Hornby's Steam Punk Train Range | What Went Wrong?

[Music] hello there everybody Sam's trains here welcome back to the railway and welcome to another review upon the launch of hornby's new steampunk range every single product within that range sold out overnight and traditional model Railways were completely forgotten as people in their thousands flocked to build new steampunk layouts today we take a look back at some of the legendary products in this range that revolutionized model Railways forever [Music] clearly then that video intro of mine was a complete lie hornby's steampunk range has been with us for almost three years now and far from selling out overnight the vast majority of the range is still in stock to this day and last month they even slashed most of these prices in half to try and shift the stuff and yet it is still in stock and I haven't seen thousands of Steampunk layouts crop up in fact I can't remember seeing a single one the only steampunk layout I've ever seen was the Lorry Calvert layout which was the original steampunk layout and in fact it was Laurie that designed most of the Hornby steampunk range now I don't want to say nasty things about Laurie's designs and such because I actually think there are pretty good the Locos and the wagons and Rolling Stock they are very very interesting and unique with the steampunk range I don't think it is the design that's the problem but more the concept I think the products are conceptually bad rather than physically bad and this is really a trend that we are seeing quite a lot from Hornby obviously the company are in quite a bit of financial trouble and we are seeing them desperately trying anything and everything to try and turn their fortunes around and this has led to a lot of frankly bizarre products and Rangers which have arrived with great Fanfare and then quietly faded away as nobody was really interested I suppose the most recent example of that would be hornby's TT range the products themselves are absolutely fine I really like the products I think they are great but conceptually is TT something that people want not entirely sure it's hard to say how sales are going at the moment and the range certainly hasn't faded away we're not at that Point yet but will it turn out well I'm not too sure anyway what made Laurie Calvert's steampunk layout awesome was the fact that it was completely different from the rest it was unique and nobody else had anything like it the moment you produce this stuff commercially on a mass production basis that ceases to be the case if these Locos and things are made in their hundreds or even thousands they're just not unique anymore but I of course am a model Railway Enthusiast and when this range was launched a lot of people said this range is not for you it is for the steampunk Community you have no idea about the steampunk community so oh okay back off so where are they where are the steampunk Community have the steampunk Community adopted this range on mass not sure like I say the other month a lot of the prices here were slashed in half and yet it doesn't seem as though the steampunk Community bought all of this stuff now I'm not an expert on on steampunk but to me the whole point of Steampunk is the creative side it is making this stuff it is creating something that is unique by simply buying these products you're skipping the best part why would you want to miss out on creating something like this and then you've just got an object that you own that you didn't create and what are you going to do with it play with it as an adult run it round the track a few times that's going to get boring quite quickly isn't it well to that maybe you would say that the Hornby steampunk range is intended to be just a starting point maybe these things are supposed to just get you started in being creative in building a steampunk layout but that sounds great but to me it doesn't make any sense again the best bit of creating a layout for me at least would be devising the locomotive and Rolling Stock by just buying this stuff off the shelf again you're skipping that best part for me a good starting point would be Laurie's original layout I would see that and then if I felt like I wanted to create something similar that would be my starting point and I would start from scratch I don't see the purpose of the Hornby steampunk range anyway when Hornby launched their steampunk locomotives they started out at 39 pounds 99 and what do you do when a product isn't selling that well well of course you increase the price don't you isn't that how it works well yeah now they're 43 pounds 99 because that makes a lot of sense and sure enough yes the entire range is still in stock but like I say last month or you know a few weeks ago whatever I noticed that Hornby were trying to clear the range and they cut the prices in half and in that little sale I managed to pick up basically these two steampunk locomotives for the price of one these cost 22 pounds each I might be the only person that did because they're now back up to full price and still in stock but today we're going to be taking a look at these we'll see what they're like again they are at least interesting if not great Sellers and I do find the range quite amusing I must say the fact that Hornby thought that people would pay almost 50 pounds at this point 43.99 