Link Here:

https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/mrh-202606-june-2026-13849813

Jon

I feel for those who have potentially lost money in this scenario through paying for pre orders, but given the owners attitude towards us, lets not forget he actually said we N gauge modellers have "short arms and deep pockets" its hard to have sympathy for someone who runs a business that requires people skills and customer service in order to make a success of it when he clearly lacks them.

Hopefully someone else will pick up the King they abandoned - but not buying the CAD's as they were a waste of their money it seems

Same boat here being a pensioner. I normally wait for a review before pulling the trigger. I watch Sam's Trains and Jenny Kirk, mostly fast forwarding to the mechanism and running characteristics and decoder installation. I did jump on a Rapido Manning Wardle the second day it hit the market and then got worried that I may have jumped too early. Fortunately, it runs beautifully.

I did miss out on a Microace EF13-31 while waiting for any review. Luckily, after writing it off, I did find one a few weeks later.

I've fallen into the gotta buy it now before it goes out of stock syndrome and have to wean myself off.

Part of my day is going to the Kato Japan, Tomix, Microace, Rails of Sheffield, Kernow, Hobby Search, Hobbyland Pochi (used stuff), and getting myself into trouble.

Wow, the owner of that house go play the lottery after that? Super fortunate that they didn't take damage. I'm guessing they live on the outside of a curve?

I bet you guys have the same sick sense of humor that we had in the Navy. One guy would get a pack of m&ms in the mail, sort them out by color and gather up the ones that had a cracked shell. At the end of the day, he'd go to the fantail and flick each one, one at a time, into Davey Jones' locker.

I get a kick out of this guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lohU3b2yI8k

Hi all,

To my pleasant surprise, I was invited this month to appear as a guest on The Shunting Yard Live. The episode will be streamed live on YouTube this evening (the 18th) from 8 PM.

We'll be talking about cutting edge model railway technology and where it might go in the future, and the topic list includes command and control, layout inputs/outputs, layout automation, layout networking and 3D printing among other related topics.


I'll be there alongside Ayberk (The N Gauge Wizard) and I hope it might provide some interesting food for thought for you.

I hope you will join us and drop a hello in the comments.

https://www.youtube.com/live/G7rlVZl_LQk?is=UFoUMwRpLzVs-AC1

Will.

I join Hornby Collectors Club as they have a 50% sale on a loco that I love. The club is free of cost, so why not. I put the loco in the basket, go to check out and boom! Get smacked by the earth shattering, eye watering, jaw dropping, and I can't think of anything else, £75 international shipping charge!

I send an email to Hornby and they say they can't change it.

I don't understand why so high since they gotta box it up the same as domestic (armor plated box for RM), just have 10 minutes of paperwork. Rails and Kernow only charge me ~£14 to ship to me.

So waste of time, totally crushed, have to cry myself to sleep tonight, or drink another shot of the good stuff... haha

KR Models did have plans for a class 40 which should have been a bread-and-butter model, but they should have been able to carve out a niche in the market by making the niche products - sort of how Rapido are currently doing in OO with a increasing range of pre-grouping models.

Sadly, they clearly had issues with quality control and the character of the owner wasn't welcomed/appreciated in many circles. He then became a victim of much bad press from several online influencers.

Sadly this also lead to much nastiness being sent his way - the sort of thing that's easy to send online which you'd never say in person.

KR never did anything I'd be interested in. I did, however, try to chat to them way back about future plans & they were just not really 'people friendly'.

Personally I think part of their issue was trying to do too many niche products. Don't get me wrong, who doesn't like a niche product, but if you're running a business you need some 'bread & butter' products to prop you up to give you the buffer against manufacturing issues & slow sales of more niche products.

Just my thoughts, but it's always sad to see a manufacturer go.

No personal dealings with them, but observing as a neutral, one area where comparison to DJM was certainly justified was in their approach to "Customer Relations"...

Feels a bit like it was everyone else's fault. I struggle to believe the comments about failures being isolated, it was endemic on the Leader, and frankly embarrassing that the failure was essentially (according to this email) very similar to one that affected the Fell.

They tackled some interesting models, but did so badly in the main, and (far worse IMO) their general conduct was shambolic. I feel for those who've lost money.