Boats and Ships

Didn't Lima or someone used to do that?
Maybe not for that reason though.
MBQ

> Some people do experience confusion when differentiating between a boat and a ships. Perhaps the easiest way to remember the correct definition is that a ship will carry life boats - a boat won't carry life ships. The strict definitoon used to be - and it may have changed a little - is that any vessel less than 60' long was a boat, anything of 60' or longer in length was a ship, excpet that all submarines have always been referred to as boats, irrespective of their dimensions.
Not trying to be pedantic, but hope this helps a little. (When serving some years ago in HMS HERMES I did find it a little irksome when a friend used to refer to her as a "boat" - all 28,000 tons of her!)
David Costigan

On the other hand the less sensitive souls in the merchant fleet don't bat an eyelid when the ships of double that tonnage and more that bring our models from China are refered to almost universally as Box Boats.
G.Harman

I believe some manufacturers of model ships did...

There are several Max's: Panamax, Suezmax, Saimamax, etc. Usually these sizes are defined by canals (Suez) or locks (Panama). To the best of my knowledge there is no Netherlandsmax. In dutch inland shipping there are differend size of locks in use, although hight of fixed bridges is usually maintained on 7 meters above water. You might find more on (in Dutch).

"beamends" wrote
If sending boxes full of fresh air is so expensive, then perhaps both Hornby & Bachmann ought to look at reducing the sizes of their loco boxes. As for making or breaking the product I don't think either manufacturers latest box offerings actually do very much to help sell the contents. Both fail abysmally to allow you to see what's inside.
Shipping to Russia may be expensive, but shipping from China to the UK &/or USA isn't. Think the last I heard a 40' container from China to Southampton was in the very low hundreds, and it would actually cost more to move that container from Southampton to Manchester by road or rail than the sea voyage.
John.

wrote
Lima started producing their British range to HO-scale, then when demand was poor started to switch to standard OO-scale. There was a period when they sort of mixed the two - the class 50 & 55 locos were almost to OO-scale but had HO-scale bogies.
John.

: > 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. : : If sending boxes full of fresh air is so expensive, then perhaps both Hornby : & Bachmann ought to look at reducing the sizes of their loco boxes. As for : making or breaking the product I don't think either manufacturers latest box : offerings actually do very much to help sell the contents. Both fail : abysmally to allow you to see what's inside.
How does looking at my computer screen allow me to see into the box sitting on your shelf or counter John, could both Bachmann and Hornby just be recognising the fact that most trade is via the 'postmans' hands that than directly between trader and customer in person - protection is more important than outward looks?
: : Shipping to Russia may be expensive, but shipping from China to the UK &/or : USA isn't. Think the last I heard a 40' container from China to Southampton : was in the very low hundreds, and it would actually cost more to move that : container from Southampton to Manchester by road or rail than the sea : voyage. :
ATM, shipping costs (as in ship, not just transportation) is a volatile market place. Also moving the container to/from the docks is part of the total cost which needs to be calculated into the warehouse door price of the product.

Or in the case of their supposed N scale products they invented a whole new hybrid scale of 1:150ish.
Fred X

"Fred X" wrote
If only - there was no consistent scale for Lima's N-gauge. You only have to compare their 'Deltic' model with the under-sized Mk1 coaches.
John.

The message from "Fred X" contains these words:
Except for the Deltic and the 4F...

"Jerry" wrote
Not in our case Jerry; about 90% of our trade is through the shop door and as with all sensible retailers we like our customers to be able to see what we're selling, not a picture of what we're selling.
Can you imagine Comet or Curry's trying to sell washers by keeping them in a box with just an illustration on the outside?
John.

: > How does looking at my computer screen allow me to see into the : > box sitting on your shelf or counter John, could both Bachmann : > and Hornby just be recognising the fact that most trade is via : > the 'postmans' hands that than directly between trader and : > customer in person - protection is more important than outward : > looks? : : Not in our case Jerry; about 90% of our trade is through the shop door and...
...and my local model railway shop does 90% of it's trade via either telephone orders or their website AIUI and I doubt they are an exception to the trend. I would suggest that there are many more mail-order traders these days than 'traditional'.
If there is a trend away from 'windowed' packaging then there must be a good reason, one that is not going to cause people to stop buying the product because they can no longer see the product, these sorts of marketing decisions are not taken on a whim nor lightly.