for something like this it's quite funny isn't it really so let's take a look the Hornby steampunk locals so here we have it the good old Hornby steampunk packaging which is deliciously ironic because if you know anything at all about the steampunk Community their pet hate is when a company comes along and tries to commercialize the steampunk aesthetic by just taking random everyday objects sticking gears all over them and then trying to sell them to the steampunk Community as some sort of Steampunk merchandise and that is exactly what Hornby tried to do with this range it's unbelievable but they did yes with the packaging but also with the various scenery and buildings yeah look at this stuff these are just standard Hornby buildings which have literally had gears and other gubbins stuck all over them it's frankly hilarious that Hornby thought that this would work like I say I don't know anything much about steampunk but when Hornby launched this range I did a little bit of research and I found all this stuff I found original song about sticking gears on stuff and calling it steampunk this is a well-known thing how did Hornby not know that this would not go down well I don't know but yeah the buildings are absolutely hilarious I want to buy some but I also don't want to waste space and money so we'll stick with the Locos because these are slightly less terrible and a little bit more interesting because you can actually run them so what is this thing then well the label won't really help you to understand because this is BL big loss 2002 Fearless Boston Gray's Hatter's engine and if I show you the back of the box which is printed upside down you can see some of the other Horrors in this range the first one is Leander I guess which is the one I looked at a few years ago and then the other two locals we're looking at today and some of the other Rolling Stock is probably best forgotten so let's have I've forgotten what it's called Already Fearless all right well let's open it up and let's have a look now like I say these are interest testing because they're resin yeah they are the standard hornby040 which are cheap as anything by the way but instead of the standard 040 body they've got a resin cast of a hormier 40 body which Laurie took and sort of added bits to and chopped and changed and made a new body so they're not injection molded plastic and then they're sort of painted up so they are resin and they weigh a ton anyway here's a bit on the Boston Gray's Hatter's engine okay designed with speed in Mind Over pulling power that's because it's a cheap Pawn b040 the Sleek curves and classic fittings were the brainchild of Boston gray himself he said the idea came to him during the revelries of a particularly fun party it was the Chic engine to have and if Boston had one his Chums would have worn too of course all subtly augmented and painted to the desires of their owner okay lack of punctuation and long-running sentence has made that particularly awkward to read anyway I'm not going to really show you the um instructions except it says steampunk 040 locomotives HP motor let's open this up have a little look okay nothing unique about this it's just the standard Hornby 040 instructions although I will check this later on yeah I'm pretty sure when I tried to remove the body of my existing steampunk logo I had to sort of destroy the glue that was holding it on or whatever so yeah interesting right so no accessories weighs a ton I will compare the weight of this to a standard Hornby 040 in a bit but here it is oh my gosh yeah it's an impressive thing I have to say and the photo on the front of the Box looks absolutely nothing like it I mean look at the difference yeah the colors are completely different aren't they a lot more silver on the actual thing and the photo of course doesn't show the top of the model which is insanely complex actually but it's all a single molded piece molded in resin like I say now do I like this very much no not really I'm more of a lover of elegant traditional steam Locos but you know if you're a steampunk Enthusiast maybe you would like the look of this although it's quite clear that the bottom half is just a very typical straight laced standard non-stink bunk chassis and then there's a clear divide between that and the body which is obviously absolutely insane completely different color completely different style just doesn't look very unified does it but you know for 22 pounds it's all right I wouldn't be paying more than 40 for something like this so that's just a bit silly and they can keep them in stock for eternity for all I care anyway there's another one look at this thing so I suppose this is supposed to be a diesel go figure steampunk let's make a diesel it's about as well thought out as the rest but let me show you the label so what names this got Rogue I guess say there's a rogue if it's a diesel isn't it lady trim femur love laces diesel Dames engine okay so they're not hiding the fact that it's a diesel then okay well let's open it up let's have a look at this see if the model well I'll tell you what let's have a look at the back story because they're quite amusing right so lady trafenia that's not what it said on the box okay so the box says lady trefema the card says lady trafenia so they've changed the name already I mean come on now really is