An Overview of the Modern Motive Power Products Range

There can be little doubt that the 7mm/’O’ Gauge scene has changed dramatically over recent years and is still changing.

Firstly in terms of the most popular eras that people wish to model. Pre-Grouping, or even ‘The Big Four’ are now eclipsed in popularity by the BR-Era. Within this time-span however, the steam-diesel changeover period is undoubtedly the most popular and any reasonably commercially-minded manufacturer ignores it at his peril. Increasingly, also, there seems to be a growing nostalgia for the 1970s & 1980s ‘Rail Blue’ era and even that of ‘Sectorisation’. What is still not so popular though is the post-privatisation period that we have the misfortune to live in now. The ever-changing number of ‘dog’s breakfast’ style liveries and the almost complete ending of loco-hauled passenger services is, we think, in no small measure responsible for this - plus, of course, the ongoing decline in freight loco types - the Class 66 takeover now being almost total. For every Late-era Class 31 or Class 47 kit we sell, we turn-over 5-6 kits of the original versions, that can be painted in green or rail blue. The same with our vacuum-only braked Class 08 kit versus the dual-braked Class 08/09 kit.

The other big change of course since we started out in 7mm in the 1970s is the availability of kits that use non-metal parts [i.e. not just etchings or castings] and latterly, the ongoing growth in the RTR market.

When we started our original range of kits [Post-War Prototypes] in 1978 the majority of ‘O’ Gauge modellers were modelling in Coarse Scale [remember it???] and Fine Scale was the Scaleseven of today! It was years before anyone asked us to consider including cab interiors, as most modellers painted the insides of their cab windows gloss black to hide the huge ‘Bonds O’ Euston Road’ 24 volt motors that they fitted! But our original Class 47 kit came onto the market at £39.95 and sold in many hundreds. The prices increased slightly as we added motor bogies & buffer beam brake pipes etc. but the whole concept was that they were very basic collections of parts indeed, that you could make of what you wished. You could build them as basic ‘shapes’ or you could add as much detail as you wanted. Above all though - they were cheap to buy and this was a very important consideration in Britain at that time. We sold several thousand in terms of quantity, of the loco, coach & wagon kits across the range of 96 subjects during the 1979-88 period. When RJH purchased the range in 1988 they effectively killed it off by almost doubling the prices without increasing the detail and the rest is history. Under our ownership only one loco kit [Class 59] ever got above £100, coaches were £50-60 max. and wagons like the SPA were only £25.50.

When we then started the MMP range in 1988 we made a conscious decision to go ‘up-market’. Our contract with RJH prevented us from producing mainline diesels for five years until September 1993 but after that the restrictions of our sale contract were gone. The MMP range of kits was/is not intended to compete with the ex-PWP/RJH kits but to be a fine-scale alternative. We felt there was room for them both on the market. The problem was for the ex-RJH range that all the subsequent owners have carried on with the kits at the higher prices but without changing the ‘spec.’ in any major way.

Steam loco kits such as those from Martin Finney and the Kemilway LNER coach kits were coming onto the market and it seemed that 7mm was now taking an unrelenting step upwards in terms of detail and kit complexity and we very much wanted MMP to be among the front runners in this area. The use of CAD made so much more possible in terms of pushing the limits of the etching process. Unfortunately, the skill levels of many 7mm modellers have not kept up with this trend and now one section of ‘O’ gauge modellers have seemed to become openly hostile to complex etched kits.

If our kits are complex then the philosophy behind them is very simple - it is that with an MMP kit you have the opportunity to develop and increase your skill levels to then produce a museum-quality model that is substantially made of metal and will last for years & years - and to get right inside the subject of your model - and all for a fraction of what a quick-assembly resin or plastic kit will cost you. As another manufacturer remarked of his customers to me a while back, ‘we are offering them the ability to make Stan Beeson quality models at Lima prices and they just don’t believe it!’. Part of the problem is that the amount of modellers who worked in manufacturing/engineering is now a much smaller percentage of what it was in the 1970s/80s. Then, they would bring those manipulative skills to their hobby but the changes in our society and in the work place now mean that this is increasingly not the case.

The Ready To Run scene will only grow as consequence of this but at present quality and accuracy can be patchy. For example, nothing can be done to correct the two-dimensional appearance of the bogies on the RTR Heljan Class 47, short of replacing them [the reason we offer a bogie side/end beam replacement set for this model]. We have also sold a large quantity of the sets we produce for the Bachmann brass Class 08s but it cannot correct the fundamental bonnet shape problem with the loco. And then there is the Skytrex range! So - kit or RTR? I know which we would prefer to spend our hard-earned money on and which, pound for pound, will bring us the greatest value for money per hour spent. Build times of our kits generally mean that you are spending way below £1.00 per hour on your hobby. That is very cheap indeed by today's standards and is an important consideration for many in these 'cash-strapped' times.

So, against this background, every kit manufacturer must assess the future direction his products will take. Do we simplify our kits or even withdraw them and just produce the parts as RTR locos & coaches in batches - or do we say that there is an ever-widening split in the 7mm market [similar to that which has already occurred in 4mm/EM/S4] and we are going to ‘take sides’. The two of us who ‘bankroll’ MMP have decided to do just this. We have decided to go with the small but still numerous enough band of modellers who wish to make highly-detailed kits that are predominantly etched.

We have many interesting loco, passenger, freight stock and lineside kits still to come and they will increasingly include extra materials and features like working leaf springs. What we will NOT be doing is simplifying our kits or 'dumbing them down'. Neither will we be taking into account what kits are produced or are going to be produced by any other manufacturer, in either kit form or RTR, as their kits/products are not constructed in the way that we would wish to build them.

So, if you like to build trains rather than just play trains, [and there is nothing wrong with that - its just that it is surely much more exiting to play with a train that you have actually built!], we will continue to do our very best to make your hobby both exciting and interesting.