Bachmann Class 40 - latest news.

"Mark Thornton" wrote

Oh, right, so explain in simple (please) terms how the average modeller would do that?

John.

It's marketing, not design. Marketing is all about giving the customer what he wants, which is not quality per se, but the best price-quality ratio that the customer can afford.

Fact is that the serious modeller who is willing to pay extra in time and/or money for a higher level of authenticity, mechanical quality etc, is and always has been a minority. Model trains is an surplus-income pastime, and most people also want to play golf, go to Cancun (sorry, Ibiza :-)) in the winter, watch TV, have a pint or two at the pub, and so on. Time and money for trains have to compete with these other interests, and something that looks reasonably good and runs reasonably well is good enough. These people happen to be the bread and butter of the toy makers, and always will be.

Bachmann know their market very well. The modern consumer demands a better product than in the past, and a lower price - a _much_ lower price. Bachmann is doing quite well because it estimates the desired price/quality ratio so well. There are other marques that have managed to improve their price/quality ratio. Marklin hasn't - its product is very, very good, but not enough better to justify the much higher price. Bachmann knows that if it can deliver something at 70-80% of the best quality and at less than 50% of the price, people will buy. And that's just what it's doing.

And that's my 1.56 cents worth.

ISTR reading that it would take until at least October (2004 - I think!) for the final handover to make its way through the Italian legal and financial system. I don't know if it's still on track.

Canadian or American, old pence or new pence?

Ask the average hi-fi enthusiast.

Under Italian law, there is an eight month time window between the first bid and the Courts giving it the green light. Another party (I can't recall who) threw their hat into the ring a couple of months ago, and since Hornby made their bit in April, we'll have to wait until December for a conclusion.

--

No. It's silent as far as the electric motor is concerned. All you can hear is the noise of the wheels running along the rails, with a multiplicity of clicks as the multiplicity of wheels goes over the multiplicity of rail joints :-)

And when you've found them, are they in a steamable and runnable condition?

Don't need the train-heating boiler - these were freight motors.

Where, in my case, would you position the under-layout speakers? My layout is 150 feet long by 25 feet wide.

Suggest it to the chip manufacturers and wait for them to produce a plug and play version.

A crossover will do it. :-)

-- Cheers Roger T.

Home of the Great Eastern Railway

John Sullivan asked in >Message-id:

With no discernible catenary maybe the sound of a Thunderbid 57 would be the best bet. ;-)

Tommy

"John Sullivan" wrote

Just nip to the next Glastonbury thingy and extracate some PA gear from out of the mud, stand it in the middle of your garden and wait for the neighbours to pass compliments about the realistic train noises.

John.

In message , Tommy writes

You don't think I'm putting catenary up in the garden do you? The first squirrel to walk along the track would have it all down in an instant! :-)

Two Canadian cents converted in into US cents. Abnout 1/2 a new penny.

In that case you might have several, perhaps one every 25 feet. It wouldn't matter a lot where they were either --- under, over or at the side. On the question of separating high and low frequencies, the traditional method is by using analog cross over networks as found in many speaker systems for decades. However these days the original digital audio stream might be separated by digital processing into two or more streams, with the high frequency section fed via the on train speakers and the rest to the bass system. I wouldn't expect the average modeler to do this themselves, but there are plenty of people who can do it.

Mark Thornton

IIRC most sound processors these days separate the deep bass for you. You could feed this to an 18" sub woofer if you liked but I don't advise it as full spectrum sound emanating from a 1/75th scale model would look/sound ridiculous. The 'scaled-down' sound provided by mini speakers is more in keeping with the size of the models.

I haven't tried this yet but I've got a .wav file of a Class 40 revving up and might record it to CD and play it back through my full range floor standing speakers just for fun.

(kim)

Thanks for signalling that update to the timetable.