Any chance you could fix your broken software? It isn't handling quoted text properly, which tends to make your responses look unnecessarily messy.
Given that most online model railway retail websites are utter shite, I'd be very surprised if any of them are a significant source of income for the operator. For Hornby products there are a fair number of online box-shifters (including Amazon, which I suspect is probably the biggest online model railway retailer in terms of units sold), but other than the few big name online vendors such as Hattons, Rails, Gaugemaster and OnTracks (and even those could be a whole lot better), there aren't very many "full range" retailers with even a semi-decent website.
Better protection in transit is certainly a major reason for moving away from windowed packaging, but that's just as much the trip from importer/wholesaler to the shop as it is the journey from the shop to the customer.
Mark

: : Given that most online model railway retail websites are utter shite, : I'd be very surprised if any of them are a significant source of : income for the operator.
Mr Goodge get it wrong again then!...

You have some figures to show that I'm wrong? Feel free to share them, in that case.
You'll note, of course, that I said "most", so providing the figures for just one or two of the better websites doesn't prove anything. I was careful not to state an absolute, merely a generalisation. There are, of course, a few websites which do shift large quantities of stock and constitute a major revenue stream for their operators. However, those are the minority, and my claim is about the majority. I'd be very interested to see any figures which contradict my claim that most model railway retail websites aren't a significant source of income.
Mark

: On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 20:28:24 -0000, Jerry put finger to keyboard and : typed: : : > : >"Mark Goodge" wrote in message : >news: snipped-for-privacy@news.markshouse.net... : > : > : >: : >: Given that most online model railway retail websites are utter : >shite, : >: I'd be very surprised if any of them are a significant source : >of : >: income for the operator. : > : >Mr Goodge get it wrong again then!... : : You have some figures to show that I'm wrong?
More to the point, as you are the one whop raised the issue, do **you** have any figures to show that you are correct, that these websites are so bad that no one could possibly trade effectively via them - I would suggest that as some of these companies have either had long web presence, and in some cases a web only presence, that you are far from correct, considering that they are still trading! Of course your opinion wouldn't be based on your wish to rubbish other web authors work and thus promote your own?...

I can easily point out the flaws in any website you care to suggest, yes. And yes, there are statistics available which make it pretty easy to tell whether a retail website is likely to be profitable. Although they're an approximation rather than precise figures, and they only give values for visitors rather than sales, the Alexa rankings are generally a good guide to how popular a site is.
So, let's start with a simple test. Google for "buy model railways online" returns these shops on the first page of results:
Alexa rank: 16,515
Alexa rank: 197,505
Alexa rank: 92,986
Alexa rank: 157,229
Alexa rank: too low to be ranked
Then a few more that don't show up so well in a search, but that I happen to know about:
Alexa rank: 33,077
Alexa rank: 30,511
Alexa rank: 32,839
Alexa rank: 26,609
Now, unless you've got experience in running an online shop yourself, you're going to have to trust me on this, but on these figures only the eHattons, Rails, Gaugemaster, Antics and OnTracks sites are getting anything like a significant amount of traffic (although railway-models.co.uk is another domain for Antics, so those figures really should be combined). For comparison, one of my own sites has a UK ranking of 10,147. I don't sell anything online myself (I leave that to my employers), but as a general rule you need a traffic ranking of at least 50,000 or better to get enough visitors for sales to be significant.
So, unless there are a lot of high-ranking model railway retail websites that I'm unaware of, then it's pretty safe to say that not very many of them are making significant money for their owners.
Well, given that Bachmann won't even sell to web-only retailers, it would be very surprising if there were many, if any, full-range retailers that only sell online. Plenty of Hornby box shifters, yes, but that's not really what I'm on about.
Writing websites is my day job, yes. So it's not surprising that do have a certain amount of experience in the field and an ability to judge what is good and bad, effective and ineffective.
Mark

: On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 23:02:11 -0000, Jerry put finger to keyboard and : typed: : : > : >"Mark Goodge" wrote in message : >news: snipped-for-privacy@news.markshouse.net... : >: : >: You have some figures to show that I'm wrong? : > : >More to the point, as you are the one whop raised the issue, do : >**you** have any figures to show that you are correct, that these : >websites are so bad that no one could possibly trade effectively : >via them : : I can easily point out the flaws in any website you care to suggest,
That is not what I asked and not what you tried asking me, were is your proof that these websites you imply are so hopeless that they could never be used to run a successful on-line business.
: : So, let's start with a simple test. Google for "buy model railways : online" returns these shops on the first page of results: :
No, lets start with proof that these online sites can't be used as a on-line business, that's what you said, now either back your criticism with facts or retract. Google ranking is not the issue, there are traders (not just in the model railway trade either) who have little or no Google ranking but trade only vie the web, most people know what they are looking for and know were to look, only the non (railway) enthusiasts need to use google to find a trader in the way you are suggesting - this will be a minority of sales in most cases.
So come on Mark, some facts and figures to back your accusations up, put-up or shut-up!