OK, here's one to discuss.........

A quick trawl of the Dapol and Bachmann (GF) websites seems to indicate an ongoing trend towards mostly larger locos and very few smaller tank engine types.

The short spurt from Dapol that gave us the 14xx and the M7 seems to be over. Now we have the boring Pannier, and, er, not a lot.

Playing Devils Advocate, is this an effect of the difficulty in chipping them?  Too many people unable to lay out track well enough for them to run well? Just simply not what people want? What do you think?

Has for 'chipping' I would hate to think so but I'm afraid you might be right. Cheers john.

I quite agree with you. There has always been a dearth of small tank engines in n gauge due to the difficulty in squeezing the necessary equipment into a small loco body.

I would suggest that the Dapol Ivatt 2-6-2T would not be an easy loco to convert to DCC.

Dodger

Quote from: Bad Raven on February 15, 2013, 04:19:01 PM
Playing Devils Advocate, is this an effect of the difficulty in chipping them?  Too many people unable to lay out track well enough for them to run well? Just simply not what people want? What do you think?

There may be something in it. It is often quoted as the reason for the Peco Collett having a large tender that while not totally unprototypical was uncommon for the class, and was alegedly one of the excuses used for the initial batch of Ixion Mannors being overscale...

I'd say however that things are getting easier as the technology advances - Chips are getting smaller and modern motors take up less room than the old Farish open frame lash-up so don't give up hope of smaller more interesting prototypes just yet...

I think there is some strength in that, coupled with the fact that smaller Tank engines possibly dont sell in the quantities that the larger tender engines do.
People are more likely to have one Tank engine per layout in a yard, whilst having many more tender and larger tank engine types for main line running.

I must be one of the exceptions to the rule then, I have about 10 panniers on my layout, a Castle, Hall, Merchant Navy and a 4F.  I love my cute little panniers to bits.    As has been said previously, chipping the small locos is a little bit more difficult but with the modern motors it is so much easier to the extent you can fit sound into a Dapol pannier if you really try.   

Quote from: whiteswan on February 15, 2013, 08:36:02 PM
you can fit sound into a Dapol pannier if you really try.   

Have I missed the tutorial for that, Caz?  Itching to see...

From what i can remember, isn't the latest version of the
Graham Farish "jinty" going to be DCC ready 

dave 

Quote from: tim-pelican on February 15, 2013, 08:43:59 PM

Quote from: whiteswan on February 15, 2013, 08:36:02 PM
you can fit sound into a Dapol pannier if you really try.   

Have I missed the tutorial for that, Caz?  Itching to see...

Most of the tutorial is done, just waiting on me to do another install as I missed out photographing a couple of things first time around.    Just not enough hours in the day at the moment, spending more and more time over my daughters villa which they are having modified before the move here later in the year and I'm the sort of clerk of works for the project. 

Quote from: Bad Raven on February 15, 2013, 04:19:01 PM
OK, here's one to discuss.........

A quick trawl of the Dapol and Bachmann (GF) websites seems to indicate an ongoing trend towards mostly larger locos and very few smaller tank engine types.

The short spurt from Dapol that gave us the 14xx and the M7 seems to be over. Now we have the boring Pannier, and, er, not a lot.

Playing Devils Advocate, is this an effect of the difficulty in chipping them?  Too many people unable to lay out track well enough for them to run well? Just simply not what people want? What do you think?

Not at all Dave.
It is, as you say, a trend. And thats all it is.
Tank engines of all sorts will make a comeback and will be DCC ready/installed once the technology gets small enough.
Besides, not everyone has space, or indeed wants, to model mainlines and I'm sure the manufacturers know that.

I have to agree there is a dearth of smaller non tender locos even though DCC has no place on my layout, although I don't think DCC has caused this situation.
I love my Jinty and J94 to bits but there is still a host of tank engines for the big 2 to have a go at

I hope that DCC is not the reason for the reduction in availability of small steam engines. My layout is DCC and if I had my way I would only have steam engines. I will definitley be going for the Jinty and Ivatt Clas 2MT when they appear. I have some locos which I have had wied professionaly and most of them have had problems. I have resolved only to buy "DCC Ready" or "DCC fitted" in future as I can plug in a decoder quite easily and the ones I have done like this have worked well. I hope I don't have to take the advice of a friend and "go diesel" but I have to say I do not have any problems with my diesels so there might be something in this.

Ron

From what Bachmann have said elsewhere they do big steam locos because they sell vastly better. Nothing to do with DCC

Apparently it's the larger locos (faster, bigger, better) that are more iconic and sell better - things like named express passenger locos - rather than the smaller mundane tank locos. And I get the impression it's always been that way even before the advent of DCC.

Now they can squeeze DCC chips in to relative small locos and they've developed the coreless motor to get in to small spaces, so I doubt that DCC has any impact on the choice. After all it hasn't stopped them from doing some tiny diesels like the class 03, 04, 08 and 14 (regardless of with or without DCC).

H.

As H says, nothing to do with DCC as they have done small diesels with no DCC socket eg 03, 04 and 08.

Cheers, Mike