Live Steam a Success

Hi Everybody,

Well I’ve had an excellent week, I was invited by Frank Martin, former MD of Hornby to visit some of Jeremy Hosking’s collection of locos at the old Hornby premises.

For those that don’t know, Jeremy Hosking is a wealthy man who owns around 35 full size locomotives. They range from A4 Bittern, A2 Blue Peter, King Edward 1, Nunney Castle, A 9F, Royal Scot, 2 Deltics and a Eurostar and it goes on . . . .

I also had the opportunity to talk to Frank about Hornby live steam, I asked him if he saw it as a failure, he said not at all, they made and sold in excess of 10,000. He could not remember the exact number; he did not disagree with me that it could have been 12,000 to 14,000. For him some of the measures of success are:

Did more than 5,000 of the first model sell? Yes.

Did subsequent models sell more than 2,000? Yes.

The market at the time in the UK was about 50,000 modelers. To sell 10,000, 20% of the market is success.

I then asked him why stop then?

Sales had slowed, but most significantly the manufacturer Sanda Kan had ceased trading. When they looked elsewhere for alternative production, prices offered were two and three times more expensive. Their view was the market was not there at that price and so that was the end, I also recall Simon Kohler telling me this some time ago.

Frank also said that Live Steam gave them a significant boost in the city.

I mention all of the above because we seem to have at times a negative view of the reasons live steam ceased. I’m not sure where this has come from, but it’s time we had a more positive view. After all, we are trying grow the club and to quote Adrian “get these locomotives into joyful use.” After all if someone did re start production the minimum retail price would be £1,000 per unit, making the existing stock look extremely good value.

So, I would like to propose the following:

When asked why did it stop, we have the answer, the contract manufacturer in China ceased trading and replacement suppliers wanted two/three times the price making it uncompetitive, yes the market had slowed, yes we had 2008 financial crisis, but the main issue was price.

I’ve quoted Adrian once, which is a great quote and one I fully support. There is another which I think we need to stop using and that is “Hornby got it wrong” Adrian is referring to the inaccuracies in the handbook. He’s right of course, but we don’t need to say it, in fact I don’t think we should refer to the Hornby handbook, we should just show people how to operate correctly and if asked about the handbook, comment that there were some mistakes but let me show you how and leave it at that.

Your comments and further suggestions appreciated.

Maurice