@njee Do you fancy trying to print these?

https://maps.app.goo.gl/eiXZnL5zNwn8kwvGA

  

John P

Quote from: jpendle on August 08, 2025, 10:42:01 PM@njee Do you fancy trying to print these?

https://maps.app.goo.gl/eiXZnL5zNwn8kwvGA

  

John P

Have you considered 3D knitting?! 

Quote from: jpendle on August 08, 2025, 10:42:01 PM@njee Do you fancy trying to print these?

https://maps.app.goo.gl/eiXZnL5zNwn8kwvGA

  

John P

Headspans are really hard, there's just not enough rigidity in the material. I do have an idea - I can give it a go, but my hopes are low!

Not quite an Autumn 25 announcement but my collectors' club conflat turned up in the post today.

Nice little wagon which has been retooled to add NEM coupling sockets.

Mildly surprised with the tooling revision that there weren't a couple of examples in Wednesday's announcements whilst they had the tooling out. Maybe one for December.

Quote from: NeMo on August 08, 2025, 10:28:00 AMcompany to sell 'Railroad' sets containing a basic 66 and a few wagons to children and teenagers who couldn't afford the Dapol or Farish ones.

How? Look at the poverty figures and the rental figures and the statistical data sets from the government.

Most people with children are living in undersized rental homes and can scarcely make the rent. They get forced to move every couple of years.

There's a reason that everything is online - you can take an android tablet with you when you move (again) and it fits in the room hardly bigger than a bed with two kids in it.

There used to be an argument that N was good because it reflected modern house sizes. That's kind of true for older folks but no longer for a lot of others.

Also whoever above said kids can afford games is confused. The 60 quid games are bought by middle aged mostly men or very well off parents. Most kids are playing free to play games or games they got off steam sales or epic or amazon giveaways or low cost deals.

Lots of kids play with model trains, but they play with them online because they don't have to keep paying for an extra wagon, they don't have to take it apart every night, and it can move with them every time they get evicted.

To a large extent none of this is new either - the primary market for model railways has always been 50+ people wanting to re-create their pre-teen years. It's the same for heritage railways too - right now it's maroon, when I was a kid it was big four, in a few years BR blue will be the new cool (it's already starting to happen). In time people will be remembering the "good old days" of regional railways

Quote from: njee20 on August 08, 2025, 12:01:30 PMThat's interesting. My (wholly anecdotal) understanding is that PC gaming is more common among adults, whilst consoles are more used by the 'younger generation'. PC gaming has the potential to be far more expensive after all. I'm not surprised about a backlash against micro-transactions!

Tablet/phone based gaming is the primary gaming platform if you look across the whole market. It's affordable to the masses.

Quote from: EtchedPixels on Yesterday at 03:13:49 PMHow? Look at the poverty figures and the rental figures and the statistical data sets from the government.

Most people with children are living in undersized rental homes and can scarcely make the rent. They get forced to move every couple of years.

I think that is overly pessimistic. They reckon 21% are living in relative poverty in the UK. And this is the UK definition of poverty and is nothing like the poverty you will see in developing countries. 65% of people in the UK own their houses. Both my children (and their partners) have ordinary jobs and they have managed to buy a house without my financial help. The news likes to spread gloom rather than optimism and I think this is a big problem. If you keep telling people things are difficult they will believe it.

A few pages back there was a comment about too much transition and steam era. I think N does pretty well for modern items that reflect the contemporary scene. I'm old but I still like running contemporary from time to time. What's more I can do this in N without any problem. Perhaps we need to push this more; I certainly did my bit in Model Rail a couple of years back. Whilst I'm an old codger and my favourite era is the late 1960s I still take an interest in real railways today and enjoy running current day stock because it is easy to relate to them. Maybe more of us posting current day layouts on Facebook and youtube might help to inspire younger folk?

Quote from: Chris Morris on Yesterday at 04:13:27 PMI think that is overly pessimistic. They reckon 21% are living in relative poverty in the UK.

This was about appealing to children. Over 40% of children in the UK are either classed as "absolute low income" or "relative low income". 78000 families with children are in temporary/emergency accommodation.

This isn't the place to get into the whys and wherefores but the reality is that the market for model trains for children isn't a good one, and making cheaper N gauge stuff won't help. For another thing it's nearly impossible to make an N scale model pass any level of child safety requirements whereas the old crude OO mouldings without small separate fittings actually are big enough.

The market is (and to varying extents has always been) well off older people mostly men.

I'm old enough to remember the early 1970s Hornby catalogues and even in OO back then there would be a a new locomotive, and maybe a coach or wagon or two each year. Anything else was a renumbering or a new livery.

It took 12 years from the class 47 being introduced to Hornby having a OO scale model of one.

So things are still good, we've just had a period of exceptional new product volumes driven by lower tooling costs and cheap Chinese people that has now partly passed. And the quality and detail is immeasurably better even if the running quality and reliability are not.

Getting back towards the announcements I do hope folk go for the Motorail flats. Here's a photo of my Motorail train. Yes it is shorter than it should be but the maximum length is dictated by my storage sidings. My motorail flats are obviously NGS ones, in fact they are repainted Railease wagons because I missed the boat on the actual Motorail branded ones. Nevertheless it makes for an interesting and different train and I am very pleased Bachmann have decided to do a run of them. Getting the cars for them is interesting. I have a mixture of Oxford diecast and 3D prints from a few sources. I look forward to seeing more Motorail trains in the not too distant future. 

Hi

On the real railway would that VW camper with the roof rack have been allowed?

A million years ago (1990 ish) we used motorail to get back from Italy to Calais. We had a roof box and the guys in Bologna were saying that we could not travel with it. A nice couple of English ladies who spoke fluent Italian persuaded them to strap it to the wagon behind the car as the train was half empty.

Regards,

John P

Quote from: jpendle on Yesterday at 06:16:00 PMOn the real railway would that VW camper with the roof rack have been allowed?

I hope so as I have 1 on mine too