I wasn't in a rush to get any of the new Hornby R8220 close-couplers, as I was under the impression that they were merely re-badged versions of the excellent Roco close-couplers. However, this isn't so, which just goes to show you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet.
The Hornby item is 'Roco-like' rather than purely being an exercise in cloning or re-badging. As the photo shows, the Hornby item is considerably longer than the Roco original, which means vehicles are held further apart if the Hornby product is used. Not-so-close-coupling, if truth be told.
Contrary to some ill-informed comment, the Hornby couplings will couple to the Roco ones. The action is a bit stiff, needing a heavier shunt to accomplish, and Hornby definitely lose points for this to my mind, but they do couple.
The above handful of Bachmann 16 tonners shows the difference in coupling distance, the Hornby close-couplers in actual fact giving a gap that's wider than tension locks by a mm or so! In a perfect world, the Hornby newcomer would be completely outclassed in every area by the Roco originals, however...
It ain't a perfect world. As is reasonably well-known, many UK-outline products have incorrectly positioned NEM sockets, making theoretically simple coupler swaps much more difficult, so a less-than perfectly-specified coupler can actually be pretty useful. Two wrongs making an alright-ish, if the conditions are favourable.
The Hornby close-coupler is a worthwhile companion for the Bachmann Mark 1s, for example. It won't fix the socket height issue (being too high, the couplers will still rub, unfortunately, although they aren't obstructed enough to prevent manual uncoupling) but it overcomes the problem of the socket being too far back from the corridor connection to allow the use of Rocos. The Hornby equivalent works well enough, within rakes at least, as can be seen in the photo. They corridor connections do seem to hinder coupling slightly, but with a little fiddling everything fits nicely.
Other contenders might include the Bachmann JGA, where the bogie-mounted NEM sockets are a little too far back to work reliably with Rocos. Ironically, I can't think of any Hornby products that would benefit from Hornby's own couplings off the top of my head. The HAA and Coalfish might be candidates (I haven't got any intact examples to check) but if you want close-coupling of the Gresleys (as seen here) then you need the Rocos.
I'm still trialling the Hornby ones, as yet they don't have the proven track record of the Rocos as far as I'm concerned. But I'm initially encouraged and expect to replace all of my Bachmann 'hose' links with these things at some point unless something goes catastrophically wrong.
Finally, I think it's important to stress that these things (whether Roco or Hornby) are not in any way supposed to be shunter's couplings. I'm not replacing any of my 3-links or Kadees with them - no way. They're designed to provide a rigid close-coupling in rakes that are fairly fixed, and are especially effective where the NEM socket is on some sort of cam arrangement as seen on the Hornby Gresleys and the Bachmann Mark 1s.
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