it that difficult to come up with a name and stick to it across all of the different labeling I don't like to cry incompetent but I can't think of a better word unfortunately right lady trifinia slash trafina lovelaces diesel Dames engine designed by committee as a slow-moving armored vehicle to get troops and armaments to the front line battle with the Martian Invaders the diesel Dames brought stocks and invested in a few of their own repurposing them to run on Rails as had always been suggested they increase their Speed without damaging their pulling power the Rogue clearly is the brute able to smash through barriers and still take a heavy load okay well no idea what that was about makes no sense at all okay well sorry I'm being really nasty about this but it's just um I don't know maybe maybe I should be more gracious about it but just um all of it Daft isn't it poor but look at this again this is such a big beast it's absolutely massive it's oh it's huge oh wow okay so here it is again the photo on the box completely fails to put across what an absolute beer moth this thing is it weighs a ton it's insane looking it's got some big jets on it and around the back wall of these exhausts or something it's quite a cool effect on it um I mean utterly horrible in my opinion it's not something I would want to run on my Railway ordinarily but a few years ago I would never have imagined such a thing would exist never in a million years so here they go at full price I have around 90 pounds worth of locomotive in my hand here yeah it's no surprise this stuff didn't sell but for sort of 44 pounds um it's a little bit better isn't it it doesn't seem too awful we'll have a close look then I will show you very quickly some of the details and then I'll get them running for you so let's get started okay so here they are all lined up it looks like some horrifying evolution of steam locomotives or something on the far end we've got the traditional Hornby 040 on which most of these are based and because it's just got the plastic body on it this weighs in at the 122 grams the rest of the Locos bodies like I say are cast in resin and so they're much heavier this one as I'm going to call it because I can't be doing with the names already I can't even remember what any of them are is 148 grams so considerably heavier this one that I had before a couple of years ago this one's even heavier at 169 grams nice and then the one on the end the Great Big diesel is the heaviest of them all a really massive chunk of resin on this thing 178 grams so over 50 grams heavier than the traditional Hornby Tank Engine so there you go that's the weight very heavy resin models so there it is up close and personal I can't remember the name of this one some nonsense about hats or something anyway and yeah I mean to be fair it is cool looking isn't it you cannot buy anything else quite like this in model Railways and for a few minutes at least I do find these quite interesting to look at however ultimately I become quite bored of these things quite quickly they're not very inspiring and I think that's mainly because the entire range is just based on these basic cheap Hornby 040 chassis which really shows me that hornby's heart was not in this range these are the cheapest chassis that Hornby produce and therefore they represent almost no risk no development needed nothing I think if a different chassis had been used for at least one of them like a tenderloca or something like that it would have been a lot more interesting but also a lot more expensive and a lot more risky and the fact that they are all just based on these 040s shows that Hornby were not willing to take a risk with this range and that they'd rather just take a shot at making a load of money on stink Punk stuff without really investing in it properly which of course is not the smartest idea so here's a closer look at the body yeah it's just a single resin piece no separate parts on this at all and all painted the same color except for the safety valves in this case which have got this gold paint on them for some reason all of the safety valves are sort of connected together weirdly which isn't a great look interestingly at the back of the cab there is a separate piece glued onto the chassis here I'm not exactly sure what that is or why you would want it there again steampunk's supposed to have a logic to it I'm not really getting a logic from this thing I can see the streamlining yeah you've got this sort of Duck's beak at the front and a few pipes and such but again these pipes for the most part they're not really connected to anything so I don't get it yeah it doesn't make sense there's no logic to it let's move on and please very very quickly right here's the big diesel thing and you'll notice there's no Variety in the paintwork it's decorated in exactly the same way just sort of painted black with a bit of silver slapped on and it's been painted so haphazardly that there are even bristles from the paintbrush stuck to the model which is quite funny um yeah I suppose we're supposed to believe that this is driven via these big jet engines but again there's no real logic to it is there the jet engines are right up at the top there so you're going to introduce like a rotation to the thing in order for the Loco to dry forwards you're going to have hot air spewing out