the asking price. I dont think that not many younger customers are coming into the hobby but that they are shopping elsewhere. Like I shop at either bachmann or heljan for the right price.
My Type 20 with British Railways livery (similar to those at 50 seconds) still goes after more than fifty years of use and abuse.
Awesome dude as always. Did you watch the 2episode series James May narrated on Hornby?
Yes - the programmes he did a few years ago were amazing!
@@LittleCar really hope that a follow up series will be done, have asked him, but surprisingly hasnt replied....yet.
Great video again. The monk or priest has found a nice way to deal with celibacy :D
That is the late Teddy Boston, very good friend of Rev. Awdry who wrote the Thomas the Tank books. He is a very respected person amongst us railwaymen
@@StaxRail Thank you very much for this information.
@@Brera011 no problem 👍
clanline35028 He wasn’t celibate. He married late in life.
@@johnmckegney9109 I know
What is Hornsby doing with the Corgi brand? There’s nothing like the Corgi Classics or Heritage line on their website. It’s pretty much slim pickings.
The Electric train that was the few, sold in France, if that was the Metropolitain, I have one.
I've been really enjoying your productions, rather pleased at how professional the productions are. I must admit thoroughly enjoying the toy ones. And a big thank you for correctly pronouncing it as gauge zero, as it started out and remains today on the continent. As the advent of "double oh" in 1938 evidences, zero had already started to become oh in the years proceeding. Marklin, whom did the first 00 in 1935 (TTR and Bing were "table top"), pronounced it as spur null null, gauge zero zero. Unfortunately the examples of Henry Greenly's letters I have explaining the origins of OO (there was a whole lot more than just the motor size fyi) he fails to indicate OO or 00, the letters to the press we know are authored by Henry Greenly, but typed up by whom? to give an indication Lionel's early catalogues saw the ad department stating 2", 2 1/4" and 2 1/8" through different year catalogues to describe exactly the same track size. O and 0 may have ended up solely the prerogative of whomever set the typeface....
It is very confusing. To be honest I'm still confused about it, but at least I read it correctly from the Wikipedia article.
@@LittleCar you are very good with the available knowledge. and to be honest I just read the Wikipedia entry for the gauge and really could and should get redone. it's confusing, relatively uninformed, no real reference material, and some real off the wall bit about regional manufacturers using their own gauges for O which would appear to have no basis in reality. in fact all the wiki references seem to be light coffee table reading. Anyway, well done big car / little car.
@Amtsf yeah, it's about Hornby. The size gauge can still be 0 or O. Seeing as Dublo was Hornby tradename all 4mm scale models have to be oh oh then? HO is in a bad way then: it'll have to be hoe seeing as Hornby owned the aitch oh name.
Thanks for this. Will you be doing some on plastic models too like Airfix?
Maybe. I usually put things out for a vote on my Community page, so if you see one of those pleas vote for a future video!
I'm subscribing now so I'm sure that I'll see the pole
Will you be doing Majorette too? My personal favourite.
That will be the next video!
you should make a video about tyco
From what I understand, Hornby saved Airfix. Am I right?
Excellent. What about Märklin - I remember when I was a kid these were the Rolls Royce/Mercedes Benz of toy railways. We were not rich enough, but I got a badly made battery train set that I was not very happy with and this ruined my love for small railways.....
Never heard of Märklin. We'll see how this one goes...
Micro machines next
I always thought Dapol was pronounced to rhyme with the fruit. The name was a portmanteau of the founders' names wasn't it?
Probably. I haven't heard it pronounced, so we're both learning about all the things I don't know!
From 2:55 that layout isn't Hornby Dublo - it's Trix Twin. Similar system, but inferior locomotives and rolling stock compared to Hornby Dublo!
Yes - it's just meant to symbolise model railways from the 1950s (and all I could find from the period).
I would have any model trains unless I was gonna make a short film with a runaway train.
Cole Phelps 1947 huh?
@@memahselfni i'd only use model trains for destruction because i'm destructive.
At this point may I ask you for an episode on Tomica?
Maybe in the future. It's on the list.
3:30 - "Keeping the faith" - we see what you did there!
Yeah, I think that was a total accident!
@@LittleCar Hornby really broke my 9 year old heart with their varying standards. After finding their track was weak & failed regularly (this was the height of the 70's brittle plastic era) I saved my pocket, Christmas & birthday money for a year & ordered as much of the beautiful track from Fleischmann as I could afford. Excitedly I set it all up, only to find that the flanges on all my Hornby locos and stock were too deep to run over the points! I was so disappointed I sort of lost real interest in the hobby after that.
