Happy Birthday Frank (Hornby)

It was Frank Hornby’s 150^th anniversary this week. Google celebrated with a special “Google Doodle” on the UK website. It set me off wondering what Hornby meant to me.

There is no question that Frank Hornby was an inspired entrepreneur. He popularised mechanical engineering to a whole generation of kids by inventing Meccano. Yet by the time I was in my childhood, Meccano was being trumped by Lego – you could build fantastic things in Lego much quicker, and much more easily. And I think that the wonders of engineering had been all too readily accepted by then. The wonder material through the Victorian and Edwardian eras had been iron and steel, but by the 1950’s the new wonder material was undoubtedly concrete. Meccano looked like the Victorian great structures such as the Forth rail bridge, but Lego looked like the South Bank centre and the National Theatre in London.

Of course, whilst it is well known that Frank Hornby invented Meccano, it is the model rail system named after him that is more famous today. There is a link in his development of the Meccano idea to early trains, which led his company onto the Hornby Double O system. Looking back at the various books and web resources. you can see some great model trains which were developed through to the 1960’s – models I look at with a bit of longing in my mind.

My first loco - a Playcraft clockwork 0-4-0

My first train set wasn’t Hornby set. By the time I was old enough to get involved in trains, Tri-ang had come along and set up in competition to Hornby. Tri-ang was part of the great toy empire of the Lines Brothers, and they had access into every toy shop in the country. But the launch of Tri-ang set other people’s minds in motion, and Playcraft did a deal with the French firm of Jouef to introduce a range of British look alike train sets, sold mainly by Woolworths. These sets were much cheaper than either Tri-ang or Hornby, the cheapest was one penny less than a pound – equivalent to around £20 at today's values. You can’t find anything equivalent to that sort of value even today. 

Playcraft sets were great, but the range was never that developed. As I grew older, Playcraft became harder to find, but Tri-ang was everywhere. I soon became a convert to Tri-ang. There were problems though – the rails didn’t match as the rail connectors were on different sides (when you put a playcraft rail up to a Tri-ang rail, both connectors were on the same side, leaving the other side without any connectors). Although it wasn’t obvious to me as a child, the height of the rails were also different.

The underside plate to my loco with Playcraft's name and Jouef diamond logos

What saved the day from my point of view was that Tri-ang merged with a firm I had only vaguely heard of – Hornby. As part of the merger, special adaptor rails were introduced to let Hornby track interconnect with Tri-ang – and guess what; they fitted Playcraft track as well. 

So from a very personal point of view I’m grateful to Hornby, but in a very backhanded compliment sort of way – it was only the demise of his train system that helped me out!

Being more than a little older now, I can look back and start to appreciate, both the imagination which led him to launch model train sets in the UK, and also the attention to detail they still show to this day. Of course history moves on and much later, the Lines Brothers' toy empire fell, and Tri-ang Trains were sold off. They were re-branded as “Hornby” and the modern system which bears Frank’s name is arguably much more a product of Tri-ang than of the original Hornby model system. And in their new guise Hornby have been very creative, they have ramped up the accuracy, and have tried very hard to respond to what their buyers want. For the current generation of children, Hornby means model trains, and a great inspiration they are too!.

Codename Strikefore – wishing for a little bit more…

I have spent a lot of time over the last few months looking at the video of Codename Strikeforce as I learn how to edit –then forget – then relearn it again! It’s given me a chance to think about my own views about the set. There is no doubt that Al enjoys it; but I think Hornby could have done a lot more with it.

Hornby’s recent history is of a failing company that was brought back to life by a dedicated management team who refused to give up on the brand and the concept. They realised they had to attract serious (i.e. adult) modellers for whom the lack of detail on the older models was a source of irritation. They have succeeded heroically in this. The problem has been attracting the youngsters. After all, the serious adult modellers with the serious money to spend all started off when they were kids – the future of model rail as a hobby lies in keeping interest alive in a generation where the instant entertainment of the internet, a host of TV channels and games consoles poses serious competition.  In the last couple of years Hornby has introduced the Railroad series – a cheaper option with some of the expensive detailing being omitted in favour of price. This seems to me to have been a real success.

Codename Strikeforce has to be considered as another option along these lines. I just think they could have done much more mainly by including operating accessories to fit with the main trainset. For another £20 they could have included a remote controlled helicopter – Maplin have two on their website for £19.99. The iconic Tri=ang Battle Space range, made between 1966 and 1973 included lots of operating accessories: tanks which fired missiles, a satellite launcher, Rocket launcher (which fired rockets!), even an exploding car. Nowadays I would expect to see remote controlled tanks rather than the fairly plastic – almost Christmas cracker level – attempts which are actually included. I would also have thought there was a market for selling the individual items, but I haven’t found them in the catalogue yet. Surely Hornby could get additional sales by offering individual items which would fit in with the Codename Strikeforce set?  So overall, whilst Al enjoys it, I think there are more opportunities here which Hornby are still missing. But don’t get me wrong – there is no-one else out there doing anything similar that I am aware of; so well done Hornby for taking us this far. The set runs well, and the specialist Trakmat helps create the “story”. Keep it going, Hornby – but maybe raise your sights a bit?