of the jet engines and going straight towards the cab which has larger glass windows on the front so it wouldn't work it would kill whoever drove it and I'm not really sure what the rest of the logo is for why has it got the sort of engine area underneath the Jets is that a backup system why do the wheels need to be coupled together if it's jet powered they could just do away with the rods and that would be something less to maintain saying yeah I think the pedantic side of me and also the engineering side of me just rejects this for not making a lot of sense there's a slight variation in the paint job around the back I don't know what these two things are supposed to be but they are painted into a copper color and around the front there's a blue thing is that supposed to be a lamp or something I have no idea but yeah it's a very big thing quite eye-catching and you do kind of look twice at it think what on Earth is that but under closer inspection it doesn't make a lot of sense right let's get these down onto the track See How They Run okay so I'm not going to spend too long wittering on about the performance and the mechanism in these Locos because we've seen it all a million times like I say it is just the basic standard cheap Hornby 040 chassis and I don't believe there's anything different about the steampunk version of the chassis so let's start with the duck-lipped Loco to start with does it work yep it works absolutely fine how's the gearing let's go past at 50. yeah so not too fast that's good can they crawl heat it up gently yeah not badly not badly at all yeah that's absolutely fine um not the best again these are cheap cheap chassis but they do work fine and they do tend to be quite long lasting although of course the bodies do add a little bit more weight in this case let's cut out so I guess the lack of bearings is slightly more concerning here because there's a lot of weight on them but still no big deal right hideous jet powered diesel thing let's have a go with this does this one work yeah it does no it's cut out immediately not been running of course uh probably we'll just let these run to be fair I'm not too bothered about running them in properly um yeah it keeps struggling on the points this is obviously a big heavy one so does this one crawl let's see yeah not too bad I mean it's very jerky but there's no flywheel or anything in these so that's to be expected so let's talk about Rolling Stock I only I think I only have one piece of Rolling Stock and this is it it's the standard Hornby coach which has had random pipes that aren't connected to anything stuck all over it and then the whole thing has been cast in resin a quick glance and it looks cool but under closer scrutiny it just has no substance because there's no logic to it again though nice and heavy Rolling Stock before we couple up the Rolling Stock to this stuff let's have a quick look at the mechanisms not going to go into any kind of detail here but I will at least try to remove the bodies and show you what's inside let's get the body off this horrid thing then and this could be an important thing to do because you know if these things are not selling they might go really really cheap one day and then you can buy these models for the chassis so anyway screw out the back and then hopefully I should be able to price this out they'll say in the instructions that you're supposed to lever it out so let's try that yeah so there you go just the standard Hornby chassis which is made of plastic there's no proper bearings on the axles no DCC socket three pole motor worm drive directly to the axle that's all the mechanism is let's have a look at the other thing um yeah I guess I should undo the screw um not entirely sure if I need to with this but I'm going to and then I should be able to just price the body off in a similar sort of way not being too careful of course okay there you go so yeah the body is actually glued to this Die Cast running plate piece so there's no way of getting that off unless you break the glue so that must be what happened when I was servicing that before and yeah underneath as you can see exactly the same thing very cheap plasticky chassis weighs almost nothing no features on it to speak of right let's send them running around the track so while these run along let's try and answer the title question of this video that is what went wrong with the Hornby steampunk range and clearly the answer is quite a lot of things went wrong the first thing I would say is a fundamental misunderstanding of what steampunk is and should be taking mundane existing objects sticking gears pipes and other bits of tat onto them and then selling them as steampunk products is the opposite of what steampunk enthusiasts are looking for and this is obvious just a few minutes of research could lead anybody to that conclusion why it didn't lead Hornby to that conclusion before they invested in this range is a massive mystery speaking investment another thing that went wrong was lack of proper investment in the range they took the most basic cheapest models they had and just repurposed them they didn't spend any serious money on this range and yet clearly they expected to make a lot of money from it obviously they overestimated demand because we're almost three years in now they're having massive sales where the prices