BosKonay

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?

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

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.

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..

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;)

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.

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

Super. All is well so. There would have been Hunslet emails today and if you got those that’s all good.

The accurascale systems are a lot more automated and 'better' than we had managed on the IRM site Do you have them in your accurascale login?

https://www.accurascale.com/blogs/irish-railway-news/park-royal-update-october-2024-decorated-samples-revealed https://www.accurascale.com/blogs/irish-railway-news/icr-update-october-2024

Youtube will follow the live event by about an hour.

Having heard the projects i am confident its the finest sounding 60 since the real one.

Funny enough we have more new IRM items in tooling right now than accurascale!

A reminder chaps that this forum is not a support channel and if you have an issue or there’s a discrepancy or error with anything to do with the import in the first case, and for the benefit of doubt and all due respect to the team trying our best to look after you;contact Support

Underway. Drop support a note if you don’t have tracking by close of business tomorrow.

It’s simple really. Any open orders will be now open at accurascale.com. Any old orders are there on IRm and we recommend d you make sure you have your own records. As long as you reply to the same thread the team have everything from the ticket on their screen.

The Heljan tanks weren’t copied over so are on the IRM site still. To be fair, no human will be answering support issues now. During office hours you will get a response.

Checking the tickets I can see andrew answered your last email within 30 minutes despite it being 20:11 irish time. Do please continue that conversation if you need any additional clarity.

I can assure you the people answering the tickets are fully familiar with IRM not least being four of us all based in Ireland This forum isn’t a support forum for specific issues so do please persist with the emails.

Check if you have an activation link in your email. If not drop support@irishrailwaymodels.com a line with your email and we can resend it.

Same people you always have Only the badge on the website is changed. Everything else is pretty much the same.

Make sure you choose the Euro / ireland option in the footer if the site doesn’t auto detect you. That will ensure all pricing is in euro and irish vat etc.