Hornby/Arnold Brighton Belle, some pics and comment

[woodbury22uk]

That would probably kill the economics of the whole project and I am sure Arnold will want it to take UK R1/Continental R2 curves like everything else they make.

Eh? Of course not. No need to kill or effect the economics. It simple means that if you don't have such train set track radius you might not need the cut outs and can either fill then in, or that Hornby don't really need to include them. A simple snap out section in such circumstances would suffice.

H.

Brilliant suggestion H.

[Zunnan]

Hornby seem very good at cutting their nose off despite their face of late. I realise full well that this is merely an EP, but if it is in any way representative of the finished product I have to say I'm glad the prototype doesn't hold any interest me. If it does lead to further UK models from them further down the line, it potentially sets a very disappointing precedent indeed; even Farish (Poole) didn't compromise in this way 30 years ago...they just produced comedy mini wheels instead...

Sadly pizza cutter wheels are the standard in the Arnold range, so they are likely to stay. But even so, I have never seen an Arnold coach with a cut away sole bar before and there are some models with the bogies well and truly up against the body with minimal clearance, and they perform perfectly well on tight curvature. Its a backwards step by their own standards, let alone current UK standards.

As an alternative, whats to stop them providing additional wheelsets to UK standards? In the same way Farish provide alternatives for a number of their models for those who can use closer to scale wheelsets (and Microtrains used to until they adopted the finer standard), and have the NEM pizza cutters marginally undersized to clear the solebars for those with trainset track.

[gc4946]

Several European-based manufacturers still use 192mm (just under 8 inches) radius curved track including Arnold, Fleischmann and Minitrix, and even now, most stock are still engineered to be able to go round these curves.
These solebar cut-outs are probably a result of a combination of choosing to use full-sized diameter carriage wheels with NEM wheel profiles which have deeper flanges, and catering for 192mm radius curves, all of these factors together the wheels would have fouled the underframe if full-length solebars were fitted.

[red_death]

Wow, talk about some over the top hyperbole! The body mouldings look good (certainly better than Poole ever produced), the electrical continuity through the couplers is a nice idea and yet Hornby are accused of crimes against N gauge!

Sure, hopefully they can be convinced to reduce the wheel flanges and remove the need for the wheel cut outs but it is not the end of the world. Let's not forget that some of the other manufacturers have made relatively recent 'male chicken' (changed by forum)-ups with wheels...

That is not to excuse Hornby, but equally lets not blow things out of proportion.  Take the opportunity to feedback to Hornby - the more of us that do so the more likely we are to get it changed for the better.

Cheers, Mike