Very uninspiring and not good news for retailers sadly.

Quote from: leachsprite4 on August 04, 2021, 02:17:26 PMGP Tank (why does nobody clamour for this to be rebuilt  )

Because it was a horrible mongrel with only a vague resemblance to an LMS Jinty with bits of SR E2 stretched to fit a GWR 9400 chassis...
Even the old Farish company gave up on that one and dropped it from the range when they introduced the first 'proper' Jinty in the early 90s...
(so I suppose you could say it has in fact already been updated twice!)

Is the lack more releases any real loss considering the excessive price of Farish models these days.

Why release another batch of inspection saloons when last batch did not sell well and had to be heavily discounted to clear the stock and some retailers still have them, makes no sense.

Hi all,

So yeah as the announcement was made where I live the heavens opened maybe it was a foreboding sign of what I should have been expecting... (More tears than light at the end of the tunnel)

It was a rather lacklustre announcement...again on the whole, honestly I think its fair to say that OO seems to be the main effort at the moment which isn't unexpected it is the larger market which in turn means more cash at the end of it all and after the events of the past 18 months everyone has taken a hit both as individuals and companies and could do with some more cash!

That been said, there is still no sign of multiple items that I am really interested in, the 319 at TINGS 2019 was shown and yes there was errors I picked out a few glaring ones but it wasn't far off in one or 2 cases I could easily ignore the errors, but the Northern livery I am after is now defunct and no units carry it!
350 in TPE all it requires is a different seating tooling and fresh livery and good to go (I have forgotten how long ago it was announced) and then there is the colas 47 both of these no longer exist in the real world!

The 69s has been a bit of a surprise to me though this year I would have thought with it been such a restrictive model Farish would have wanted to put any available cash and resources into something that offers more of a wider interest, than a fleet of 10 locos with zero operational life span (currently).

So with all things considered I am hoping this is the calm before the fanfare and maybe just maybe with TINGS provisionally been given the green light, they are waiting for that to give us all a very nice surprise and we see a few long awaited new models!

Bachmann said they had invested GBP1m in the new OO Class 47, which suggests they may be putting larger but fewer eggs into the launch basket going forward.

Entirely possible, but I'll bet that basket (or those eggs) is only OO gauge!

I'm not sure the N gauge market would weather some of the prices. several forum members would explode at £200 locos! I also suspect there are few prototypes that would sell enough (7-10,000 potentially) to justify that outlay. You need a long history to appeal to a broad audience. In N, just not sure the market's there.

It would be nice to have a bit of a carrot from Bachmann. Even a "we know there's not much here in N - we are absolutely working on some newly tooled items, just waiting for a slot" or something, to avoid the feeling of being let down.

I have to agree that the inspection saloons seem a bizarre choice; more mk2s, a vanilla GBRf 66, a Swallow 47, so many other things which seemingly would have been more obvious! Then again, who knows when they had to commit to the production run in order for delivery to be achieved in this period (not that they're always meeting that!).

Would I be too optimistic to think that Bachmann are easing their way out of the 3 month horizon straightjacket? TINGS will see the great reveal of something super-dooper. Still sure that there will be nothing there for me, of course. :-)

Well they threw the 69 in there randomly, and announced the 47 a day early. It seems to be the case that they're breaking their own rhythm for items they're not going to achieve within the 3 month cycle, leaving the 3-month announcements for the "BAU" items, which isn't entirely unreasonable. To that end, it doesn't seem unreasonable to announce something at TINGS which won't be delivered within the following 3 months.

Quote from: woodbury22uk on August 05, 2021, 09:30:13 AM
Would I be too optimistic to think that Bachmann are easing their way out of the 3 month horizon straightjacket? TINGS will see the great reveal of something super-dooper. Still sure that there will be nothing there for me, of course. :-)

I wrote to Bachmann very recently and received a very good reply from the Communications Manager.  Although not the subject of the discussion, he was emphatic that they were committed to the current three month information releases and nothing would move them from that position, not even to appease disgruntled/disappointed/disillusioned N gauge modellers such as ourselves.

Best

Scott.

Quote from: njee20 on August 05, 2021, 09:37:01 AM
Well they threw the 69 in there randomly, and announced the 47 a day early. It seems to be the case that they're breaking their own rhythm for items they're not going to achieve within the 3 month cycle, leaving the 3-month announcements for the "BAU" items, which isn't entirely unreasonable. To that end, it doesn't seem unreasonable to announce something at TINGS which won't be delivered within the following 3 months.

Bachmann have stated that production of the first batch of 47s is complete and will be arriving in shops this quarter.  Point taken re the 69 though.

Best

Scott

Quote from: NGS-PO on August 05, 2021, 10:45:34 AM
I wrote to Bachmann very recently and received a very good reply from the Communications Manager.  Although not the subject of the discussion, he was emphatic that they were committed to the current three month information releases and nothing would move them from that position, not even to appease disgruntled/disappointed/disillusioned N gauge modellers such as ourselves.

Thanks for asking Scott. 

I wonder if one of the things that might convince Bachmann to ultimately change tack is feedback from retailers that can't take pre-orders on items that they don't know are coming plus we're already starting to see customers comment that they don't have time to save.

From a wider perspective, by not announcing more than 3 months of releases you make it impossible to tailor production runs against orders/pre-orders (even from retailers) so you're left with only being able to produce fixed batch quantities and not capitalising on unexpected demand for particular models (not that Bachmann have ever done anything different to that as far as I'm aware).

From a personal perspective I'm not a fan of the 3 month cycles - it creates a false sense of expectation that is too often dashed when very little or nothing appears.

I can see and appreciate both points of view, for and against the 3-month cycle.  Personally, I probably lean towards preferring it.

Best

Scott.

I also spoke with someone within Bachmann who was emphatic that there's good stuff coming in N. But what exactly that means I don't know.

I'd missed that the 47s were due shortly though, still leaves the 69 as an outlier (and the JIAs - unless they were on the Ever Given like the Dapol JHAs, they'd still have been late, but by 6 months not 12).

I can't decide on the 3 month cycle. Conceptually I like it, but the reality is that each quarter is a letdown! That said, was it actually any better when it was an annual letdown, rather than quarterly ones!?

Quote from: PLD on August 04, 2021, 11:45:11 PM

Quote from: leachsprite4 on August 04, 2021, 02:17:26 PMGP Tank (why does nobody clamour for this to be rebuilt  )

Because it was a horrible mongrel with only a vague resemblance to an LMS Jinty with bits of SR E2 stretched to fit a GWR 9400 chassis...
Even the old Farish company gave up on that one and dropped it from the range when they introduced the first 'proper' Jinty in the early 90s...
(so I suppose you could say it has in fact already been updated twice!)

I was being cheeky but added the wrong  emoji. 

Should have been 

Quote from: njee20 on August 05, 2021, 11:22:18 AM
I can't decide on the 3 month cycle. Conceptually I like it, but the reality is that each quarter is a letdown! That said, was it actually any better when it was an annual letdown, rather than quarterly ones!?

I think I prefer it, but I'm more interested in the "also arriving this quarter" items rather than new tools.  Aside from an NBL Type 2 and maybe some new catering vehicles, there's nothing else I'd need to make my projects complete, that aren't already out there.  But then I've been amassing items for a while.

Don't get me wrong there are some nice to have items I'd buy and get a little excited over (Clan Pacific, re-tooled Peak) but I wouldn't spit the dummy out if they never appeared.

I have a lot of money sitting in an account that wants to be handed over to Bachmann for a shed load of Mk1s to cmplete my rakes, but there aren't any to buy.

Best

Scott.