Hornby adding cast footplate to A1/A3

[mick b]

See here

https://uk.hornby.com/community/blog-an ... footplates

If Hornby are willing ? they need to sell the metal Footplate as a seperate item for those customers suffering the Book Law and others versions of the A3 with the "Ski Ramp " front end problem.

They more or less have admitted the recent issues are all faulty, with this announcement. Although they are saying extra weight for pulling power.

No doubt one excuse will be, different mounting points on the new body moulding, that is presuming the body/fooplate will be screwed together as on Bachmann Pacifics.

Any point in asking Hornby ?

[Hatfield Shed]

If you don't ask...

But I feel it is a long shot on two grounds:
the different mixed material construction of the complete model suggests the type of incompatability you suspect may be present;
and more significant yet, there's the difficulty in shipping a significantly sized part with none of what it is mounted on in the fully assembled model, that supplies support and bracing while it is in transit.

[manna]

G'Day Gents

I'm wondering how long it will be before we have metal A4's !

manna

[nzpaul]

It might be too early to call them out on it, but it's a shame they haven't made the effort to find the etching artwork to produce the nicer valve gear bracket that the later versions of the original releases like Flying Fox and Gladiateur had.
The whole chassis could do with a rethink as well, the new motor mount/gearbox ideas are much better than the way the old A3s were done.
At £209, which seems to becoming a normalised kind of price for models like this, I'd like to think it's going to have a fairly serious makeover mechanically from it's predecessor.

Paul

[Hatfield Shed]

...I'm wondering how long it will be before we have metal A4's ...

Pretty much bound to happen, though I'd like this to be 'standard', rather than the H-D nostalgia treatment. (I am far more interested in the prospect of an all singing and dancing N2 with a metal body. It's easy to pack Hornby's good looking A3 and A4 with lead for traction, and the motor can be glued into the chassis for long term stability.)

...The whole chassis could do with a rethink as well, the new motor mount/gearbox ideas are much better than the way the old A3s were done...

Quite. There's a lot of potential for future mechanism upgrades drawn from developments in HO. The LNER's big engines with plenty of interior volume and deep tender and Cartazzi frames lend themselves to a large motor in the tender driving both the tender wheels and the loco drivers via a drive shaft; essentially a version of the twin bogie drive now normal in D&E traction. There's an end to my fiddling around with RTR OO mechanisms to make them perform. Also allows space for features such as open frames with a working inside cylinder crank and connecting rod to be represented on the A3.