Arnold U25C

[nkalanaga]

I think part of the cost is that Hornby, to my knowledge, has never made American N scale locomotives.  Other manufacturers have a "library" of parts they can reuse, know what an American locomotive needs to have in it, and have done a lot of research that can be reused for other models.  Hornby is having to pay all of those development costs up front for this model.  Even the wheels and gears have to be made new, since we demand smaller flanges than most European modelers, and the prototype probably has different size wheels than their other models.

That doesn't make it any more affordable, but hopefully, if these sell well, later models will come down to the same price range as Kato and Atlas.

[unittrain]

I ordered a conrail from blw hope they do Penncentral next, as far as price and having to tool everything from ground up maybe they will do in n what they did in HO release another uboat the U28C which probably really close in design and would lower cost of production so your theory maybe correct.

[Kisatchie]

Are these locos made in China for Hornby, or are they made in Europe. If made in Europe, I think you can forget about lower prices in the future.


Hmm... European bananas
are EX. PEN. SIVE...

[strummer]

I'll bet China. I believe Hornby is the distributor for Scalextric slot cars, and they are Chinese made. Dunno if that means anything or not...

Mark in Oregon

[peteski]

Are these locos made in China for Hornby, or are they made in Europe. If made in Europe, I think you can forget about lower prices in the future.

Kiz,
nothing is made in (Western) Europe anymore.  The closest you can get is Romania.  Most of the stuff is done in China. I'm talking about all the European model train manufacturers: BRAWA, Fleischmann/Roco, MINTRIX/Marklin, Liliput. Piko, etc.

Kind of reminds me of how Apple does it: Designed in USA, manufactured in China. That is what they actually state on their products.

And the prices are still high (both European trains and Apple). 

[jdcolombo]

Magneplanar speakers: made in the USA, exported to China.

http://www.magnepan.com/index

BTW, none of my basic stereo system is made in China.  Magnepan Speakers (Bear Lake MN); Meridian Audio preamp/processor(Huntingdon, England), Musical Fidelty amp, made in England before they moved production to China (which I plan to replace with Audio Research, made in Plymouth, MN). I do use an Apple Mac Mini as a music server, though. 

John C.

[Iain]

The tubes in my amp were made in the Soviet Union.

[jagged ben]

Nobody has mentioned that these already came and went at MBK.  I think when I first noticed a couple days ago, only L&N was left.  Now all gone.  (Did they have more than one of each?)

[wazzou]

3 each.  I think that was just the initial salvo.  I've heard that they won't be in short supply.

[Leggy]

Nobody has mentioned that these already came and went at MBK.  I think when I first noticed a couple days ago, only L&N was left.  Now all gone.  (Did they have more than one of each?)

They're in at Kleins' if anyone is wondering (just added in the last hour it seems). Not affiliated, just a customer.

Never made mention of how many they had tho!

[reinhardtjh]

Nobody has mentioned that these already came and went at MBK.

As long as you're in the US they are supposed to be in stock at BLW on the 30th.  http://www.blwnscale.com/hornby-u25c.htm

[garethashenden]

Never made mention of how many they had tho!

I saw 3 of each.

[jagged ben]

Never made mention of how many they had tho!

Sorry, I was AWOL over the holiday and then your post got buried by talk about tubes from the USSR.

I'm sort of pining for an NP loco but can't really justify the price given the deviancy from my modeling era and locale.  So I'm hoping there's enough product around on these that I can think about it for a while.

[sirenwerks]

Gotta say, I'm a bit miffed they are in such limited quantity.  I sure hope there's more NP units coming down the pike from this first run.

[C855B]

To me, given the magic "three of each" quantities, it's sounding more and more like MBK was the beneficiary of a pre-shipment, an air express package to the US Hornby office for QC, etc., ahead of the container. Since MBK doesn't take pre-orders and is same-day-quick about putting new product up on the ordering site, it would make perfect sense to "seed" this prominent dealer with a handful of samples. This way, the well-anticipated models can be "out there" to be talked about, etc., but without invoking the ill-will that would be created by shipping this too-small quantity to a BLW, NSC or the other shops that have pre-order queues. Logical - at least to me - to have handled it this way.