Boats and Ships

Why not try Gordon Brown -- you could make a bid for what he has left of the Andrew!

In message , Rob Kemp writes

Hi Rob

Harburn Hobbies do a small selection of inshore fishing boats but the biggest selection is probably Langley Miniature Models.

Have a look at:

Regards

4mm ship (even a small one), you have PLENTY of space then?

Airfix (or might have been Revell) used to do a lovely 'costal tanker' in

1/72. Just the right size for a small harbour. Sadly mine was used for target practice....

Cheers Richard

How about a RNLI life boat or perhaps a (decommissioned and adapted...) Vosper Motor Torpedo Boat, both Airfix, or perhaps a

1:72 Sunseeker "Predator 108" Yacht by Revell, depending on the era of the layout?

Are you sure that it was 1/72? and not 1/130. The description sounds like the FROG models SHELL WELDER which was often used as you say in harbour scenes sometimes kit bashed a bit. FROG has long gone but the model has lived on in various forms and ISTR that Revell did have their name on it at one time. Latest incarnation seems to be from the Russian Novo brand as described here.

G.Harman

Your right, it was the Frog (now there's a blast from the past!) 'Shell Welder' - was it really 1/130! Younger eyes...... ;-)

Cheers Richard

: : Your right, it was the Frog (now there's a blast from the past!)

Once owned by Rovex IIRC, or was it who ever owned (Triang-)Hornby Railways after the Rovex collapse, distinctly remember the range being included in back of a (Triang-)Hornby catalogue in the mid '70s.

You sure about that? Ships are really really big - even small ones.

Artitec have some HO models

"Large Coastal Freighter": 558mm long and 93mm wide

There is the Shell Welder kit, but that's 1:130. Ship models often seem to be random scales - maybe to fit the box?

Revell do some ships in 1:72, but they might not be appropriate: There is the Airfix lifeboat, though I've heard it is a pain to build (not done mine yet).

The late Peter Swan who modelled O-scale used to be a director at Matchbox, and he said that was why their models were a mixture of scales. Having only one size of box kept costs down keeping the product inside a pocket money budget.

"Christopher A. Lee" wrote

product inside a pocket money budget.

Someone wants to remind Hornby, and to a lesser extent Bachmann, that a universal box size keeps costs down & allows retailers to display models more easily.

John.

But the reverse can also be the case John, for example a scale

70ft coach takes up more space than a scale 57ft coach, the difference can add up, maybe even to allowing for an extra wagon or even coach to be exhibited on the shelf.

The same arguments apply, and probably more critically to, warehousing and transportation, the space saved in a ISO shipping container by not transporting fresh air or packing foam can mean the difference between a second container being needed or not. No manufacture is going to go away from a 'standard' box size unless there is a cost saving.

"Jerry" wrote

No

Consider if you would the Hornby 'Skaledale' range, reduced in size to suit N-scale and renamed 'Lyddle End'. A quick examination of our shelves shows at least a dozen differing box sizes. Now to me any potential saving in volume by such variable sizing must be offset ten fold by the cost of producing so many different boxes.

Looking at the 'new' Bachmann packaging for locos. Each of the three different size boxes used (and I can see the logic here as the varience in loco size is considerable) is supplied with an outer sleeve, each individually printed with the loco class. I wonder who is meeting the extra cost incurred in this extravagence, compared with a standard sleeve.

John.

Only in Guillotine use, the art work still needs to be designed and printed and one might actually find that more (smaller) boxes can be obtained from the same amount of card, IOW the wastage is reduced.

: : Looking at the 'new' Bachmann packaging for locos. Each of the three : different size boxes used (and I can see the logic here as the varience in : loco size is considerable) is supplied with an outer sleeve, each : individually printed with the loco class. I wonder who is meeting the extra : cost incurred in this extravagence, compared with a standard sleeve. :

We are, the end user customer, have you asked your customers is they like having such information on the packaging or would prefer the old style self adhesive label stuck to the opening flap on one end of the box?

The box size was the reason Matchbox toys were such a mixture of scales. It didn't matter for their intended market. The late Peter Swan who was a director of the company told me that this kept the price in the pocket money range.

"Christopher A. Lee" wrote

Cost of packaging never seems to be an issue with Hornby; maybe that's why the overall price of their products is escalating out of many folks' price range.

John.

The frase "Large coastal freighter" made me laugh. This model is 558mm long on H0. Means 48.5m in real life. The model is a typical year 50's small coaster, normally trading around Western Europe. Even in de 50's

50 meter was definitely not large. To all fellow modelers: for our standards ships are huge. An ordinary vessel (nowadays standerds) is 100 meter or more. Big ones are 300m. Even in my scale (Z = 1:220) a 110 meter vessel is half a meter. So unless you have plenty of room, or go to an ancient era, when there were no railroads, it is difficult to work to scale. Ermin

I priced up some boxes, with company logo printed on, a while back. At the volumes Hornby would be buying they would achieve little or no benefit from one standard size box. Indeed, if a standard box meant that many boxes were effectively half full of air then transport costs would easily out-weigh any extra cost. A half-pallet to Russia costs £245.00 (plus VAT!), a full pallet costs £395.00 (plus VAT) for example, so sending a pallet half full of air is extremely expensive! Getting the packaging/artwork right can make or break a product, it's part of the whole product strategy, not just an after-thought.

I'll also bet that the size of boxes is carefully calculated to get as many as possible (based on their experience of typical orders) into a standard size large shipping cardboard box.

I came across this at Royal Doulton. We were unloading thousands of boxes of Czech crystal from containers, re-packing, and putting them back into another container. We were doing this because the 30% more re-packed boxes in the container (going to the US) represented the profit for the whole shipment apparently!

Cheers Richard

Is there a "Netherlandsmax" size or something which it might be?