Having been invited to join an operating session for a few hours yesterday, on a friend-of-a-friend's US N gauge layout, I came away suitably impressed. The quality and performance of most of his kit was first rate, easily putting most 4mm D&E offerings to shame, and I wasn't the only one to notice. The inevitable discussion/rant ensued, concerning the generally poor state of affairs over here, and some interesting insights into how people were dealing with the various deficiencies emerged. Errors in models are matters of fact and tend to be documented rather quickly these days, but whether they bother an individual is obviously down to opinion. Personally I find I need to live with a faulty model for a while before I really know if I can put up it, so perhaps now is a good time to sum up living with last year's lumps:
The infamous Bachmann Deltic (first featured here) hasn't got any better with the passage of time. The grossly distorted nose and the high windows look worse everytime I see it - teetering on those awful bogies it reminds me too much of the ancient Lima N gauge model rather than a Deltic. Personally I'd rate this model as the worst Bachmann have produced to date, as not only does it have virtually insurmountable errors in the general body shape (like their Class 37) it adds the tinplate concept of printed on detail and misses out lighting entirely. But whether it's poorer than the 37 or not in the individual's eyes is somewhat acedemic for me - it's so far beneath what I'd consider to be the minimum standard for a model that I just can't live with it.
On the other hand, Bachmann's Class 44 (first featured here) is one that I've found I can live with. I'm not attempting to excuse the faults (such shodiness in this day and age just isn't on) but it doesn't seem to destroy the illusion for me in the same way that the Deltic does. This might be because my layout is mainly viewed along the tracks and thus the squashed-up nose blends into the squashed-up perspective effect, I don't know, but I can get by with a handful of these lacklustre offerings.
Similarly, Bachmann's 25/1 (first featured here) is another I can live with. This has always perplexed me, as the face of the loco is so very wrong that I would have expected to hate it with a vengeance, but I've got about 2 dozen Type 2s now and run them quite happily. This is exactly why I object to reviewers who try to give me their opinions rather than the facts - how an individual reacts to a model is obviously going to vary, so one man's rushed opinion in a review is going to be of little value at best, and no value at all when the basic facts aren't there. If I don't know exactly why I can live with something, how is a reviewer going to?
Finally on the Bachmann front we have the Super Voyager (first featured here) which is, as is often remarked, several orders of magnitude better than the same manufacturer's diesel locos. I've bought a good few Voyagers and Super Voyagers now, despite not needing them for any layout, which surely demonstrates that a better quality product will generally shift more units. They're not perfect (indeed I had a few more errors that I hadn't noticed pointed out to me yesterday) but they're sufficiently beyond the comedy-charicature level that living with them just isn't an issue.
Switching to the competition, first up is the Hornby Class 50 (featured here and here) that was one of the first releases to try and significantly raise the stakes for D&E modellers. After my initial rush of enthusiasm for these I've found I just can't put up with them - I utterly loathe those windows! This is no doubt exacerbated by my end-on-view layout, and many people will certainly feel differently, but it illustrates the point nicely. In most areas this is a fine model, but for one or two personal reasons I just can't get on with it - yet I can live with significantly inferior items such as the 44 and the 25. That's my decision and nobody else's - I'll make my own mind up based on the facts.
Next is the Heljan Hymek (see here) which, in terms of prototype fidelity, is unrivalled. That it's been denigrated in some of the monthly comics for not having some of the out-of-scale play features found on the Class 50 says more about their target market than the product, I suspect. There's no question of whether I can live with this quality offering, but unfortunately it's not a prototype I've got any great need for - sod's law, I suppose.
Last of all is the Hornby Class 92 (see here) which, strictly speaking, wasn't a new model at all. I've included it here, however, as it was the first 'useful' Hornby D&E model to feature the 5-pole version of their pancake motor, and I did a fair bit of fiddling to see if I could live with that from a mechanical point of view. In short, the answer was no. Whilst much, much smoother than their 3-pole version, it's underpowered - even when double-motored and fitted with replacement wheels the Class 92 is a poor comparison with any Bachmann loco from a price/performance perspective. I wish Hornby would pull their collective fingers out and stop p*ss*ng around with these little tweaks - there's a completely untapped market out there for D&E models to the standard of their kettles...
Currently On My Stereo: Porcupine Tree - In Absentia.