Welcome to Third Angle, where you can find a Spitfire, a train and a racing car all in one room.
I’m your host, Paul Haimes, from industrial software company PTC. In this podcast, we share the moments where digital transforms physical, and meet the brilliant minds behind some of the most innovative products around the world, each powered by PTC technology.
From Spitfires to Concords, when I say the name Airfix many of you will be flooded with nostalgic memories of working on model kits as a child. Airfix is a much-loved brand, well known for bringing hours of entertainment to would-be modellers by putting immensely detailed model planes, cars and ships in their hands. But how do they achieve such lifelike accuracy? And in the age of computer-aided design, how have their models evolved over the years?
We sent our producer Hannah Dean to Hornby HQ to find out. Hornby is the parent company of Airfix and other household names like Scalextric – and is also known in its own right for its model trains. In a bit, we’ll hear from Jamie Buchanan, head of strategic delivery, but Hannah first met with senior designer Chris Parker Joy, who’s involved in the design and development of new kits at Airfix, which is supported by PTC partner PDS vision.
So in this corner of the showroom, we have the display of some of our new simple starter kits, ones that we want to try and encourage people into the hobby with. So we’ve got a range of supercars from older stuff to modern stuff. So we’ve got a Jaguar E-Type, we’ve got an Aston Martin DB5, up to a Bugatti Chiron. Below that we’ve got some of the classic jets like the Spitfire, and the modern jets like the new F-35, all as part of the starter range, and we’ve got some tanks and even the old Mary Rose warship.
It's a privilege to be able to work here. I have memories as a kid of making Airfix kits – it’s one of the things that fuelled my love for design as well as making and creating, which I now enjoy in all sorts of different areas of life. Building is the thing that gives me the most satisfaction, and Airfix was absolutely a part of that in my childhood. Mostly I made warships. I don’t know why. I didn’t live near the sea, or maybe I wanted to be near the sea. But I think for a lot of people, Airfix has nostalgic memories. Some of them may remember doing them with their parents as a kid, but actually could still do the same thing now and hopefully carry on that legacy if they have kids, and keep making these things and passing the skills down through the generations.
Here we have actually Airfix’s new range of products, QUICKBUILD. Airfix is a product that a lot of people probably have some experience with but maybe the last time they bought it was some time ago. We have a fantastic, really dedicated community of people in the hobby who are encouraging, and love the stuff that we do, and we love interacting with them. But it is a product that we need to get back into the hands of kids. Something that’s physical, it’s not digital, and actually engages – something different than just sitting on a screen. So we’ve been working on a product like QUICKBUILD, which is a quick clip-together type kit but you end up with something that is a real representation of an actual product.
We have quite a range of skill levels in the product range that we do. So there are, for the really experienced modeller who’s been doing it for most of their life, we have some super high detail kits, which we’ll come on to later, something we’ve just released over this last year. But you can’t start there. It is craft to learn to be able to build these things well, and paint them up as something that looks realistic, and like it’s a miniature version of the real thing that’s weathered and beaten and been thrown around. There’s an artistry to it. So when people do it incredibly well, you see a photo and you’d be hard-pressed to say that that’s a model when it’s all been, you know, the right lighting and all that stuff. I’ve been doing this job for 10 years, and I can still get tricked by the people who are really, really skilled at what they do, and it’s craft. But that takes a long time to learn so we have simpler kits as well, so QUICKBUILD is a separate range that clips together, you can undo it again and rebuild it as many times as you’d like. But we also have simpler versions of what would be like a classic Airfix kit, so you get your glues out and you paint and you build it up.
Over here we have some of the classic kits for people maybe who started there and then you come along a little bit. This is our range of 1:72 scale. So this scale one is a lovely small scale. It’s ideal if you’ve not got loads of room in your house, which many of us don’t, to be able to display the things that you make. And here’s a whole bunch of stuff. A lot of World War 2 fighter planes like the Hawker Tempest, Messerschmitt 109, more Spitfires, along to some of the Cold War jets like the English Electric Lightning, Douglas Skyhawk. A whole range, mostly aircraft. Our brand name is Airfix, but actually that isn’t to do with the planes, even though we do mostly do planes. But that’s actually, when the founder of the company started developing plastic products, was actually making inflatable chairs. And so Airfix, fixing air into a chair to make that. And he also really wanted the product, the company name, to be at the start of your phone directory so needed to make sure that it began with an A. But it seems to fit very well with the core of our product range now, so that’s good luck really.
When we’re choosing what subjects to go with, everything we do has to be based in history. And there’s such a range of options for us, but the things that are tried and tested that do sell well is still World War 2 and Cold War stuff. We’re standing in front of a display that holds the three V-Bombers, which are the UK’s, the RAF’s, answer for what could carry a nuclear bomb if that was necessary. So these three aircraft kind of have a bit of a mysticism to them, because obviously they have never actually participated in that sort of warfare, thankfully, but they were really cutting edge for the time. We’ve recently redone all of these. So Airfix is a an old company, we’ve been creating products for a long time, and some stuff that we made in the 70s can still be sold today, although the quality isn’t quite the same; moulding techniques have improved and CAD software didn’t exist back then, so we can get the detail better. So we’ve recently redone all three. It’s interesting to see: this is the original one, even for them, you’ve got details like the cannon bay hatches are open so you can see through them, the cowlings around the engines come off, and you have an engine in there. So it’s a nice kit, they’ve done something great with it. But next to it is the new kit that we’ve just been developing, and hopefully, you can see an improvement.
