New Loco Query

I have had a reply back from Simon about the possibility of producing high temperature plastic bodies.

Not good news unfortunately

Simon Kohler

Dear Adrain,

From memory I believe we ended up creating new tooling or at least heavily modified tooling for both the A4 and A3 models.

As for your request to run off other types of bodies, firstly the cost would be prohibitive as they would need new bolsters etc. plus sadly they have all be scrapped.

Sorry.

Kindest regards

Simon

From: Adrian Campbell <adrian@planestv.com> Sent: 01 June 2018 13:00:27 To: Simon Kohler; Simon Kohler Subject: Commissioned job to supply Hornby bodies

I seem to recall that when you originally made the Live Steam A4 and A3 you used older/redundant moulds (from Triang days?) just in case the high temperature plastic damaged the moulds. Did it damage the moulds? Would Hornby be prepared to supply a batch of bodies using the same high temperature plastic using old Triang moulds for, say Battle of Britain9FCoronationTranscontinental Hiawathaetc Kind regards Adrian Adrian CampbellChairmanOO Live Steam Club

Just got back from holiday and catching up on the forums I find this.

To me it is a no brainer that to test the market for a possible relaunch you 'rework' the stock that's out there.

That might mean recalling or buying back from the huge 'stock' of dormant locos out there or it might simply be an 'add-on' to an owners existing loco/set.

But Hugh asks what will it cost?

How long is a piece of string but an easy market teat is to do what we are doing - a limited run of rename renumber with a customer submitted loco as an option.

Another easy test is to package up a "Refresh Pack". The only cost of investment would be the box. The contents would be

Live Drive Controller

New Instructions

DVD

Some key spares

Some key tools

100ml (say) water

and (possibly) a voucher for a free loco check up.

Sell it for £100

Offer it to the trade

Sell it on ebay - it would be an advert in itself.

A more ambitious (but out of my league professionally) but I think worth pursuing, is what would have to be done to convert 100 Mallards to, say, 9Fs if Hornby could be pursuaded to do a run of bodies using the old Triang mould like they did for Mallard and Flying Scotsman.

Personally I think losing a clear see-through view is a small sacrifice for the slow speed performance that smaller driving wheels will deliver. It hasn't seemed to worry Hornby. No see-through view here.

I totally agree. We do know that for all practical reasons any new oolsc product would need to be

made in china and the initial up front tooling costs alone, would be in access of £100,000.

Without a firmed up drawing/specification package to formulate any meaningful unit costing

together with transportation etc we are talking about seriously large amounts of money on a potentially very limited marketplace.

I also think that the floating boiler of the 9F makes an 00Live steam version, totally impractical.

You could possibly make an 0 gauge version,although once again outstanding contemporary 0 Gauge model live steam manufacturers such as Muhletaler and Gianini tended to concentrate on the Pacific Class outline. For the time being and /or until someone comes up with a couple of million quid to indulge our passions (whilst many out there still consider 00LS to be somewhat eccentric) we really have to make the very best of the available and still seemingly numerous,existing stock.

Which Maurice has already sussed out.

The question of who owns what in respect of patents etc is a topic for another day. However

patents have a life of around twenty years. Whereas copy right is yet another subject.

Not sure Huw is necessarily going to see this but its a fun topic to discuss anyway.

Also makes one appreciate how extremely fortunate we 00Live Steam enthusiasts are to

ever have had the product manufactured for our continued enjoyment to this day.

Charles

The original message is not in any of the threads but was an email via the OOLS website 'Contact Us' page

It is just one member asking questions following some posts on the OOLS site so I have posted here so that all the committee can see it

Norman I think your last paragraph sums up the situation very succinctly.

Which message thread is this in? I have not read it on the website.

There are two distinct questions here.

1. What would it cost to get dormant locomotives back into club control?

2. What would it cost to create a new LS model?

Looking at question 1, it begs the question "How do we find hidden locomotives" and echos some of the questions I raised in relation to the Hornby project but which have never been answered about how many were produced and where were they sent to (countries).

A large advertising and marketing campaign about a buy-back programme would bring some locomotives to light, but exactly how many and from where, I think is any one's guess. When we have no idea how many there are out there, or where they are, it is difficult.

Huw suggests a 9F locomotive. which was a 2-10-0 wheel arrangement. My suspicion would be that as the current LS locomotives are all Pacifics, 4-6-2, there could be fewer or lower cost implications in fitting an existing design into a body shell, perhaps a streamlined Stannier Coronation Class locomotive, than even an unstreamlined Pacific, where the boiler, body shape and crucially the "blue sky" between the boiler and frames which makes the profile of the original difficult to reproduce with the LS technology.

From recent experience I have had with some engineering work I have had commissioned, the design and then production of something new, even new/old, is costly, even when it is a reproduction of a previous part and uses some standard metric size metal.

Who holds the patents and the design copyright for LS? simply copying what Hornby produced may not be legally possible. Recasting some small, no longer available parts, is not the same as copying the complete inner workings of an A3 or A4 and dropping a new body shell on top.

The tenders also are different, so there is a lot of design work to do around a "new" model, both internally and externally. These days people want their models to "look like the real thing". I still have my original Hornby Dublo Silver King. It was fantastic for the era it was produced in, but would not pass muster these days even for a start up. Just looking at the details difference between the Hornby model of Spencer (Thomas series) and my old A4 shows the order of magnitude change in external detail.

As a train-the-trainers person, I teach reflective practice. My starting point on the design would be: If we were to start again with a blank piece of paper to design a Live Steam locomotive, what would we do differently to make it better?

Hindsight is the most precise science known to mankind. We know that there was insufficient thought put into the material which new owners received in the box about firing and running an LS loco. The miniature marvels run well, but were/are perceived as difficult to drive.

The fact that so much brilliant technology was sandwiched into such a small space is incredible, but without access to the manufacturing which was used, I think a conservative estimate for going from design to prototype would not give much change from £250K.

I'm most certainly not advocating that we don't do it, or never consider the project, but think there needs to be a healthy dose of realism about what is involved and what it would take.

Norman

Noted

However I'm not really the best to awnser the chaps questions