Hornby Acquisition of Lima Now Approved

The message from snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (kim) contains these words:

I know what you said. What is the minimum wage for a 16yo (in most cases it will also be the maximum)? Maximum 48 hr week. I find your

The Cadillac marque is still alive and well and producing gas guzzlers, including the Escalade SUV. It weighs almost 3 tons and has a 345HP 6L V8 engine.

Like Thomas the Tank Engine?

David Jackson wrote:-

The lowest paid vacancies where I live are 4.66 per hour. That is the lowest, not an average and doesn't include subsidies from indulgent parents.

My point was that young people today have more disposable income than at any time in history but they do not choose to spend it on model railways as it is not seen as being 'cool'.

Kim, Coventry.

Ronnie Clark wrote:-

I didn't say they were 'earning' it, I said they were spending it.

Talking to local kids confirms the figures I was given are slighlty on the conservative side.

(kim)

expenditure is

Hmm.... Working 48 hours a week for £4 an hour only gets you £192 a week. Before tax and insurance come out.

I find it hard to believe that the average school leaver (ie, inherently unqualified) is earning much more than £4 an hour. Nor working much more than 8 hours a day for 6 days a week.

Ronnie

-- Volunteer guard on the Great Central Railway, Loughborough, Leicestershire Visit the world's only double track preserved steam railway!

Firstly I would say that most working teenagers of my acquaintance (I'm a voluntary youth worker) earn considerably less than £150/ week as in this area full time work is hard to come by and secondly they pay 'keep' to their parents leaving them an awful lot less than the blatantly fictitious '£200 disposable income' Not only that but when one takes into account the cost of having any sort of social life I'm amazed that any of them manage! Mike H

The message from snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (kim) contains these words:

You're quite right, it's not an average - it's well above average for the country as a whole. The minimum wage for a 16/17 y.o. is £3 per hour, and that's the figure that most employers will pay unless local conditions demand otherwise (full employment locally would be an example, as in your area).

However, we're splitting hairs over money, when we could be agreeing that the average teenager would rather be in the pub than "playing" with a model railway...

I'm not sure a one-off purchase of a GBP2000 car really counts as spending GBP200 on ten weekends (why not 9 or 11?). Also, the car might be seen as essential - you can't get to work/college/etc on a model train - so it's not a simple choice between cars and Hornby.

Maybe the average includes the super-rich, giving a misleading median?

(Shirley a school leaver wouldn't be able to drive a car straight away anyway, unless thay had stayed on for A-levels)

In an attempt to get this thread back onto model rlys I would have thought the prospect of Hornby tweaking the Lima tools in the same way as they have their own would have got people anticipating what might be released. What about a decent finish on a 73 with separate handrails and a better mechanicals to get the thread going.

Mike Parkes snipped-for-privacy@mphgate.removetoreply demon.co.uk

Mike H. wrote:-

They seem to manage to find the money for drugs, alcohol, tobacco, designer label clothes, mobile phones, state-of-the-art PC's, junk food, video games, CD's, hairdressers and manicurists.

(kim)

I think that's being just a TAD steriotypical! One would hope that the AVERAGE school leaver would find it hard to acquire alcohol for another two years!

I think the bottom line is, there's just very little for the average teenager to be interested in with railways now. It is a very long-gone age when trainspotting was the norm, and watching expresses was exciting. Why be interested in the railways with their endless similar multiple units when you can get your own car and thrash it around the block and have fun?

Social conditions have just changed too much for wide-spread interest in railways. It's quite sad that on reflection, my own deep interest in the subject comes only via being taken to endless preserved railways as a child. There's something about steam engines that just captures a child's mind in ways that diesels and electrics can't compete with. Of course, the more mature rail-enthusiast that I am now, the love of steam has grown up to give me a much wider appreciation of the modern railway. But I have to wonder how many more kids would grow up enjoying railways if taken to steam railways when young.

Ronnie

-- Volunteer guard on the Great Central Railway, Loughborough, Leicestershire Visit the world's only double track preserved steam railway!

Maybe John, but speaking to my local model shop owner, when he was talking to one of the mangers who came down here to NZ earlier in the year, he complained to him that they needed a train set that could sell about the NZ$150 (approx GBP50) for kids and others who wanted to start in model railways. To me this is one way of getting "reasonable" quality models that are robust for kids in starter train sets. I agree some of the Lima models are poor by today's standards, but others they are all we have.

Not just the 73, but the 60, 87, 67, plus countless wagons. Funnily enough, most of the coaches aren't worth it. Not without some serious flush glazing, anyway!

Ian J.

"Edmund Good" wrote

Well we already have that in the UK - there are a couple of sets in the 2004 catalogue that sell at that price, but of course shipping and import duty might push that up in NZ.

The fact is the cost of producing a basic loco from either Hornby or Lima tooling is going to be very, very similar, so I don't see how acquiring the Lima tooling will change that.

John.

"Edmund Good" wrote

The basic 'Thomas' electric train set sells for GBP50.00 in the UK.

John.

My point is that DCC is 'cool'. A kid who wouldn't be seen dead playing with model trains would be quite happy to boast how he programmed a DCC chip to control something-or-other.

(kim)

All our stuff goes all the way to the UK and then back to NZ (I kid you not!!!!)