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Hornby Announce Peckett W4 0-4-0ST


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A word of warning to any other retailers who are still placing their orders for the 2017 range.

 

We have just submitted our 2017 advance order, and included the new Pecketts (R3550), our order has been refused.

 

I now have to convince my customers who have given me their advanced orders, in good faith, for an item not due for release until the end of the year, that the manufacturer will not supply me with their wishes.

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A word of warning to any other retailers who are still placing their orders for the 2017 range.

 

We have just submitted our 2017 advance order, and included the new Pecketts (R3550), our order has been refused.

 

I now have to convince my customers who have given me their advanced orders, in good faith, for an item not due for release until the end of the year, that the manufacturer will not supply me with their wishes.

That is unfortunate. Still, it’s better than my usual retailer’s experience with the earlier batch, where an order was accepted but not fulfilled.

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You got to be more worried about Oliver Reed nicking it. ;)

 

 

 

Reference to the film The Damned which was filmed at Weymouth complete with Pannier tanks. Well worth a watch.

 

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/boats-pubs-salt-air-filming-damned-dorset-oliver-reed

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/These_Are_the_Damned

 

 

 

Jason

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You got to be more worried about Oliver Reed nicking it. ;)

  I could watch that all day just to see Shirley Ann Field and the motor bikes. (And wonder at Kenny Cope with hair.)

 

Nice bit of Southalls BR built pannier running at Beaconsfield Station in this  Film. Head of to 27 mins & 23 seconds.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl0wh5ZJFxA&t=1676s

 

With apologies for the topic drift.

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A word of warning to any other retailers who are still placing their orders for the 2017 range.

 

We have just submitted our 2017 advance order, and included the new Pecketts (R3550), our order has been refused.

 

I now have to convince my customers who have given me their advanced orders, in good faith, for an item not due for release until the end of the year, that the manufacturer will not supply me with their wishes.

Did they give a reason why? Turning away orders seems to be a very strange way to conduct business.

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Did they give a reason why? Turning away orders seems to be a very strange way to conduct business.

No reason given. My assumption is that once again they have grossly underestimated demand, and are totally inflexible in production quantities.

 

(Other items were also turned down, but these were ones that have already been released, so I would expect that these were due to being sold out.)

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No reason given. My assumption is that once again they have grossly underestimated demand, and are totally inflexible in production quantities.

 

(Other items were also turned down, but these were ones that have already been released, so I would expect that these were due to being sold out.)

 

I have a suspicion that part of the trouble here may be down to wishlists.

 

When I took up railway modelling about 10 years ago there seemed to be a general presumption that manufacturers such as Hornby would only consider a model with demonstrable wide appeal, taking into account geographical coverage, livery variations and years in service; in short, a really useful engine.

 

In more recent times the wish lists seem to be more niche-driven - a Standard 2 for example to fill that last gap in the Standards. Thus models appear to critical acclaim and limited sales and then disappear for years on end.

 

Faced with the demand for a really useful engine such as the Peckett, the limited run mindset is having trouble adjusting.

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No reason given. My assumption is that once again they have grossly underestimated demand, and are totally inflexible in production quantities.

 

(Other items were also turned down, but these were ones that have already been released, so I would expect that these were due to being sold out.)

It's ironic that Hornby were or are teetering on the brink of financial collapse, but they now have a product that they literally can't make enough of to meet demand. The current business model certainly leaves a lot to ge desired when it actually hampers a company's ability to make a bigger profit.

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We shouldn't forget that Hornby has come unstuck recently by producing a second run of locos the year after first release, in quantities that have clearly been too high for the residual demand not satisfied by the first batch. Hornby may well have had to place the order with the factory for the 2017 model last year, so took a cautious approach to the quantity to ensure there was no fire sale later in the year. They can always produce another version in 2018 if there is still the demand.

 

There is also the unknown quantity of whether some retailers that placed their orders with Hornby early have ordered large quantities on the expectation they will sell them easily despite few pre-orders, meaning Hornby has none left for the likes of C&M but overall there will be enough produced to supply demand. Just not in the shops that have customers waiting.

