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I sell Hornby Hobbies Limited products, this section of the website being their Scalextric range of slotcars. Although I have only been accredited as a dealer in 2019 I have been using Hornby products since 1962. In comparison with other long establised shops I would not expect to instantly hold large stocks but would hope to offer a simple ordering service at an attractive price. My interest in Hornby (or Tri-ang, as I still think of them) goes back to the 1960s. Now owned by Hornby Hobbies the Scalextric brand lives, and in this instance is comparable if not wider in range than in the 1960s and 1970s. Certainly some of the classic vehicles are currently missing (the blower Bentley and Bond's Aston Martin for instance) but to their great credit Scalextric does bring back a few classic designs every year, even if you have to pay for a more modern vehicle at the same time in a collector pack and at a modern price. In the UK the main competitor for Scalextrix was the Airfix MRRC range, which certainly had a following but was never the leader in sales. Also available though harder to find and at a full american import price were the cars from Revell, and if you liked 1:24 scale slot cars some truly beautiful models from Cox and Monogram. Incidentally Scalextrix did offer 1:24 sets and accessories for a period, readily distinguished by the width of its three-lane track if not the size of the vehicles. In the early 1980s there was a slight surge in the popularity of small-scale slot racing, perhaps the smaller size of flats and other residential buildings driving this trend. By the 1980s Minic motorways was long gone but the american Aurora and Tyco brands had sets nominally labelled as Ho scale (which they were close to in their 1960s and 1970s products but later grew to 1:64 scale) to which Tomy and Micro Scalextric joined in. I would be remiss if I failed to mention Faller's Ho AMS (auto motor und sport) system which had been available for a while but not widely distributed outside of germany which used the same slot and pick-up system with cars available both in the normal 12v dc format for racing or 12-15v ac if intended for slower model railway type situations (with the additional facility when diodes were used in the vehicles that two cars could be run at different speeds in the same lane, a similar system to that used in some Trix Ho railway sets). Having both commercial and racing vehicles Faller AMS was more akin to Minic whilst keeping to the more universal slot design. In more recent years, alongside the traditional analog controls, slot cars have gone "digital" with the ability to control the speed of several cars independently on the same lane. With the addition of "crossovers" (points if you like) triggered from the hand controller cars can now change lanes (or sideswipe each other) at these track sections and thus overtake. This is not the first time that Scalextric allowed sideswiping, way back in 1970 there was a system where you could switch between driving down the left hand or right hand part of your own lane. Basically the cars pick up was on an arm pivoted at the rear of the vehicle (the arm pointing forwards so that the pickup was near the front wheels) which would swing to one side or the other depending on which way the motor was turning. By means of adding a few more gears and a pair of one-way sprag clutches the rear axle would be powered forwards regardless of the motor rotation, the control was simply a dpdt switch on the hand controller to reverse the track polarity. I order on a roughly fortnightly basis. If the items are in stock at the warehouse it will probably take a week to reach me and another week in the post before it is due to be delivered to you. It must therefore be understood that there could be a four week delay before delivery. In some instance it might be quicker but you should not rely on that. If this delay is not acceptable then please do not place an order.
I am trading under the Micro Entrepreneur regime, I pay the equivalent of TVA/VAT sales tax up-front when I buy goods and I can not exempt this for any purchasers who might be TVA/VAT registered.
Due to my location in the countryside of France's Massif Centrale I am not expecting passing trade but that is not to say that I do not like meeting other model railway or slotcar enthusiasts or possible potential customers. If you would like to meet up then please do not set off in blind hope, contact me to arrange a rendez-vous first. French is not my natural language, and for the limited range of words that I do understand my speed of translation is slow. If you are able to speak english I will be able to answer your queries more quickly. If you want to contact me please use email. If you speak french (or another language) then please either use a translation facility (such as deepl.com) or at least understand that I will be trying to use such a system on your text so please avoid abbreviations, slang or idioms that are likely to provide problems for a silicon based translation. I am happy to post within metropolitan France and also the "western" EC countries (United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Republic of Ireland) plus the Channel Isles. When using the site please select between the "France" or "other country" shipping option (if you should make a mistake on this then you can zero out the shopping basket and start again).This is not to say that I may not consider posting to other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Singapore or Japan who generally have a reliable delivery system and if you happen to live in one of those and would like to buy anything then please contact me and I will see what can be arranged for shipping. A further comment on postage costs: I am initially having to guess at the likely cost of posting single items. I would agree that adding in a duplicate item ought not to double the cost however I am having to make a choice within the options of the Paypal shopping cart and have defaulted to the method where there is no postage discount for multiple items (which worked for my previous web shops where multiple item purchases were not that common). If you are buying lots of compact and lightweight items then I can either offer to refund the excess postage or, if you prefer to pay the correct amount in the first instance, send me an email with your items and I can then make a specific invoice for that bundle. Although, as a dealer, I have full access to the Hornby Hobbies image bank I have been surprised to see that many items in the Scalextric catalogue do not have individual stock images to download although images may well exist within their printed and on-line or downloadable catalogues. If the web pages on this site do not show pictures of an item that you are interested and want to view an image then may I suggest that you search within the catalogues or alternatively see what your preferred internet search engine pulls up. Scalextric has produced a few videos. I hope to put links against the appropriate products in their category pages but since some will be of older items but potentially still of interest if you are hunting up old stock I will also list them on this page, well worth a quick look to show what comes in their sets (though euro products would not have uk style mains plugs). You should also understand that some of the older items in the catalogues will be out of production whilst newer ones may not yet have been produced. My individual product line pages are intended to show the items that are available in the warehouse now or slated for production and open for pre-order. Please understand that I use the predicted production dates as provided by the factory or importer and these may be subject to delay. |