Model Railways, New Year Thoughts

2005 was the year when British outline N turned the corner. British N endured a couple of fallow years after Bachmann took over Graham Farish and relocated production to China. Then N seemed to take a back seat while Bachmann released model after model in OO, many of them rushed in an attempt to beat competition from Hornby. It took the arrival of a new manufacturer, Dapol, to make them pay attention to N. Since then we've seen Peco enter the fray, making British N look healthier than it's been for years. We've seen Farish bring out the 170s and 158s with all-new mechanisms, and the Mk1 suburbans and Super BGs with much finer detail than anything produced before. Dapol gave us the GWR 45XX small prairie, rendering the Farish kettle range obsolete in a stroke, as well as the Dogfish ballast hopper, and the six wheel milk tank (but not yet in a diesel era livery, sadly) The year ended with not one, but two class 66s, from Dapol and Graham Farish. I'm hoping next year will bring the promised Peaks and Warships from Farish, as well as the Mk1 coaches in blue and grey, and Dapol will bring out

The Continental scene was the complete opposite, a year of consolidation and retrenchment. I'm told that N is in decline in the European market. Have German houses suddenly started getting bigger? We saw the virtual demise of the Arnold range, dragged down by the collapse of the Lima group, although with the company now owned by Hornby, some models will hopefully come back. We also saw Roco all but abandon N, with nothing save a few reliveries. The year ended with Roco going broke, but being sold to new management with production relocated to eastern Europe. I'm guessing that the 'reissues' that appeared towards the end of the year (Orange Eurofima coaches, Italian freight stock) were actually old stock being sold off to free up capital, and weren't actually new production.

This leaves the 'Big Two', Fleischmann and Minitrix. Both released very few completely new models in 2005, concentrating on reliveries.

What will 2006 bring? Here are some of my wishes:

• Minitrix SBB EC stock in the new "Cisalpino" silver/blue colours. Since the common prototypes formation is a six car set made up from two A (first class) and four B (second class), selling them as a set of one A and two Bs would work well.
• Fleischmann BR185 in BLS silver/green livery as a BLS Re485. Since the prototypes tend to hunt in pairs, a powered/unpowered twin set would be nice.
• Hornby to get the Arnold Eurofima coaches in FS Turquoise and Cream back into production. An improved and upgraded BLS "Brown" Re4/4 is probably too much to hope for; the old model is rather long in the tooth both visibly and mechanically.
• The long promised Hobbytrain SBB UIC coaches to finally appear. I need both the Grey/Green EWiv style livery ones, and especially the promised Hupac livery.
• For completely new models, I'd like to see somebody produce the FS Cisalpino Pendolino sets, and at the other end of the spectrum, the modern EMUs used by the BLS and several other private railways.