Hornby Spares Negotiation

Following the passing of John Humphry’s the issue of any Live Steam spares becoming available Margate has occasionally been discussed at shows but prior to today I have not had anything specific to report and for long periods it appeared that the whole idea could just fade away.

However the good news is that our patience has finally paid off so here is the full story.

In October 2022 when we first learned of John Humphry’s passing on behalf od the club I contacted Hornby to offer our condolences, inform the new people about the newly established OOLS Service and Repair Scheme and enquire about the future plans for any spares that John might have been holding.

I received the following reply from Andy Walker, Head of Quality

Thanks for your kind words and for the information.

I did know that John had tentatively set up a link with you guys but didn’t get the details so this will help greatly.

We are having a good sift through the mountain of John’s stuff and as we come across anything Live Steam we will be keeping them together and once we have a sizeable haul we will arrange to send what we have. I’m sure most will end up just being worthless to you but figured that you will know more than we will so apologies in advance for any “junk” you get!

I then contacted Andy to say ‘We would very much appreciate anything you can send to us, perceived as junk or not as I am sure it will be useful us’ and a week later received the following reply.

I’ve been meaning to respond to this for ages but just so hectic at the moment.

We will definitely put aside anything that we think may help and send it through. I will let you know in advance before we do (may still be a little more time as a lot going on)

I replied that we would wait to hear from them and then made periodic attempts to follow up but received no further replies for around nine months.

Then in August 2023 one of my emails was finally replied to by a Sam Coventon, Quality Control and Technical Support Assistant.

Thank you for your email, I hope you are well. My name is Sam and I have been brought in over at Hersden (pinched from the Hornby Development Team) to take over some of what John dealt with before he sadly died towards the tail end of last year.

In tidying up our QC department over here, we have located considerably more parts than we had anticipated, and indeed that we believed that we had. To this end, and due to the weight of components, I believe posting them may be difficult. If you want me to detail some of what we have, and pack it rather more sensibly than it is at the moment, I would be happy to let you know exactly how much we have (at the moment it is sprawled over a pallet). It would potentially be easier, should you or some of your members fancy a jolly boys outing close to the Kent coast, to arrange for them to be picked up by yourself.

I confirmed that we are very interested in the parts and asked “If there is more than originally expected can you let me know if you will need any payment” I also agreed that if it is weighty then a trip to Margate would also be sensible option. I wonder if it might be possible to arrange for us see the visitors centre and One to One museum as I am sure that would be enough of an incentive for a four of five of the club to travel down to the coast (244 miles for me!)

After sever further prompts Sam eventually replied

Thank you for coming back to me, and apologies for not getting back to you sooner. We have been very busy and time seems to fly here, if you had asked me how long ago it was that you had emailed I would have said three weeks, I now see that it is coming on for two months, again, apologies for this.

I have asked around and I have been able to get you access to the 1:1 collection, the museum in the making, next door to the Hornby Margate office on your trip down here, I also can’t imagine it will be a problem getting access to the new visitor centre provided it has opened at the point that you come down (they aren’t letting anyone in, even staff, before it properly reopens). As we, and the spares, are located at our Hersden warehouse it would mean collecting them and then heading over to Margate but that is only a few more miles down the road.

At the moment the plan is for the revised visitor centre to reopen towards the end of next month, so I would look to pencil in a date in a week at the start of November if that fits. Purely as an example, the week of the 6th to the 10th November would look good to us, if there is a date in that week that would be suitable for yourself and whoever you wish to bring.

NOTE: Although I asked so far they have not put any monetary value on the spares

I have replied that as a committee we will need a little time to discuss and agree a way forward but the first week in November should be fine.

We now have two options

Option 1 - A small group of those who are interested take a trip down, visit Hersden and collect the spares and then continue to Margate for a day out.

Option 2 - Two people (Nick plus one other visit Hersden to collect the spares

So who fancies a trip to Margate? (Provisionally on Wednesday 8th November).

I am away at Centre Parks for the next five days and will collate the responses next weekend. If there is enough interest we can have a day out. If not we will just arrange to collect the spares