Hornby International

[dario]

Since last year, Hornby took over the assets, paying 5.5 million pounds, of the Rivarossi-Lima-Jouef-Arnold group (in practice, the moulds).
Production is shifted to China.
The hope was in an improvement in the mechanical reliability and utmost care in detail.
Both these targets are hopelessly missed in Italian-prototype models made in China.
Now it is well known that the quality of British-prototype models is only toy-like. There is no comparison with German makes (ref. Warship diesels by Fleischmann and Maerklin) or Bachmann UK.
Is this state of things accepted in UK, or has anybody complained to Hornby? Nothing quite like the original Hornby OO quality, I remember.
The level of disappontment from Italian Modellers has gone over the brink.
The latest D341 diesels have out-of-scale headlights that call for vengeance! The only right action Hornby could do is recall all the D341 models delivered so far and send them to scrap.
I wait for any comment.
Dario

[swisstrains]

Dario,
Are you saying that the D341 diesels are now worse since Hornby took over the Rivarossi Group or simply that the new versions are no better than they were when produced in Italy?
I personally model in N-scale and in this scale I was under the impression that Hornby would initially only re-release original Arnold items without any changes to detail or quality.
British models were "toy-like" many years ago but I don't think your comments are valid nowadays.
John

[DSY011]

Dario,
I have to agree with John, todays British model locos are very good in both '00. and'N' gauge unless you are one of those who count the rivits on a model. I find that the fun is in running the railway not looking for fault on the RTR models. I am not running down modelers who want detailed models, I'm just stating my own thoughts.

[dario]

Thank you both John and Syd.
The strange thing is, somebody messed up with the CAD/CAM in regard of the headlights.
See the picture of the actual model, as against the picture of the former model in the Hornby's web-site.

[dario]

New D341 model by Hornby International.

[dario]

Previous D341 model by Rivarossi.

[dario]

Not strange, but within expectations, is the fact that the german range seems spotless.
I havent seen any Arnold model yet, but I guess, to win back the customers, these must also be spotless.
As for the italian range, common complaints regard the liveries (incorrect colours), the position of details, unprototypical square buffers, etc, and unreliable mechanics (loose gear drives).
Now I explain my negative judgment on Hornby's british models.
In the side views, as illustrated in the web-site, there is a big air-gap between the chassis and the motor bogies.
This is something we have learnt from ROCO: their models have bogies well enclosed in the chassis.
All continental manufacturers had to follow suit.
And it is an improvement British Modellers should deserve. Better mechanics.
Now Hornby has the know-how inherited from the international range.
And how about giving up those horrible unprototypical couplers?
While I was in Australia, many British Modellers changed over to KADEEs, and they made a dramatic improvement.
The new coupler designed by Rivarossi-Lima is now Hornby's heritage, and could make its debut.
My critics are meant to be positive, because ours is "the world's greatest hobby".

[dario]

Complaint to Hornby by two brothers in Palermo, Sicily
Quote:
this short e-mail is directed to the Hornby designer. I'm an italian fermodellist, and, like many others, I had been waiting for the new hornby models for years. I expected to see new and more detailed models even for the italian market. Unlikely all the models produced till now by the new management for the italian market seem to be only the bad copy of the ones produced by Rivarossi and Lima during the previous years. The new models are dreadfully inperfect and imprecise, in spite of a good new mechanic. Wrong colors, absence of important details and much more; but what especially amazed me and many other collecters is that even models already successfully produced by Lima and Rivarossi seem to have been ruined by the new management.: how to forget the wrong buffers of the E 656, or the imprecise colors of all the XMPR models, and so on. I don't know what the future projects of hornby are, but on considering that actually other firms produce high quality models, I and many others like me have no intention to spend money for so imprecise models. Beside as the models for the other european countries have not suffered this quality failure, I have to suppose that much depends on the italian "experts" who should check the product before it arrives in shops. What else to say, but that I sincerely hope hornby to make better controls on its product, especially for the italian market!!
unquote.