are cut in half and we're coming out the other end of these sales with the products still in stock and now they've been put back up to full price finally I just don't think people want this stuff I think if you're interested in steampunk and you want to create a steampunk layout all you're really looking for is ideas you don't want to be buying this stuff off the shelf you want the joy of making it yourself you want the unique experience of having something that nobody else has got to just buy steampunk local accessories Rolling Stock and just put it all together doesn't sound like a lot of fun you really want that creativity there are some good aspects of the range which I think I should talk about first of all it is quite interesting you know it does catch the eye when I first saw this stuff I did look through it and I thought wow this is unusual also this stuff serves as a good point of inspiration I don't recommend buying any of it but you can certainly look at the product listings and get some inspiration for your own creations and then you could just as easily do what Hornby have done and take some old models that nobody wants no use for them and you can convert them into something different whether that be steampunk or some other sort of sci-fi Space Age there's all sorts of other things that you could do with them including steampunk if that's what you want to do so with that a little bit of a pointless range I don't mind them too much they're quite fun to run and if people enjoy seeing them I'll certainly run them in videos and such but apart from that the whole thing irritates me because at the end of the day this range has taken hornby's money time and Personnel away from their proper models there are models in hornby's Main Range that have been announced for years and they still haven't seen the light of day yet stuff like this pops up wastes everybody's time and it just means that we don't get to see those proper models that you know people actually want to buy so that's one of the major downsides of this as well anyway just for some fun let's do some ratings so level of detail having now bought two more of these Locos making the total number up to three I've really noticed how monotonous they are they're all the same thing they're just an old Hornby body with some stuff stuck to it then cast in resin mass produced and then painted in exactly the same way it's unbelievable they've all got exactly the same paint job and because they're all casted in resin there's no separately fitted Parts really on these they're just blob bodies so two star the performance though is absolutely fine they're not great crawlers or anything but they're nice and smooth quiet reliable you know this is a basic chassis but it does work well so I've given it four star the pulling power pretty good good as well 0.2 Newtons for the diesel 0.18 for the slightly lighter steamer around 15 coaches on straight and level track thanks to the heavy resin body these are better pullers than the regular plastic Locos the mechanism though is a two star no proper bearings on the axles very tricky to maintain and access the pickups Jeep 3-pole motor no flywheel and no DCC socket clearly no lighting or anything like that either so very basic mechanism quality I've given three star because the paintwork is particularly slap Dash they are quite plasticky in their construction or residny I guess and the quality of the chassis is relatively poor as well it's just a plastic thing cheap motor that kind of thing not terribly put together though yeah they they are presented reasonably nicely I suppose so I've given it a middle of the road three star value for money then when these first came out the Locos were 39 pounds 99 and although I managed to pick these up in the sale much more cheaply overall the price has only increased since then with the new RRP being 43 pounds 99 for me they are not worth the money almost 45 pounds for one of these I don't think so and it would seem most people agree with that price I paid 22 pounds yeah it's a bit more worth it because you can pick them up use them as spares that kind of thing or just to poke a bit of fun at in fact they are quite good for that anyway overall 6.03 out of 10 not very impressive that's a grade of e into the logbook we go just below the hellgram class 45 and above the A2 3. unfortunately a little bit of a waste of time but there you have it that is hornby's steampunk range not dreadfully impressed by it obviously these products are not aimed at me and obviously if you think better of them than I do if you like them that's absolutely fine I can only give you my opinion and my opinion of them is that they're a bit of a waste of time if you disagree that's absolutely fine please comment Down Below in fact and let me know I'll pop some affiliate links in the description if I can find one for this stuff that's not to say I recommend it but if you want to the links are there for now though thank you so much for watching and I will see you very very soon alright cheers folks you take care foreign

Channel: Sam'sTrains

Views: 52,108

Keywords: samstrains, model, trains, hornby, steam, tri-ang, 00 gauge, railway, diesel, class, review, unboxing, bachmann, layout, H0

Id: TmuFLtV9mIo

Length: 28min 6sec (1686 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 21 2023