I think you'll find the smaller branches in the suburbs only ever stock the premium lines with the biggest price tickets and highest markups. That's the only way they can survive and the same is true for model railway manufacturers in Britain.
(kim)
Just had a look at the Hornby website.
I don't know where you get that idea since what they actually say about the Railroad range is "Devoid of easily damaged detail parts ... fitted with efficient drive mechanisms". There's no mention of new tooling, nor upgrading the mechs. What they're doing is NOT spending money by NOT adding extra detail parts.
MBQ
So how did they convert the 9F from tender-drive to loco-drive without upgrading the mechanism?
(kim)
Maybe they had the drawing (and who knows, the tooling) from when the 9f first came out. It was the first tender drive engine (I had one as soon as I could get one) and considered very revolutionary at the time... how times change ;-) I seem to recall that the tender drive was adopted at the last minute as it was thought to be not ready in time, but then was - or at least the mags speculated so. So maybe the engine drive version actually existed and has just been dusted off? In which case he change could be very cost effective.
Just a thought.
Richard
So why didn't they do all this before Bachmann released their own 9F?
(kim)
Depends what you mean by smaller branches? Tesco Express on petrol station forecourts or smaller actual branches of Tesco? For the latter it's certainly not true where I shop. The small branch certainly doesn't stock all lines but they definitely stock some value lines as well as not stocking some premium lines.
MBQ
The Railroad range isn't simply the 9F.
MBQ
To nit-pick, it's actually a Britishism. The first public railway in this country (and the second in the world, by some counts) was the Lake Lock Railroad Company, and the coal drops re-erected at Beamish Museum bear the proud name of the Stanhope and Tyne Railroad Company..
Later on "railway" became the accepted usage over here and "railroad" over there, but originally both terms were in use on both sides of the Atlantic.
All they need to do is reshape the chassis (frame), add a geared main driver, power pickups, and a motor. Except for the new frame, those are all stock parts, except maybe the geared main driver, but for that no retooling is needed, just a rearrangement of the assembly line to include pressing the 9F main drive wheels onto a geared driver axle. Minimal incremental cost, actually.
The major cost would be a new casting for the frame, but it's not a very complicated casting. If the old tooling is worn out, new dies would have to be cut anyhow, so the dies for a new frame wouldn't cost that much more than for the old one. Redesign cost only, or so it seems to me. With CAD/CAM, that would be low compared to the real costs of designing tools by hand in the Good Old Days.
HTH
What do you want, kimmy? A copy of all the minutes of all the meetings that took place at Hornby to decide this project?
Why should Hornby do it any given time? For all we know, Hornby was planning the Railroad range five years ago, and the fact that Bachmann was planning a 9F for release around the same time was probably not known to them. Manufacturers are not in the habit of telling each other what products they are planning. We modellers might like that, so that their efforts wouldn't be duplicated, thus providing resources for a wider range of models. But business doesn't work that way. Both Bachmann and Hornby estimate the probable market, and there's no question that some engines are more popular than others. Duplication is therefore inevitable. Anyhow, Hornby's and Bachmann's 9Fs are aimed at different market segments.
Your questions are getting quite tedious, I'm sorry to say. Something has got up your nose, and you're not your usual friendly self. Take a break, with a good stiff tot of your favourite single malt and some nice silly TV. It'll make you feel better. ;-)
HTH
*If* it existed, then at the time the Railroad idea wasn't public. I'm only speculating, but I just thought it would make a refreshing change if someone gave Hornby credit while doing so, rather than assuing the company is run people without a clue ;-)
Cheers Richard
[...]
It actually depends on your town/village, and Tesco's sales history there. Tesco is very careful to match stock to what sells in any given location. They will from time to time test a few items not normally stocked, or brand new items, but if these don't sell fast enough, they will not be restocked. Remaining stock might even be moved to another location. All modern chains do that. It's a business model pioneered in the USA ands Canada. It's the reason I buy Marmite when I visit my model train chums in a town 45 minutes' drive away. There are a lot of elderly Brits in that town, you see, and they like their Marmite. AFAICT, I'm the only one who likes Marmite in this town. ;-)
HTH
The memorial to the Rt Hon William Huskisson MP, the first man to be killed by a passenger train, stands at Parkside, Newton-le-Willows, a short distance from my home.
The inscription mourning his death states that it took place 'on the 15th day of September, 1830, the day of the opening of this rail road' (sic).
One official seal of the Liverpool & Manchester 'rail' company bears the title 'Liverpool & Manchester Railroad'.
Several American 'Railroad' companies entered bankruptcy, only to emerge as a 'Railway' company very soon afterwards, sometimes without any break in service. Others were always known as 'Railways'. I think the Canadian 'Big Two', the CNR and CPR, were always 'Railways'. Roger T will know this
Regards,
DigitisED (Eddie Bellass)
Eddie & Margaret Bellass, Merseyside, United Kingdom.
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free and checked by a leading anti-virus system - updated continuously.
It was purely a rhetorical question. Of course I know full well why Hornby didn't of it before now, it was because there was no Bachmann equivalent of the 9F from which to take away market share.
(kim)
[...]
No, you don't know that. In fact you know squat about how businesses operate.
In the early days, there were a number of terms. By the mid-1800s, the preferred term in the UK was "railway", but many writers still used "railroad", and "rail road." In North America, terminology took a little longer to settle, but by the 1880s/90s, the common term was "railroad", while company names might be either "Railway" or "Railroad", as Eddies' observation about corporate histories correctly notes. OTOH, there's The Official Guide of the Railways, which has had that name from its beginning approximately a century ago.
Some grad student in philology could do a nice little MA thesis on the history of the terms. It would take a lot of reading in the original literature, and would, I'm sure, lead him or her into all kinds of byways. ;-)
HTH
The Railway Men always referred to 'The Road'!
Regards
/snippagio/
Plus there's a regional factor - "railway" and "railroad" were Shropshire usage originally, with the northern coalfield using "waggonway" (and, of course, these terms reflected quite different technical approaches in terms of track gauge and wag(g)on size). The Shropshire usage seems to have started to win out from the later 1700s, probably because Shropshire-type railways (and plateways/tramways - still normally called railroads or railways) were often used as feeders to canal systems and so were more visible to visitors from London than the lines in the northern coalfield, Cumbria or Scotland (where the waggonway ruled).
Ironically, modern standard-gauge railways/railroads are descendents of nothern-type Waggonways, not of Shropshire railways/railroads (NG railways are of Shropshire descent, via lines like the Festiniog, though..).
:)
Ok - here's a theory (and it is only that!). At the time that the railways were starting out the road system was abysmal. One of the new companies selling points was that they could move goods and passengers much faster and more comfortably than the competition on the roads, so they used Railway rather than Railroad to emphasise the point (maybe the publc was aware of rail-roads, as in trackways too?).
We still do it today - Motorway rather than Motorroad, Urban Clearway rather than Urban Clearroad.
It's likely that the first ralways in the US were built by ex-pats (I think that's true?) - and if the first one happened to call them Railroads then that is what is likely to stick. As the Americans were also building roads from scratch rather than relying on Roman/Medival remains the word road may not have the same stigma attached.
Just a thought.
Cheers Richard
Not always, by any means. I actually wrote a bit of an essay about this for my site last night, which I'll check over tonight and upload. It tries to explain how the words 'road', 'route' and 'line' were used, at least in the early 1980's. To precis somewhat - it's context sensitive. And complicated.
Cheers Richard
PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.