2021 Range

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At least the LSL Midland Pullman locos and stock is a sensible use of existing tooling to produce an up to date model. Planning to release both at the same time now there's a novelty. Pity their website can't stand the load of people looking for the new annoucement.

[RAF96]

I wonder how many get canned due to their poor pre-order sales algorithm saying its uneconomic to go into production for a particular model.

I prefer to buy from the shop shelf having looked rather than ‘enthuse’ up front.

[Bigmet]

I love the idea of bringing back cast metal bodies. They have a presence due to their weight which makes them sound right.
Also, and I am not sure why, plastic bodies locos always look plasticky despite their intricate detail. Metal bodied locos seem to look right even though they lack detail. Does anyone else see what I mean? ...

Mostly. The aspect where you are out of date is "Metal bodied locos seem to look right even though they lack detail." Take look at the regular releases with largely cast metal loco bodies from Hornby, (Schools, 700 'Black Motor' 415 'Radial tank', B12/3, D16/3, J15, J36, and shortly to come the BR std 2MT 2-6-0) also the Oxford N7, and Bachmann MR 0-4-4T: those I have seen or own are comfortably the equal of plastic bodied models, to the extent that many owners were unaware of what they were getting! The technology has advanced, and as far as I am concerned I would like all my models made this way from now on. You get plentiful weight for traction in the right place, and they look very well.

(The recent 'Hornby-Dublo' nostalgia job on the Duchess may be different, imitating the lesser fidelity of H-D according to some reports, but I have yet to see one to check if this is true. I would hope Hornby give that idea up before getting to the important locos for this treatment, the Doncaster designs: they can make the GWR, LMS and SR items as 'nostalgically blobby' as they like; but crisp rendition for the Quality ...)

I wonder how many get canned due to their poor pre-order sales algorithm saying its uneconomic to go into production for a particular model...

Yes, just one among many other problems that beset Hornby. Hopefully the 'new man' will take a look at that one, among many others, once the immediate underwater holes that were sinking the ship are definitely repaired.

[Buelligan]

... I'd love one of the proper Midlands Blue Pullman sets, but the Bachmann sets are just so expensive! ...

Small chance of an alternative. Sometimes it is a case of pony up or do without for the RTR item. Alternatively go to work on the Triang set with a replacement drive, Kitmaster cars, ...and a whole lot of work...

I doubt my Dad would approve of any form of modification on his old Pullman, plus from memory, its fairly battered, missing all buffers and couplings. As much as I like it, I've not seen a Bachmann set for under £500 yet, and I just don't like it that much! I can live in hope, maybe one day. Or I might get really lucky and find a bargain Bachmann set.

Pity their website can't stand the load of people looking for the new annoucement.

I tried their website, but couldn't get on it, and still can't get the page I want to load. I can get the homepage, but the page I want comes up as 504 Gateway Time-out. To view the new releases, I just went on to a shops website and saw it all there, and then preordered a couple.

So, from an initial shortlist of around 6 locos, I narrowed it down to 2 and have now preordered them, along with the Christmas wagon, which will go nicely with my reindeer and sleigh. I've gone for the rebuilt/streamlined W1 in the grey/silver livery, and the Stephensons Rocket mail coach set.

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Updating ones website whilst you promote your new range sounds like a total lack of planning.

Hornby Logo
WE ARE UPDATING OUR WEBSITE
The 2021 product launch is hugely popular. Our website is currently full with visitors.
Please visit our YouTube channel to see the new range presentation

[Bigmet]

Updating ones website whilst you promote your new range sounds like a total lack of planning.

In connection with matters railway, this puts me in mind of W.S. Gilberts splendid critique: "Saturday afternoon , despite occurring at regular and completely foreseeable intervals, always appears to take this railway company by surprise.". (My memory of WSG's precise wording of this gentle flaying may be slightly adrift, but the intent is clear enough.)

I have some (microscopic*) sympathy for those running Hornby's IT though. They may have been confronted with a requirement from one of their service providers to perform an essential update, with no delay.