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If Hornby have completely pre-sold out of a model that is not due to be even manufactured until this Autumn, it is surprising that they couldn't work out some way with the Chinese factory to increase the production run. I would have thought getting the tools etc up and running was the time consuming portion and a production run increase would not add much additional time

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We shouldn't forget that Hornby has come unstuck recently by producing a second run of locos the year after first release, in quantities that have clearly been too high for the residual demand not satisfied by the first batch. Hornby may well have had to place the order with the factory for the 2017 model last year, so took a cautious approach to the quantity to ensure there was no fire sale later in the year. They can always produce another version in 2018 if there is still the demand.

 

There is also the unknown quantity of whether some retailers that placed their orders with Hornby early have ordered large quantities on the expectation they will sell them easily despite few pre-orders, meaning Hornby has none left for the likes of C&M but overall there will be enough produced to supply demand. Just not in the shops that have customers waiting.

There's also the issue that, for several years, Hornby consistently failed to fulfil deliveries of the quantities ordered, in extreme cases as little at 10% turned up..

 

Some dealers may have (understandably) upped the numbers on the assumption that, however many they ordered, they would be unlikely to get even half of them.

 

If the practice was at all common, it could well have distorted Hornby's impression of a model's sales potential. As production difficulties began to ease, they may have increased batch sizes or brought forward further runs in an attempt to satisfy this phantom demand.

 

John

Edited by Dunsignalling
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If Hornby have completely pre-sold out of a model that is not due to be even manufactured until this Autumn, it is surprising that they couldn't work out some way with the Chinese factory to increase the production run. I would have thought getting the tools etc up and running was the time consuming portion and a production run increase would not add much additional time

From posts made by DJ and Rapido, I think you will find it is production that is time consuming.

 

Roy

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Evening everyone, I hope I have created a relaxing and enjoyable video featuring The 'Hornby Peckett loco', Bachmann J72 and Bachmann via Model Rail USA tank loco. Special delivery for farmer Giles :)

 

 

Video was inspired by Dodo really :)

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I hope the goods shed staff weren't asphyxiated by all those steam locos passing through their shed!

 

And I was sorry you didn't film the bit where the crane winched itself onto an adjacent track and back again ;-)

 

But that aside, enjoyable and relaxing! :-)

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I hope the goods shed staff weren't asphyxiated by all those steam locos passing through their shed!

 

And I was sorry you didn't film the bit where the crane winched itself onto an adjacent track and back again ;-)

 

But that aside, enjoyable and relaxing! :-)

 

Haha No all ok, loco men very professional and just coasted in with minimal smoke.

Oh, yes you never saw the bit where the crane was shunted onto the other line, set of points just behind the goods shed.

Must have missed that bit out, twice ;)

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Considering how popular these turned out to be, there don't seem to be that many out there in the wild. I spotted my first one yesterday at the East Grinstead show, shunting on Bob Vaughan's layout Gas Lane. It's been nicely detailed and weathered.

post-6821-0-77957000-1489360185_thumb.jpg

post-6821-0-54070600-1489360184_thumb.jpg

 

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Evening everyone, I hope I have created a relaxing and enjoyable video featuring The 'Hornby Peckett loco', Bachmann J72 and Bachmann via Model Rail USA tank loco. Special delivery for farmer Giles :)

 

 

Video was inspired by Dodo really :)

 

That's nicely done, Mike. I haven't watched the whole video yet, but the parts I did watch got me in. :)

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Got a question. What stock could I run with a pecket, I'm assuming they were around until the end of steam so I could get away with BR wagons and vans, Highfits, shock vans and steel minerals etc?

Steve

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Got a question. What stock could I run with a pecket, I'm assuming they were around until the end of steam so I could get away with BR wagons and vans, Highfits, shock vans and steel minerals etc?

Steve

I believe so. I shall be doing exactly the same.

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Got a question. What stock could I run with a pecket, I'm assuming they were around until the end of steam so I could get away with BR wagons and vans, Highfits, shock vans and steel minerals etc?

Steve

 

I'd say that the short answer is pretty well anything you like except brake vans - and simply because they would only get in the way when shunting or tripping around an industrial site

 

Best though to have an idea of what you want to achieve at any one moment so that it looks convincing. The sort of work these puggies were employed on tended to be fairly specific, whether it was a couple of vans or a couple of tanks or whatever. What you wouldn't often get would be mixed traffic, say vans and tanks at the same time. Rather it might be more a case [hypothetically] of bringing in a couple of wagonloads of coal for the boilerhouse; then off somewhere else with an open, before taking a van out to the exchange siding

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