BosKonay

1 hour ago, Fowler4f said:

Due in warehouse 31 August 2025, should be out for delivery within 7/10 days. D.V.

The exact timing may pull in slightly, but we should have an exact date in the next week or 10 days

As my last post it hadn’t been showing VAT dynamically but is fixed now. 

Unless it’s on your order list the order didn’t go through. 

If it’s a preorder the system will just take card details to hold / secure the order (like booking a hotel) then you can pay on arrival as you prefer. 

Thanks for the heads-up on that guys, the system should now correctly show Euro Vat inc Prices, and append a little 'inc. Irish VAT' specifically for Irish customers so you can be sure. 

Example link https://www.accurascale.com/en-ie/products/br-class-50-br-blue-d423-dcc-sound-fitted

14 hours ago, irishmail said:

Using  google chrome in Ireland (mayo).

Thanks will do some checking. Does it make a difference if you are logged in first?

The site should show prices in Euro with ‘inc. vat’ appended. Where are you browsing from ? If the site can’t tell if you’re in the EU it will just show ex Vat and then add it on when you confirm your location. 

31 minutes ago, josh_ said:

Amazing models taken there

But it seems when i click any the links, the drawings wont come up

Can anybody help me 

Thanks a mil

https://irishrailwaymodeller.com/resources/

Didn’t Trump remove De Minimis for Chinese goods? So tariffs apply from $1 of value now. 

12 hours ago, Mayner said:

They say there is an exception to every rule, NZ very much does its own-thing.

While New Zealand a staunch supporter of Free Trade particularly unrestricted duty free access for our food and timber exports to Europe and US, NZ imposes a 5% import duty on toys including model trains not that we have an indegenous toy manufacturingindustry to protect.

Apparently customs only levy duty on imports above $1000nz in value, I got hit a number of times when I imported high value large scale locos from the States which were bascially unobtainable on the local market.

 

Here is the EU entry for the category

Commodity information for 9503003000

This tariff is for 2 March 2019  Change date 

Check the chapter notes to make sure this code is suitable for your product.

Get guidance on this product area: Electric lamps,  Toys, games and sports equipment

Discuss this chapter in the forums

All sections

• Section XX: Miscellaneous manufactured articles
  • 95
    
    Toys, games and sports requisites; parts and accessories thereof
    • 03
      
      Tricycles, scooters, pedal cars and similar wheeled toys; dolls' carriages; dolls; other toys; reduced-size ('scale') models and similar recreational models, working or not; puzzles of all kinds
      •  
      • Electric trains, including tracks, signals and other accessories therefor; reduced-size (scale) model assembly kits
    • https://www.trade-tariff.service.gov.uk/trade-tariff/commodities/9503003000?currency=EUR&day=2&month=3&year=2019

7 hours ago, James Regan said:

Im pretty sure you don't understand how markets work. If IRM tries to sell at the same price into the US, their models are now 30% more expensive to the consumer. The consumer couldn't care less whether you call, those charges VAT or tariffs or any other tax. Oh and its Europeans who havent figured out they been robbed by massive VAT taxes for years.
 

You also clearly dont understand that the US has a deminimis exemption of $800 for shipments from most countries. My question for the IRM guys is whether they have given any thought as to whether that may be available for their products. It doesnt apply obviously to their shipment in bulk into Europe. It would apply to their shipment of individual models to the US. Its not entirely clear given the Chinese origin of the product whether the shipment from the UK would break the chain and thus the deminimis exemption would be available. 
 

Actually part of the entire war is that the deminimis was removed. So tariffs and duty will be levied on the entire shipment value.

Re New Zealand models are not toys but a dedicated category of their own and should not have duty charged (this is of course separate to tariffs) Accurate labeling is key here but some  carriers at national level do ignore such things. 

2 hours ago, commerlad said:

The only Import duty is the VAT other than for such as Tobacco and Alcohol (Hence Duty Free lounge at Airports for certain amounts eg= The Diminimis value) )and Fuels (Usually only imported by large multinationals as somehow a carry on Jerry Can is not a good idea and it is a banned substance on the postal service. ) which have extra excise duties

And yes even when buying smaller amounts from a retailer (eg Petrol at a forecourt) we have to pay Vat on the Total

(Product Cost + Excise Duty) + VAT = Total Price

 

There may or may not be adjustments of product price along the line but a Tariff cost is not paid by anyone until it gets to the US so the Chinese supplier may charge less but they will not at any point pay a Tariff. 

The important point here is that no one in China cares and no one outside the Us cares as it doesn’t effect them in any way at all. 

Unless your business is entirely based on exporting to the USA (or importing from China to the USA) (like all the US outline manufacturers for example) then tariffs don’t change anything. 

There is no duty on models globally unless NZ are a bit ‘independent 

4 hours ago, chris said:

I'm aware of that but using GBP pricing for an announcement of an Irish model on an Irish forum and by a company called Irish Railway Models is a little tone deaf don't you think?

(joking) Says a guy in New Zealand? you can indeed shop in New Zealand dollars and even browse the website in Māori:) 

On 4/3/2025 at 8:20 AM, chris said:

I withdraw the remark and apologise as it was made in frustration in the spur of the moment.

If a mod wants to edit it out please do so, or leave it, whichever is preferred.

Its pretty frustrating though to have been told to have to move to a non-EU based entity for future orders, for none of the IRM points or milestones to transfer over, for the pricing to dramatically change and now a week later still not have any reply to my email to support...

actually the entity doesn’t matter as it’s ultimately owned by the Dublin company. 

No prices changed at all. 

All points were transferred.

Just for the record and sake of accuracy. 

Perhaps we might, if possible, return to the topic at hand? Or at least the broad hobby?

