508035 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 07, 2025 8:12 pm
Hi Mountain Goat
I agree, great looking model but definitely a frightening price for a 3 coach unit. I recently built 2 4 coach class 508s using bodies purchased from ebay aswell as using class 153 & 156 chassis ( shortened to coach length ), 2 × class 153 motor bogies and unpowered bogies ( same class ) and 12 × class 156 unpowered bogies for the unpowered coaches of both units.
The motor and unpowered motor bogies were set up in 1 of the centre coaches per uni with thr motor at more or less the middle of each unit to give a roughly even weight no matter which way a unit is travelling if they are running separately, mostly though they run coupled as an 8 coach formation.
My idea was based on the units having been delivered to merseyrail as 4 coaches instead of 3 and platforms fictionally being long enough although in reality this never happened but its my way of representing the units how they could have been with both refurbished and unrefurbished cab ends.
Granted both my units are not 313s or 314s but they are part of the family of units from which they were born into and surprisingly, both units were built for something around £400 - £430 which ok they don't have lighting or seating fitted but still, I created an 8 coach class 508 for nearly £250 less than 2 × class 313 / 314 which would be almost £700 for anybody wanting to create 6 coach formations of these great units.
Actually makes me wonder why this model isn't a P4 gauge model as one may as well go all out if one is charging such a price for a "Precision" model? And why they didn't make a simpler version of the same thing in 00 at a reduced price?
Years ago there was Hornby Dublo 3-rail and in its day it was ace, but with prices high and not getting any cheaper, many could not even enter the hobby or if they did, it was sometimes a shared venture where one would buy a loco and a few items of stock if one could and run it on a wealthier friends layout. But many would have loved to enter the hobby but the prices were just out of reach.
Now with this in mind, along came Triang and also Jouef who both saw the massive gap in the market and they were so successful in undercutting Hornby Dublo by providing model railways at affordable prices that even those that had Hornby Dublo were selling them on to replace them with Triang as it was preferred to Jouef. (Jouef was cheaper again but went a little too cheap, so it became the case that Triang dominated the market).
Hornby had tried to recapture the market to survive by coming out with a 2 rail version of their 3 rail, but it was too little too late. They had already lost trade, and they could not match Triang prices!
Now fast forward to today. Where is our 4mm scale equivalent of Triang? We have a massive gap in the market for simpler mass marketed budget models, but who is filling the gap?
Budget modelling in 0-16.5...