[dario]

Complaint to Hornby by a modeller in Rome.
quote:
Dear Hornby, I am an Italian (former) customer of Lima/Rivarossi train models, and like other people has already done I am writing to complain about the new edition of Italian models distributed by Hornby International with the Rivarossi brand. Probably you already know that these models are FULL of incomprehensible mistakes, giving the impression that who built these models had no idea about the real prototype, or any documentation has been consulted (if yes, maybe it was completely wrong...). Among Italian modelists there is a lot of disconcernment, finding any logical reason to what has been done, and most of them decided to stop buying Rivarossi models until they aren't at least acceptable. I won't describe in detail all the problems that these models have, the list would be too long...I cite the colours, most of them are considerably different from reality (in particular the light and dark brown -called castano-isabella in Italian- are too similar, the blue stripes of the xmpr livery are almost violet, and the light grey of E444 and E656 seems to be turning to green), in particular on the E402A, E444 and Z coaches many details seems unfinished, and lots of small details are missing (we can imagine that the cause of this is the hurry to deliver in shops the model within last Christmas...), the E656 had wrong buffers, many service writings on the models are wrong, incoherent with the version or even with orthographical mistakes (!), the colour scheme of some models (UIC-X coaches and E444R in xmpr livery) is not correct, and so on…last Saturday arrived in shops the new edition of the D341 diesel locomotives, and these models unbelievably have the front lights too big, their size is almost triple comparing to reality! We can’t understand the reason of this, as on the old Lima model the lights were much smaller and much more realistic. Resuming the situation we can say that all the improvements promised for these models hasn’t been realized, otherwise the reality is the opposite, that is to say that from the aesthetical point of view these new models are a disaster, a big regression comparing to the old Lima/Rivarossi models. What looks very strange is that the new German, French and Spanish models delivered recently by Hornby International are NOT affected by these problems, only Italian models are full of mistakes. The consequent question is: why? It is logical to think that only the Italian division of Hornby International did a very bad job as the other European models are good, maybe giving wrong directions or without applying a good quality test, we can only make suppositions, but the result is what I described before. During the Hobby Model Expo in Novegro (Milan) some people tried to speak with the responsibles in the Hornby Italia stand, to underline all these problems, and the answer has been that the models respects the standard quality of the production and won’t be modified. If this is really the quality they wanted to reach, I am very worried also for the future models, in particular for the steam locomotive Gr. 740…
So I am writing directly to Hornby UK hoping that my letter (and the ones of other sad Italian customers) will push you to control with attention the work made by Italian division of Hornby International, asking suggestions about the production to people that has a REAL competence in the train model sector, finding new collaborators and so on. We know that is difficult to restart a production in such a small time, but in this particular industrial sector without competence and passion it is impossible to have good results, and these new models are the evidence of what I am saying. I hope that this complaint will be useful. Thank you for your attention.
unquote.

[swisstrains]

Dario,
It certainly seems that Hornby International have failed the Italian modeller if, as you say, re-introduced models are actually worse than the original ones.
As there are no faults with models based on the prototypes of other countries (Germany, Spain, France) I am tempted to agree that the problem probably lies within the Italian part of the company and would hope that Hornby International are doing something to correct the matter. I have not studied the history of the Rivarossi/Lima collapse in any detail but from what I can gather many of the problems were caused by incompetency so perhaps there is still some element of this within the Italian sector of Hornby. I hope this matter can be resolved quickly to the satisfaction of you and the other Italian modellers.
The way Hornby portray the models in side-view on their website does not always give a true idea of their realism and quality. In fact, to me, many of them appear to be computer generated images and not photos of actual models. Although I am sure that they are not all perfect I think you should look at the real models "in the flesh" before condemning them completely.
Still on the subject of British Hornby I have to agree that the couplings used are not very realistic but they are reliable and robust. They have been around for many years and I think it would be very difficult for Hornby to introduce something completely new without upsetting a lot of established modellers. They appear to be acceptable to most and any modellers who prefer something better will fit their own preferences (e.g. Kadee's) irrespective of what Hornby offer as standard. It is ironic really because the original Hornby Dublo company used a coupling very similar in design to the Kadee one more than 50 years ago.
John.