As it stands right now if you buy say $400 of models from IRM for delivery to the USA than you will be asked to pay import duties and fees of at least $580 before your models will be released to you. So that $400 loco is now effectively $1000

The blog posts do normally list the euro pricing which if you browse the website from Europe or Ireland, you will see the VAT inclusive price in Europe equally if you browse from the USA you will see the price in US dollars and if you browse from Japan, you will see the website in Japanese with pricing in yen

24 minutes ago, DJ Dangerous said:

On top of that, I’d assume that the new factory would need to maximise the utility of those happy Dubliners earning €2 per hour…

You’d need to be swappping out toolings and machinery as soon as you finish one contract, having another contract ready to start on.

It would need to be heavily subsidised for a long time, in order to reach that maximum utility point.

In reality you’d need massive subsidy and / or the market to accept a €1,000 price point for a locomotive. 

7 minutes ago, Tony said:

Would they need a brake van to go with them?

Yes unfitted means there is no braking system (like vacuum brakes or air brakes) fitted. So the train would need a brake van. 

3 hours ago, James Regan said:

I dont want to go too far off track on the political stuff. Not everyone makes trains in China, look at Maerklin and Roco who both make theirs in Europe mostly. Its not China or bust.  Roco make trains in Austria and Slovakia and Marklin in Germany and Hungary. Roco apparently make some in Vietnam. There are many options to funding the Chinese military. 

Marklin went bust in the mid noughties with massive debts and even now struggle to turn a profit on 130m or so of sales (probably more than the entire UK market for the entire hobby) 

The challenge for our industry is that yes you could build a factory in another location at a cost of many many millions and it would not be ready to start manufacture for at least two years and that’s being optimistic and then you are going to need to hire hundreds of staff who will all have to be trained since all of the skills required are based in China   

so you end up with a massive capital investment a massive operating cost that you have to carry for many many years while getting a factory up to speed so that you can approach half as good models at probably four times the price in four years time

The simple fact of the matter is that unless change happens, all manufacturers bringing models into the USA are at risk and the damage was long long done in moving ALL manufacture east, not just our hobby. 

Unless Government is willing to massively subsidize investment and operating costs to bring any such work ‘home’ it is simply financially impossible. Chinese factories have spent nearly 50 years building a just in time infrastructure with factories, subcontractors and very high level expertise all in place with a super competitive work force who are actually happy to work hard and are amazingly good at what they do. 

Would you want to sit in a factory assembling models to ‘factory’ standards for about $2 an hour? 

5 hours ago, James Regan said:

This is all well and good but we need to move production out of China. They are literally using our money to build their army. That needs to stop. Time to move to a location which is not a strategic threat.

Without getting political, the USA actually uses Chinese money to build -their- army. 

2 hours ago, ttc0169 said:

Thanks Fran and Stephen for your contribution,

Just on point 4 above….would it not make more sense to have one dedicated cabinet solely for the Irish models and not have them mixed up with the UK models at the UK exhibitions??

A lovely idea in theory but we’ve had to expand the stand size just to barely be able to fit the growing range of accurascale UK outline models and even then have to tightly limit display to in stock or forthcoming only. 

In simple terms we don’t have the space to dedicate. 

Obviously IRM is our spiritual home so to speak so we continue promoting and pushing where it makes sense (we won’t have accurascale cabinets at Wexford for example) and we have actually a logjam of irm launches to do now since the ICR and park royal delays. 

On 27/4/2025 at 8:55 AM, StevieB said:

As one of those with a superb interest in Irish railways, I have noticed that the Accurascale website is not so easy to navigate when searching for Irish models compared to the old IRM website.

Stephen

https://www.accurascale.com/collections/irish-railway-models

Obviously we run this community (on a no ads basis) so very keen to here any thoughts on how we can make it simpler to navigate, or promote it better, bearing in mind that the IRM models are featured on the home page, the category has top line billing and we feature new Irish models in the sliders on the home also. It would be akin to us pushing French outline, or Belgian outline to a UK base too..

14 hours ago, Georgeconna said:

Being nosey here, are ye making the other stuff to so?

 

We’ve made for a range of other companies at this stage, in all scales too but can’t obviously go into specifics. 

I hear they were made by a very reputable manufacturer;)

40 minutes ago, DJ Dangerous said:

Does that mean that old orders, delivered orders, archived orders, and fulfilled orders will not be migrated, so for our order history, we use the IRM and A/S EU platforms?

Or they will be migrated at some stage and the two older platforms will be defunct?

There is no justification or need to move them. We’d suggest everyone maintains their own records and downloads any historical invoices etc before those sites are permanently shut down. 

By way of a small update:

Current Status

• - anyone with an active IRM login, will now have details on the accurascale systems
  • If you already had an accurascale account with the same email, your IRM orders will be in there
• If you missed an activation email, drop us a line to resend it. You wont be able to log in or reset a password until you have clicked the activation link
• Only open IRM orders were moved. 
  • No old orders, delivered orders, archived orders, or fulfilled orders were moved
• IRM loyalty points have now been merged / added to Accurascale points and your balances should be up to date

Outstanding:

• Gift cards with open balances will get moved over tomorrow all going to plan

Exceptions?

• If you are missing something, not sure of something, or need an activation email, or can't find something, just drop us a line, we migrated over many thousands of accounts and many more thousands of orders, so it's eminently possible that for any number of reasons, something failed to copy over, so just let us know directly and we can cross check and fix it. 

14 minutes ago, Signal Post said:

Likewise. I have Hunslets on order but didn't get the emails today about them, they are showing up on my orders when I login to the Accurascale website (www.accurascale.com/en-ie......

If nothing in your spam check in with support to make sure your emails correct?