I bought one _because_ it was HO. Now I can show visitors a typical German goods loco and a typical British goods loco of the same time period.
I bought a couple (cheaper than cheap) that had been converted by someone who owned a breadknife, UHU, a toothpaste tube carton, ballpoint pen (broken), black housepaint and a three inch brush. One had the Belpaire box cut off and card glued over the hole, a shortened cab roof and the tender coal bunker altered. The other had similar mods to the cab and tender with ribs across the roof and a "V" chimney from BIC. Leaving aside the quality of the alterations, the results didn't look like 4Fs!
"Sorry Madam, I don't do international tickets." The legendary Guard Nelson Drew on being asked for a ticket to somewhere with lots of 'l's and 'y's in Wales when leaving Yetminster.
And it will also illustrate the relative quality of model offering to the German and British markets. I somehow suspect that the German locomotive will be better modelled AND better engineered.
Greg didn't state the age of his German freight loco; if it's of a similar age to some of the ones I have then it will be without steam roller tyres and pastry-cutter flanges. None of my Bavarian locos have red chassis.
I seem to recall that Tri-ang models didn't exactly have fine-scale wheels.
I think you will find that the Roco shunter is a model of an NS shunter. NS had a fair number of them. Closely related to the BR 08 but with a few variations.
Victoria railways in Australia had a small number of closely related Locos as well. Known as F class.
Not at all, I've got a delightful little Bavarian 'Mallet' 0-4-4-0T loco made by Roco (admittedly they're Austrian) which cost well below GBP100.00 and a Fleischmann Bavarian 2-4-0T loco and three equisite 4-wheel coach set which was around GBP150.00.
None of these have steam roller tyres or pastry-cutter flanges, and if anything have finer wheel standards than either Bachmann or Hornby's latest offerings, and although both are small locos, I doubt whether either of the principle British outline manufacturers could get them to the market any cheaper bearing in mind the detail and quality performance.
My reference to Tri-ang models was in comparisoon with contemporary German models. Maybe the Germans stuck with coarse scale wheels for longer, but the quality of their mechanisms made up for that.
That's possibly why they're not (currently) bankrupt :o)
I agree, the krauts/squareheads/bosch make superb mechanisms but the final product still looks like a brightly coloured toy. The same goes for their buildings and vehicles in 3.5mm scale.
I've tried weathering 1/76th scale military models in the past and it was an unmitigated disaster whereas I can buy British outline RTR railway models which have already been weathered for me.
I can well remember a friend returning from a spell in Germany in about 1977 and triumphing his Fleischmann models that he had aquired over there. I was toatally bemused I'm affraid - they did indeed have steam roller wheels and pastry cutter flanges, and worse, the sharpness of the detail on the body was no where near as sharp as the then new Hornby Evening Star, hand rails etc were grossly over scale and the valave gear was "clumsy". They may or may not have had better motors, but at that age that didn't matter!
I've no idea how they compare these days (I'm into 0 gauge), but I did see a review of two Class 37 models on a magazine web site recently (can't remember the two makers), and I was rather surprised at the conclusion as to which was "better" - the points that struck me were that one had better representation of fans than the other, which was nice, but the suggested "better" one had most of the nose detail missing (glaringly, lamp brackets). For me, I would have rated them as models (obviously I've not seen them run) as the same - both "flawed", though that's not do damn either of them. It good old horses for courses again (with a lrage dollop of form and functionality) - one of the factors in deciding to go '0' rather than do '00' again was that I have to make everything, and if I get it wrong it's my problem!
But that was 30 years ago! The Germans may have been slow starters but they caught up a fair while ago and have now surpassed even the best of Bachmann and Hornby!
It's a fairly old model. Michael Andress did some articles in one of the magazines more than 20 years ago. He was doing British HO using what was available. For its era it was a heck of a lot better than the Hornby product which didn't even have outside frames.
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