I like all your work, but it seems you talk significantly faster on the Little Car videos.
I noticed that when I was editing this video. I'll have to slow down a bit!
If you do Micromachines, I hope you talk as fast as those commercials
jk
@@claudiobizama5603 deep breath... micromachinescomeinpacksof3,
micromachinescomeinpacksof3,
micromachinescomeinpacksof3....
Lol
The gauge system is in letters, not numbers... it's O gauge, not 0 gauge!
See this article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_scale
Actually no, it's always been zero gauge and still is for the last 125 years on the continent where it originated. sometime in the early thirties the English started referring to it as Oh gauge, (you can see the changes in the catalogue typeface) and hornby's 4mm system was of course "double oh", even though the originators of commercial OO, Marklin, referred to theirs as spur null null, I.e gauge zero zero. it's unsure as to how long the US has been referring to it as Oh. Ives began off in 1901 with it, and added gauge 1 in 1904, so we could presume that it was said as gauge zero. the other manufacturers were predominantly with gauge II with the exception of Lionel. possibly from the 1915 advent of the small gauge from Lionel it was Oh as the only other gauge was standard, neither being a number of course. catalogue typefaces would appear to support this.
@@muir8009 I have always heard it said O as in the letter from people in Australia, UK etc even if historically you are right that it came from a moving down of the number 1....
@@naguoning yeah. the English speaking countries corrupted it to oh as it looks the same, but it's still zero for most Europeans, which is a lot. :)
@@muir8009 in Chinese language in Taiwan at least we borrow the letter O rather than use the Chinese language number zero too so not only in English that it is called by the letter, not number.
Honestly Hornby and many other model train manufacturer's are completely responsible for their financial problems themselves. Of course new people aren't entering the hobby when the average price for a single locomotive is 120 pounds and anything under 70 is a miracle, and that's just for a locomotive, you'd still need to buy rolling stock, a controller and rails seperately. They're also hampering themselves by making no modern train sets whatsoever. Kids and young people have been completely priced out of the market so of course it's basically only pensioners who are customers these days. It's not like there's a lack of interest in trains among younger generations in fact I'd argue the opposite, games like Transport Fewer and Train Simulator are doing amazing and you get entire facebook group dedicated to public transit. I'd say that the younger generations not only have interest in trains but care about them politically, trains are better for the environment and socially and younger generations see that. These manufacturer's need to get their head out of their ass and realize that they need to reduce prices seriously or they'll be going the way of the dodo, the people who are their customers now didn't get into the hobby on 120 pound trains. And I refuse to believe that it actually costs this much to manufactur these trains, they're made of incredibly cheap components like plastic and electric motors and the detail level is not that high. If LEGO who is generally considered expensive when it comes to toys can sell a complete train set with rolling stock and rails for 70 pounds (and it's LEGO so you can highly customize it) then Hornby can damn well figure out to take some old tooling and rerelease those trains for at most 50 pounds but really under that. And perhaps also make a few more modern trains like high speed trains and modern electric. Seriously these traditional model manufacturers are being put to shame by other companies.
Let me just remind everyone that for 50 pounds you can get a brand new computer game. For 200-300 pounds which some of these trains go for you can get a new high end graphics card, now I refuse to believe that a plastic train is as hard to build as some of the most advanced, cutting edge technology out there.
@@hedgehog3180 I would guess there's a fair degree of licensing issues, but I totally agree with your points. Making a replica model that's accurate should be easier that it's ever been before at any time in history. Fair enough there's moulds to produce, but every product has set up costs. It's exactly the same situation with model kits, the pricing on these has shot to astronomical levels, with the quality of product not justifying these prices (to me). As you said the net result appears to be the only people capable of maintaining use of these products are generally the older age groups. Must of seemed like a clever marketing decision at some point - target the ones with real spending power, but ultimately shot themselves in foot as cheap kits a kids would pick up just to mess about with and maybe take up the hobby as a result are practically gone now.
