"BH Williams" wrote
Back in 1955 when my Dad bought me my first trainset (Hornby Dublo 'Duchess of Montrose') the price of the set was around a fiver and the controller was an additional five guineas - at the time his wages were just GBP9.00 a week.
Even with Hornby's massive price inflation in recent years, quality trains are cheaper today in real terms than they've ever been.
John.
So a Hornby Dublo coach cost almost half day's pay. Not cheap!
Wolf - can't remember exactly, but as a Junior (ie, under 17) in the Navy I was earning the princely sum of 6/- (30p) per day!
Well, I notice a lot of nostalgia for the Good Ole Days of low prices, especially now that gas is around $1 a litre here. People never seem to recall how little they were paid when gas sold for 35 cents a gallon.
My measure of "real cost" is how long it takes you to earn the price. Take the lower 40% of income earners as "low end" -- at this level, income has increased by a factor of about 10 since the 1950s, slightly better than inflation. The middle 40% have enjoyed an increase of about
15x, roughly twice the inflation rate. The upper 20% have increased about 20x. And the top 2% or so have increased their take by about 100x. By and large, model railway prices have kept pace with inflation, but quality has generally improved (especially in the last 10 to 15 years.) So in price/quality terms, we are are better off than we were 50 years ago, when I bought my first locomotive with my own money.Buying power is another issue. This varies with the goods and services. I've noticed that by and large the GBP is worth about $1 to $1.50 when it comes to electronics and model trains, even though the exchange rate hovers around $2.20.
HTH
£10 might have been 'handsome' in the late 1950's; by the mid/late 60s it was more like £20.
For some reason HD 3-rail locos and tenders were sold separately. I have a replica price list somewhere, with the six-fingered pipe-smoking father.
More like $2.06 these days, Wolf - it was $2.20 in early September. If you allow 15% for PST+GST, exchange is about $1.88.
Don't know where you get that information from. The current exchange rate between the GBP and the USD is around 1.78 at the moment.
"MartinS" wrote
Not always - the 8F and 'Castle' class locos came with the tender as did most of the later releases including the 'Mallard', 'Dorchester' and 'City of Liverpool' locos.
It is however true to say that the early Duchesses ('Atholl' and 'Montrose') and A4s ('Sir Nigel Gresley' and 'Silver King') were sold generally sold separate to their tenders, and I recall being totally unsuccessful in finding one for my 'Silver King' which was inadvertently supplied for Christmas sans-tender one year - it shared my 'Gresley' tender for many years and looked quite incongruous.
John.
Martin and I were talking Canadian Dollars.
In that case the current exchange rate seems to be 2.06
As I said, but sales taxes of 15% (in Ontario) are added to advertised prices, reducing the effective exchange rate. Advertised UK price of £100 inc. VAT = CAD206 inc. 15% tax = CAD179 advertised price.
(My calculation of $1.88 was wrong.) USD1.00=CAD1.16
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