Hornby 2020 New Releases

[Welshbloke]

In case anyone's interested, Hornby unveiled their 2020 plans earlier today.

[VJM]

- Stephenson's Rocket.... Interesting...

- Eurostar - nice painted train, don't believe the pricing (or it's not clear how many coaches £109.99 gets you... 4 maybe?)

- Gold plated Clan Line *smirk* this gimmick again?

- A2/A3 ... meh

- W1 ... eh?? Interesting

- Princess Class... putting that mold investment to hard work

 

Don't care much for the rest.

[Welshbloke]

Yep, little or nothing there for me either but thought people might like to see. I'm mostly seeking out the 80s Hornby I wanted as a kid, and can now find mint and boxed on ebay for sensible money. A little cruder, but easier to maintain and it'll handle R370 Unitrak curves.

 

I might have been tempted by Smokey Joe and the packs of retro wagons, but not at almost £140 for all three. The tooling for most of that lot is forty years old and should have been offered in the "Railroad" range at half those prices.

[Martijn Meerts]

Been looking at getting some British trains, but, like all the other N-scale purchases, I've been putting it off until I can actually run them. That Duchess of Kent does look tempting though, I really like the colour on it, fits really well. The 'DCC fitted' part is less tempting though considering the decoder in there is unlikely to be my preferred decoder. Of course, the fact that it's 00 doesn't do much good either 😉

 

That's all I've seen so far because the Hornby site is terribly slow right now, can't see anything beyond the first page 😄

 

 

[brill27mcb]

Is this all OO?  - Rich K.

[Grant_T]

I didn't know the APT was back in the catalog. 😯 That one excited me very much as a young kid (it was in the catalog included in the very first trainset I got as a kid, maybe 1980). I'm tempted.

 

But generally new Hornby doesn't do too much for me, I think the models are sub-par compared to European and American models. The persistence with the old coupling system is a turn off. I am sometimes tempted to do a nostalgia Hornby layout though, with all the vintage (late 1970s early 1980s) stuff.

 

 

[Grant_T]

5 hours ago, brill27mcb said:

Is this all OO?  - Rich K.

 

Yup.

[Welshbloke]

The APT and Rocket will be new tooling. Allegedly the original moulds were lost after being poorly stored and having racking collapse on them, after which it wasn't thought safe to retrieve them. Presumably the contractors who cleared the old Margate site after Hornby moved their offices had no such qualms when presented with a pile of scrap as part of the deal!

 

I feel British OO in general is now overpriced for what you get. We were told "if you want European or Japanese quality you have to pay more" but now the prices are at Kato or Tomix levels and the quality simply isn't there. Four random Bachmann or Hornby coaches at RRP will cost more or less the same as a Kato Hokutosei pack, won't have directional tail lights or working table lamps, and won't match the Kato coaches in terms of close couplers which simply work.

 

It took Bachmann several goes to master the idea of an NEM pocket which met the international standards for positioning, and there's still nothing like the Fleischmann Profi coupler readily available. Close coupler mechanisms need couplers which lock together as a rigid bar, or bouncing, jamming and derailments will occur. Hornby tried, but made something resembling the Roco coupler which is too long and spaces vehicles too widely. It did at least fit the Bachmann MK1s which had their "NEM" pockets mounted too far back from the coach end...

[gavino200]

Really tempted to buy that Rocket. Even the case it comes in is pretty. 

[martin67]

Steampunk anybody?

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/150342-hornby-goes-steampunk-in-2020/

 

Very curious if it sells or not! Personally I like the idea of building a steampunk layout (although, the space.....)

 

Martin

[Martijn Meerts]

I do like steampunk occasionally, but usually the somewhat more extreme things. Many of these things look like regular buildings / rolling stock with gears glued on to them 🙂

 

[MichiK]

3 hours ago, Martijn Meerts said:

I do like steampunk occasionally, but usually the somewhat more extreme things. Many of these things look like regular buildings / rolling stock with gears glued on to them 🙂

 

Yeah.. that's probably because they are casts of regular models with gears glued on to them!