They do make modern trains - including the latest 800/Azuma trains.
yeah and no. I think you're still looking at the railway hobby as being a kids thing and it's too expensive for young folks to get into. A bit of an analogy to what you're saying is you mention a high end graphics card for x amount. Now, I could add how expensive is it to make a graphics card? few wires and bits and bobs- $10 for the bits? and sell it for how many hundreds? We'll talk British here... early triang was marketed at exactly that demographic that you speak of, however years go on, customer realism demands are increasing, costs tooling and money. Hornby had that dichotomy when they went to tender drive ringfield to try to emulate the high quality expensive European equipment, but with Hornby quality. where it went wrong was to make the decision to still market it as entry level and price it accordingly. Tillig realised that continuing with the low to high end Berliner range wasn't going to be successful, so tt is now nothing but expensing end quality equipment. Can you sell a quality graphics card to someone in their mid fifties for hundreds of pounds? they'll be a few but bugger all, why would they want one? different markets, different age groups. Some youngies are interested in trains, most not. how many young people do you see in a c class Mercedes? bugger all cos they can't afford it. but they want one and when they're grey in the hair and they've got some dosh they'll put their order in. bit like getting a marklin.
I love midel railways. And its weird how they didnt change since like the 60's.
They should never have moved production to China. Yes finer detail but in terms of actual quality, it's hit or miss
leve me my toys .an old man.
Hornby had a chance to dominate the digital command control (DCC) market with their Zero 1 controller and receivers. The Zero 1 was leaps and bounds ahead of competitors, right when DCC was set to take over the scale model market. The marketing decision to require their DCC system if you wanted to run DCC was a disastrous mistake. Large swathes of scale model layouts still ran straight DC in 1980, so anything successful would have to allow for DCC and DC locomotives to work on the same layout. This error made it so the US National Model Railroad Association, which was establishing DCC standards in the late 80's, to eliminate Horny from the running. By that time, Hornby had already filed for bankruptcy, and they simply didn't have the money to fix some of these issues. Digitrack in the US and Marklin in Europe soon came to dominate the DCC business, and Britain.
Thanks - very interesting!
Hornby should be OK they invented the train set and what's not to like about a train set.
well, they had a trainset from their beginning, but far from inventing the trainset: most likely issmayer decades beforehand, if one includes sectional track as being a prerequisite of being a trainset.
@@muir8009 thanks for your response, I'd never heard of Issmayer until now but a Google search later and I'm now better informed. Much appreciated.
I think what I was struggling to get across, albeit nievly was that the modern train set as we know it today owes a lot to Hornby.
Please forgive my fumble, I'm fairly new to this, but on the other hand thanks for the heads up on Issmayer.
@@antman5474 dude, what an awesome response! I do apologise if I came across a bit patronising :) It would appear that issmayer did the familiar sectional track, and probably trainset as such. In the 1880's companies were supplying strip rail (generally copper strips about 6' long that slotted into provided wooden sleepers) but issmayer started the more familiar sectional track. marklin scored heavily in recognising the trainset as being part of a larger system and providing separately available track for set expansion. Where Hornby really struck out was in the superlative presentation of their trainsets with Hornby's flawlessly gleaming paint and imitation leather boxes. So for what one would consider the "commonwealth" Hornby could be considered the inventor of the trainset. albeit they were never cheap, we had to wait for triang for that
@@muir8009 you've introduced me to so much regarding the history of scale trains. Massive thank you.
What's not to like about a train set.
Well this is depressing news for the hobby.
Actually, I think Hornby are starting to get things right. The problem is that they fell a long way and lost a lot of expertise from the business along the way. You’ve only got to follow them online to see that they are trying hard to update, but there are a lot of people working there for whom it’s a job.....they have no actual interest in model railways and this starts with the gift shop staff and runs up towards the PR folks.
Some decent products coming out now though! I’d love to see them use Arnold to take on the UK N scale market, and create a truly budget range using the old Lima tools. My kids are almost at model railway age and they need a £40 rather than £100 plus tender engine or double bogie diesel and carriages for £15 rather than £40 each.
Never Zero Gauge - O (Oh) Gauge, please! Day-pol is also odd. It’s Da-pol! (Founders were a David and Pauline) Otherwise very well done.
Originally gauge zero, and still gauge zero for Europeans where the gauge originated. Zero is just as correct as Oh. It's not a good thing to say "never..." without having a bit of knowledge behind you :)
@Amtsf No it's not. How many comments on here are saying the pronunciation is wrong and it's not. And all you're doing is just adding to this by trying to shut the door on any further enlightenment. If comments were written as being "...think it's normally pronounced Oh..." rather than "...it's never zero..." which is patently wrong.
‘Haitch’ - Aaaaaggghhhh! Please make it stop!
NOW BAD COMPANY
Montrez nous a l'échelle ZERO la locomotive CITY of GLASGOW Avec laquelle j'ai joué enfant v'etait pas une vraie Pacifique 231 des essieux en moins
Nuls points from the Paris jury!