Codename Strike Force - Our Video goes live!

I have finally uploaded our video of Al's Codename Strikeforce set. Check it out here - or pop over to our  Youtube channel.

I don't like reading other bloggers apologies about the time it takes them to update their blogs - so I'll try not to bore you - just to say sorry its taken so long! This video editing stuff takes quite a lot of time - and concentration - and that sort of quality time in our household is in short supply. We're too busy living life and having fun when we can!

Hornby train set review: Codename Strike Force

Hi I am Al, alande’s dad’s son and this is my review on my train set "Codename: Strike-Force".

Codename Strike-Force is a great train set. It includes 1 locomotive 2 carriages with special plates each to hold vehicles, 1 guard van, 2 tanks, 2 land rovers, about 10 men, 3 barricades, a track mat and a medium sized set of track. I enjoy playing with this great train set because you can do so much with it. My favourite thing to do is to act out war scenes where the solders, a tank and a land rover get polverated by the train and the carriages. Codename Strike-Force is a great train set for kids but maybe not for great collectors because it does not have anything that might have any historic value.

Al.

Al and E’s Dad adds: look out for the video coming shortly, showing the Codename Strike Force train set in action.

E misses out!

E missed out because Dad forgot to ask her what her train set wishes were. So here as a late addition is what she would really like: a Hornby Devon Flyer train set – which she says looks really good!

Christmas Wishes

Its probably a bit late to be thinking of what we want for Christmas, but here are a few of the items we’d like the Reindeer Express to deliver.

I’d love a rake of electric motor units (“EMU”s) in BR Southern Region green. We’ve got two carriages that are pulled by locos, but they are in different scales (HO and OO) and look out of place together!

The Hornby Trackmaster software sounds good, although I haven’t seen a proper review of it yet. I’ve spent a lot of time searching for software to help plan layouts, and they all have drawbacks – Hornby’s previous attempts have been interesting, and fun, but somehow tended to stop just before they were really useful!

We would all love a really impressive steam loco and tender set. But they are certainly not cheap at roughly £130 plus!

Al would like a “cleaner train”. We’ve talked about track maintenance in the blog, and one option is to have a train clean the track. There are some really cool examples (including one by Dapol) which have tanks to store cleaning fluid, and “hoover” type vacuums” which pick up power from the track. 

But overall the things we’d probably love most would be more space for our layout (preferably in the warm rather than out in our garage) and more time to spend “playing” trains together.

Wherever you are and whatever you are up to in train set scale or in real life, we wish you a Happy Christmas.

Ps if you are still looking for your own Christmas gift (to give away or to keep for yourself) check out the train sets sold by Hornby and Bachman – they are great value compared to buying the individual items, and you will often find some sets being offered at a big discount around Christmas.

pps thanks to "callmestacy" via photobucket for the tree picture.

Wheels of Progress

After the Railway Maintenance Working Party had done such sterling work in wheel cleaning Al had taken the cleaned locos and run them around our layout. One of our pride and joys is an old Tri-ang R653 loco, a 2-6-2 SNCF black steam model (a Continental “prairie” model from the 1960’s). It’s the most majestic looking loco we have (Al would probably vote for the Hitachi bullet train, but I am an old enough fogey to feel nostalgia for the steam engine!). It was the last of the three cleaned locos to be test run, and he called me in to show it running. But - it stopped. 

A Tri-ang R653, a Continental Prairie in French livery

Now there are lots of possible reasons for the stoppage. It was stopping near to some points. One of the constructional differences between original Tri-ang and modern Hornby is that the track is smaller in height. It is more “finescale” in the jargon. The flanges on the wheels (the bigger bits that drop down to the side of the rail) were made to suit older higher track. When a Tri-ang loco goes over a point there is a piece in the middle – called the “frog” where the two running lines come to meet. The groove in these frogs is not deep enough for the depth of the flanges on most Tri-ang locos. This means the main wheel is lifted up and loses contact with the rail – reducing the transfer of power from the rail to the engine. This usually results in a “stutter” in the running of the engines around the track.  Since the problem appeared to be happening just after the points, I wondered if that was the cause. We ran the loco a few more times.

If you look carefully you can see the dirt on the wheels.You can
also see the deep flange which makes it difficult to run on modern track

Yes that’s right – we ran it again – even though it had stopped. What we found was that if we turned off the Hornby power controller for about a minute, it seemed to reset things so that it could run the loco again. And on the next test run , the loco stopped again, but nowhere near the points. The way our weekends go we didn’t have time to do any more testing, so the problem remains a mystery at the moment. I am wondering if the engine is somehow building up electrical resistance so that eventually the power controller cuts out. This does seem to be a feature of the Hornby rail controller. More research is called for – but that’s going to mean finding some more time to spend at the trackside!