New Hornby - press preview tomorrow

I can assure you, it's not a fabricated story. Check the announcement on the London Stock Exchange website, or from the Investor Relations pages on Hornby's website. Their shares have rocketed (no steam train pun intended) since the market opened this morning.

Simon

Apologies!

Well I never did, they might have got thier dates a bit wrong with Mallard but they ARE announcing here:

sounds excellent! I'd like to see some of the engine shed layouts currently doing the exhibition circuit with a bunch of these on display, it would change the atmosphere of such layouts completely.

the stock market obviously liked the news. approaching 10 quid a share as i type!

Pete

"Simon" wrote

Yawwnnn! Hornby have done the live steam thing before with the 3½" gauge

I don't care what the Stock Market think of the idea, my guess is the reported GBP500 per set will kill it stone dead in its luke warm boiler water. Sure some will sell, but will enough? I certainly won't want one, how many on here will?

John.

I'd like one, but I agree GBP500 is going to price it out of the reach of most, including myself.

Adrian

I would have one (Happy Birthday to me!) if the loco appealed to me, sadly Mallard does not.

Release a £80 N2 (with working condensing equipment) as the next model and I might be interested... Presumably a Hogwart's Deluxe set will be much more likely.

Tunnel derailments might be fun, though, whatever gets released.

Mark.

John,

I suspect that Martin meant 500 miles from Toronto, but there is a Pennsylvania just north of Bath and that's within 500 miles of the NYMR :-)

Jim.

I know that there used to be a similar layout that used to appear at the Manchester Show, years back, albeit in a larger scale. That uses app. 50 volts AC for the immersion heaters + a superimposed DC voltage to contrl the regulator, etc.

How many volts / amps will this Hornby set use?

DC

I'd love one....But I ain't paying 500 quid :)

Jon

Oh dear....live steam OO...I'd loved to be proved wrong, but that sounds like a sales disaster in the making. Hate to think how many decent locos / rolling stcok models they could've tooled for the cost of this escapade.

Rich,

From what I can gather, the heating of the boiler will be by immersion heater, so the loco will be no more dangerous than your average kettle :-) Now, if it was fired using something like methylated spirits, that might be another matter :-)

Jim.

Just noticed a couple of pages about the Live Steam on their website now

Simon

I agree, it's a nice idea, I think the £500 price tag seems to indicate they don't expect to sell that many. £500 Gets you a a nice stud of electric motor powered locos, gets you into the entry level of garden rail steam locos, and if you want an impressive table piece it hits the range of Basset-Lowke and ACE ) gauge models too.

I think perhaps people were expecting a more "modeller" based annoucement, where as this seems to be more of an expensive (very) toy. I wonder if Corgi would use a similar system for their Basset-Lowke range, might be interesting.

"John Sullivan" <

-- Cheers Roger T.

Sorry, I meant Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) was 500 miles from Toronto.

In message , Simon writes

Everyone seems to have missed the line in their press release, saying it will be marketed in the USA by their American subsidiary. Don't forget that the USA is a mush bigger market than just the UK.

This also implies that maybe the technology will be licensed to other manufacturers, with Hornby getting a royalty for every item sold. Can you imagine some of those gigantic Mallet-type locos the Americans were rather fond of, running on live steam?

At roughly 05/09/2003 5:58 pm, the person described as John Sullivan stated:

I agree, I think this new thing has potential and shouldn't be rubbished just yet. Wait a week or two... ;o)

So, er, when are the OO live diesel-electrics launched? (Yes, I know it's impossible but it would be great wouldn't it?!)

whokid

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