DJ Dangerous

Lovely to see something less common like this, and welcome to the forum!

I’d say their stand will be popular…

Where did @Murph go? He was incredibly popular with forum members, and had a couple of layout threads on the go; Murphy’s Wharf, Kilgarvan Wharf, an N Gauge layout, and then he just vanished!

Talk about ringing my Bell!

Park Royal and 22000 updates all at once? Is it Christmas?

I’m sure I’ll figure it out one day.

Surely, fiat currencies, like crypto, are inherently unstable as they are supported by nothing tangible? Glad to see Spain high enough up the gold reserve list. We’ll be grand. As for you guys up in Ireland…..

Probably showing my age, here, but what was the innuendo that made IC+ Cars obscene and not safe for work? What does IC+ mean to the youth of today that old farts like me don’t get?

On a per-unit basis, yes, it’s already more expensive, so importing from a better economy is fraught with risk. The same way that many people ftom richer economies can live here for months, using the spoils from abroad, it is growing popular nowadays for the Canarios to do the same, in places like Indonesia. Sorry, random trivia. However, looking at it from a percentage perceptive, and rounding figures to over-simplify, if somebody is earning €4k per month and has €1k disposable income, and price increases of 30% to 40% (€3k monthly costs x 1,3, let’s say) knock that down to near zero, something like model railways is likely to take a hit. Not saying that it’s all doom and gloom, just that maybe the pressure I’ve been feeling the past year or two will start hitting others in better-off economies. Which may manifest itself as “buy fewer high end, highly detailed locos with all the bells and whistles, sound etc, for a higher price or go with simpler, cheaper models” or “maybe we’ll have to accept less detail and specification levels as buyers, to keep things affordable”. To throw a spanner in the works, and knock my own opinion, if many buyers are retired or semi-retired, they may be less succeptible to some of the effects of inflation, and/or they may slow down their purchasing for other reasons, such as their own life expectancy.

Try @WRENNEIRE here on the forum.

Doesn’t matter what the wages are, nor where. If the wages don’t increase at a commensurate rate, there’s less expendable income.

Canary Islands…

In fairness, the Hatton’s Genesis coaches were also designed this way, and once done in an Irish livery, they flew out the door. Hint, hint, Accurascale!

That’s kind of what I mean, though. Wages C. €1200 per month and haven’t changed in years, yet electricity bills are one and a half to two times more expensive, food shopping has gone up, petrol has gone up, there’s much more of a squeeze on the finances as it is. Same wages plus higher cost of living means less money for passion projects, even if loco prices don’t go up, but if on top of that, you guys are suffering big increases in your costs, the future is dark.

Stunning, @Georgeconna!

Has anybody on here actually bought any of the Evolution coaches?

These ones? Available in both OO and N Gauge.

Yup, it’s not linked images, it’s proprietary forum images. I have a feeling that the missing images may be from a certain time period, rather than over many years. I wonder if the original format of the image files is a factor. I’m sure I’ve seen your images, @leslie10646‘s and @Arran’s all become “broken”.

Wow! All in all, that doesn’t paint a very bright outlook for the hobby. Maybe the golden years are over and it will become slightly more exclusive as prices climb. Or maybe we’ll have to accept less detail and specification levels as buyers, to keep things affordable.

Lovely, as usual, @ttc0169.

I’ve found this a handful of times with images, not necessarily my own, that I see the following where there had been images before:

I hadn’t realised how high inflation was. I knew that 2023 spiked way up to 9% due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine the year before, and post-Covid demand for consumer goods surging. I thought that it had fallen back since. Does this mean that the base cost for you guys contracting from China has also gone up by 35% or 40%? I saw that £250 steam engine… No thanks! Well, the boot is on the other foot now and the snarcy Webbers are kicking the DC modellers, as the match progresses. I guess the simplest solution for DC modellers is to avoid pantograph locos, and stick to the £170 diesels.

The Class 89 (£230 DC / £330 DCC) was a limited release, so not an accurate comparison to a general release. The first run of the Class 92 (£190 / £280) is a better comparison. The £190 / £280 pricing I’ve quoted is the second revised pricing, to cover the extra tech included. First pricing revision was £180 / £270. Launch pricing was £160 / £250. So £230 / £300 is literally a £40 / £20 increase over the re-revised pricing, and is £60 / £30 more than a non-pantograph Class 60. If the Non-Sound decoder adds to the price, and the pantograph adds to the price, it would appear that each adds £30, using your 2025 Class 60 pricing? You’re getting a serious kicking in terms of the, errrmmm, passion, of the, as you call them, the 10%.

On re-reading the RMW thread, I wonder if selling the locos with blanking plates instead of decoders, and reducing the price by €40, would make DC users happier, following the more established opt-in model for DCC, rather than making it opt-out? I know that A/S do take RMW feedback on board, for example the unpainted sockets on the Class 50, and this decision does seem to be generating a bit of froth.

Wow, I see you guys taking a serious kicking over the pricing and your attitude on RMWeb. Mind you, one of those posters in particular seems to take issue with almost every A/S launch! I thought the RMW base in general would have been happier, given the 10:90 DC:DCC split. Wonder where that other chap got the 40:60 split figure from. Would I be correct in understanding from the RMW thread that a DC user has two options? A. Take the loco and plonk it on your track and go, runs out of the box. B. Buy an A/S blanking plate for €6 to replace the DCC Non-Sound decoder, swap the two inside the loco, and sell the decoder on eBay for €46, while plonking the de-decodered loco on the track. On DC, the pantograph is manually operated either way, irrespective of whether the loco has a decoder or a blanking plate? So in effect, by selling ones decoder after buying the blanking plate, they are reducing their outlay quite a bit?