*Microscopic because they will insist on the boast that if the motor industry made progress at the rate the IT industry achieves, cars would by now run 10,000 miles to the gallon and only cost £100: while failing to add that steering wheel, brakes and accelerator would randomly exchange function while in use, the windows have a frequent '999 error' of going opaque, and just when you need to use the vehicle very urgently there will be the instruction 'update in progress, please wait'.

[Roger (RJ)]

I don't think they are actually updating the website, they are just using their standard message template to which they have added extra information to. Just a bit lazy of Hornby not to use a custom notification.

[Bufferstop]

Doing updates on a live system always causes problems because many of the operations need sole access to various parts at different times. Sole access means users locked out temporarily, every one who tries to connect and gets chucked out, tries several more times to get in (it's actually their software that keeps trying, the user doesn't have much control over it). Then when the software tells them it can't be done come back later, the first thing they do is try it again. Forget the Russians and the Chinese taking down your website, all you have to do is promise some goodies then make sure they are unavailable, the very people you want to impress will do it for you.

[Bigmet]

Now that the dust has settled, there is one very obvious observation to make about wagons; unless I have completely missed it, nothing completely new. (Are the 'small vehicle' production slots all taken up with making the Liverpool and Manchester, and generic four and six wheel, coaches in 2021? Hornby will want to beat Hattons to market on these...)

And few of the newer superior toolings get a rerun. (Very glad I netted several Trout ballast hoppers when they first came out, but surely a new hatch would find buyers? I'll have to tie a new fly, ready to wave over the Hornby stand when exhibitions resume, the 'Megagreen Wonga' perhaps.)

[Mike Parkes]

Youtube review of the new 4 wheel coaches proving what many suspected that they are largely not generic at all. The brake end in particular is a design that was used only by less than a handful of lines and to call it generic would be like having a generic steam loco shaped like a A4.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrN3i1T6iC8&t=962s

[Bigmet]

All I know is that neither of the two choices in generic 4 and 6 wheel coaches look anything like Great Northern Railway vehicles. Then again, GNR coaches are the only pre-group non-bogie coaches I would be truly confident of recognising, without sight of the company name or initials...

[Bigmet]

...An all new 9F, initally with BR1K, BR1F and BR1G tender options, the latter behind 'Evening Star'. Going up against the Bachmann model which is a very good layout loco. There is room for visual improvement, the frame tops could be represented, Hornby have a proven fully concealed drive line...

Hornby now showing an EP sample of the new 9F on their 'Engine Shed' page. Sadly, not an all new model in my opinion, Hornby have retained the incorrect variable axle spacing of the coupled chassis from their previous model. Pretty sure that this will be how the model will be produced as the moulded mountings for the brake gear are in the EP, and these necessarily follow the incorrect axle spacing. This may not matter to some, but to me it's a jab in the eye, as it robs some of the essential character from the 'space ship'.

Good job the Bachmann with it's rather more intelligent compromise remains a competent model that runs and pulls well: of course there's so much other product available, that the money saved 'here' will find a use 'over there'...

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I'd forgotten about "Spaceships" There were never many 9Fs in our locality so I wouldn't have heard many references to them when hanging around Bescot station footbridge. (The spotters viewing platform, one of the few spots where surrounding land was above rail level). My uncle the signalman reckoned the name was coined by some very left wing NUR members, due to the separation of the boiler from the frames making it look akin to the huge missile carriers that paraded every year through Red Square.

[Bigmet]

The newly tooled 9F has gone on sale. Hornby corrected the coupled wheelbase to equidistant axle centres spacing, the tops of the frames are represented, appearance and detail pretty good overall, and it is properly heavy, but of course no one has given it a run to assess the traction: 'my precious' will be stored away in its immaculate multi box sarcophagous by the collectorati. Photographs suggest here is some overheavy detailing of the superheater cover panel edges on the smokebox, but I can fix that with a smear of milliput before the filth goes on. But I want to see it for myself in a shop before the wallet comes out.

The Bach 9F still looks and pulls like a 9F, I can wait...

[D605Eagle]

with most of hornby's recent releases being bordering on disastrous there is precisely nothing that makes me even want to change much Bachmann 9Fs for these, but I feel modellers are no longer the market Hornby are interested in. Collectors and speculators is their target.