And, came to speak of it, bits of old battleship models...

(Anyone for a round of greebly spotting? Pretty surely, there's the notorious Airfix Bismarck on the Thermopile Impulsion Tea Coach and the Dinosaur Hatchery Wagon, and the HMS Hood on Darjeelinc Crate, Hatter Milliner, and Goggle Polisher Wagon - both the 1/600 scale kits. Not sure about the stack top on of Darjeeling Crate: It's probably Airfix's 1/600 Narvik destroyer or the their [also] notorious 1/1200 Bismarck)

Edited January 22, 2020 by MichiK

[Cat]

2 hours ago, MichiK said:

Yeah.. that's probably because they are casts of regular models with gears glued on to them!

And, came to speak of it, bits of old battleship models...

(Anyone for a round of greebly spotting? Pretty surely, there's the notorious Airfix Bismarck on the Thermopile Impulsion Tea Coach and the Dinosaur Hatchery Wagon, and the HMS Hood on Darjeelinc Crate, Hatter Milliner, and Goggle Polisher Wagon - both the 1/600 scale kits. Not sure about the stack top on of Darjeeling Crate: It's probably Airfix's 1/600 Narvik destroyer or the their [also] notorious 1/1200 Bismarck)

 

Steampunk, aka VSF — Victorian Science Fiction, is popular for miniatures gaming.  A good part of the joy in the genre is kitbashing one's own fun creations.  Some of the Hornby kit looks good for folks gaming with 15mm to 20mm figures.  I've got some fleets of 6mm (1/285) aeronefs by Brigade Models and a few yet to be built 28mm (1/56-ish) laser cut ones too.

About those houses with gears glued on though....

 

[cteno4]

LOL! Love the video! That chap is great, well done video, a lot of creativity and hard work there. Steam punk wrap, who have thunk it.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Welshbloke]

It won't surprise anyone that there's already a sizable crossover between steampunks and model train types. The general reaction to the range has been rather less than enthusiastic though!

 

Hornby deserve credit for trying something off the wall, but at the same time it could have been much better. Devoting the time and funding to some genuine 1800s locos and stock (some of which are pure steampunk even if modelled accurately) would have left them with a wider audience.

[Socimi]

 

What really makes me laugh about this "hornby steampunk" thing is that how it seems the theme was choosen (0:30-0:50), wich comes across a bit like this:

 

"we wanted to make some new thing that would attract young people, so we got into searching what young people like: superheroes? nah...  manga (*shows anime*)? what's that?

Cosplay? how? ...  Steampunk? nah... WAIT! no, it's perfect! PERFECT! we'll be steampunk! ...  yeah, so does anybody knows what steampunk is?"

 

[Sheffie]

This isn’t my idea of steampunk. 

 

Needs to be more elegant, needs more brass and bronze, needs plausible tech not painted on words. 

[Cat]

I'ld wager Hornby didn't pay Steam Powered Giraffe for use of their music in that vid.

[Welshbloke]

The sad part is that I can't think of any other use for the range. Thomas, fine, the rolling stock was good for winding up rivet counters or converting to something more accurate. I have every intention of looking for a tidy example of Percy which will occasionally whirr around beside the KoKis for nostalgia. But buildings with random non-functional gears glued on?

 

The starter track set also has a potential annoying problem in that without extra wiring it will be impossible to run a train onto one of the four sidings protruding from the crossing. Changing the points to run back will cut the power...

Edited January 23, 2020 by Welshbloke
Past tense, as Hornby no longer make Thomas!

[gavino200]

My guess is that the 'project' was given a very low budget by the Hornby executive team. But if these sell I'd bet anything they'll be back next year with something decent. Interesting that they're working with the steampunk team from the Great Model Railway Challenge. Those guys were amazing, and have all the artistic talent Hornby would need.