It’s been years since I’ve bought a complete Hornby Train set (loco/coaches/track/power adapter), but have just had a look at some of the new range stuff and it looks like the HST and Azuma set you get 1 power car, 1 coach and a trailing car. You always used to get at least 2 coaches with any set. Seems like a bit of a rip off, especially as these sets are pushing £200. I am sure I heard Hornbys profits are down recently after having a bit of a revival a few years ago. Doesn’t surprise me if their latest range and pricing is anything to go by!
IMHO the model railway hobby priced itself out the market years ago. I remember when you could go into Beatties and pick up a Lima UK loco for less than £20 or a Mark One coach for about £4. Okay I’m an old dinosaur but it’s little wonder there are virtually no physical model railway shops left any more, just too darn expensive. We might moan about the price of train sim DLC plus of course you need the hardware to run it on, but quite cheap in comparison. On the down side, a 2D screen view doesn’t quite replace the solid look and feel of a model, plus the lovely warm electric smell from the motors after a good running session.
Hornby has a kneejerk reaction to every situation they are presented with by putting prices up, its a terrible strategy and continues to be their downfall as volumes drop they just hike the price up to cosmetically look good on paper to the shareholders. The Railroad locomotives were always below £100, then last year with two price increases they topped £120, and my local model shop tells me that sales of Railroad was almost at the point of not worth stocking. This year I see Railroad locomotives rrp back below £100, so maybe someone at Hornby HQ got the hint. Hornby Trainsets have always been a building block, albeit it with a few exceptions, the Flying Scotsman set did, for a while come with x3 carriages, before being confined to just x2 carriages in the set. The IET and most recent HST are superbly overpriced now, a victim of multiple kneejerk price rises. Hornby has become a victim of outsourcing everything, some models arriving 3 years late, with Hornby telling us they are at the mercy of their suppliers and logistics partners, but there are plenty new factories they could use, if they wanted to. Marketing a model as "new for 2022"..... to quietly arrive in 2025 is hardly a good business practice.