Something that’s quite attractive with these models is just the sheer scale of it. I was lucky enough to be involved with the design of the Vulcan. And for all of these kits, we try to go and see at least one example in real life to get measurements and photographs. And I was fortunate to get to stand on top of the wing and climb around it. And it is just enormous on the outside, but when you get into the cockpit, it’s still incredibly tight and cramped. I just feel for the pilots who had to spend hours in these things.
I love seeing these kits painted. I might spend a year or two working on it, and knowing it in absolute detail, but it’s always grey. On the computer it’s grey, and in the plastic that I build these test shots, it’s still grey. And so, seeing it after a skilled modeller has painted it and weathered it and put their attention to the detail it suddenly comes alive and looks like a whole different thing. And that’s part of the joy of this product, that we let it go half-finished in a way. The thing you get in the box isn’t a finished product, you’ve got to finish it. You’ve got to put it together and paint it and make it yours. And so no two will ever actually finish identical to each other. And it’s always got a little bit of the modeller. How do they picture it? How do they see it? How much weathering do they want to add to it? It’s wonderful to see.
One of the wonderful things about Hornby as a whole company is the range of brands that we have. So obviously I am most passionate about Airfix, it’s the area that I work in, and I love that product, but we also have Scalextric and Hornby Railways and Corgi diecast. But the Scalextric stuff always has a certain appeal of just playfulness to it. And so, in this part of the showroom we have quite a few tracks set up from different ranges. This set that we have in front of us is quite a playful one. It’s like movie-based so we’ve got a DeLorean from Back to the Future and we’ve got Kitt the car from Knight Rider. Shall we see who’s fastest? It’s timeless fun.
Hi, I’m Jamie Buchanan, head of strategic delivery. So this is our visitor’s centre. We opened this probably 15 years ago. This just takes you through the history of each of the brands, and how the various different brands started off. Lots of people come in here and say, “I remember this!” or, “I’ve got one of these still up in my loft in its box!” “I used to have this as a child!” “My grandfather bought this for me!” There’s always a lovely, warm story about these types of products. I think that’s why people are drawn to our products. It’s that warm, fuzzy feeling that you had to play with this as a child, and then later on in life you then start to get back into the hobby, and then it becomes a hobby and a passion, and you start building some really complex layouts. You’ll see later on, we’ve got some lovely big layouts in our museum here.
So what we’re looking at now is what we call a fiddling yard. A fiddling yard is a long, thin layout. This is probably about three metres by about a metre deep. And unlike traditional layouts where locos go round and round in circles, all these can do is just go backwards and forwards. This is more about trying to do the logistics of running a railway layout. So you’ve got to move this loco from this side of the fiddling yard to that side of the fiddling yard, so you have to do it by a complex system of points, moving the right things at the right time, and making sure that you’re not leaving wagons, or locos, or coaches in the wrong place to try and achieve your end goal that you want to achieve. Equally, layouts aren’t all about driving trains; some people are really, really passionate about building their model layout. And you can see here, this is very detailed, there’s lots of light, there’s sound, and the lights are dimmed. It’s meant to be a night-time scene here, with guys working at night, there’s buildings with lights on. It’s not all about driving your loco on the layout, it’s also about the whole passion of modelling, and just losing yourself into your own little scale model world for a few hours.
So unlike the layout that we saw earlier, which is what I referenced as a fiddling yard, which was some track going back and forth, this is more of a traditional layout, which is two ovals, so two locos running around, pulling some rolling stock of wagons. There’s a small siding that goes into a goods yard, and then in the middle there’s just a small scene of a town. So there’s a backdrop of some Swiss mountains. And then there’s a foam mountain at the end with a tunnel going into it, and the locos go through the mountain and back out the other side. And this is that piece where, if you look at it as an adult and then look at it as a child it is very different. When a child is squatting down here and the loco comes out of that tunnel, the excitement is really fantastic.
So when we choose sounds for a locomotive, it’s very important that we get those sounds correct for the particular product that we’re doing. So we send guys out with microphones and recording equipment. They record the loco, the real loco, and that’s prototypical to the model that we want to put it on. Those recordings are then sent to some guys that have got some studio software, and they’re able to clean out all the ambient sound, because generally it’s out in the outside world, and there’s birds chirping and people shouting and stuff. So you clean out all of that and then you’re able to then slice it up to get the whistle and the chuffing sound, and then we have to break the chuffing up so that you can then sync that with the speed and the movement of the pistons on the locomotive so everything’s in line. So it’s quite complex in what we do for the sounds of our locomotives.
This is the ultimate layout. This is probably your eight metres long in some areas, three metres wide, a massive big Hornby train layout, and there are all sorts of scenes. There’s a bustling village, a high-speed train going round that goes through an industrial area off into the countryside. There’s some windmills, lights, there’s sound, and there’s another town at the far end running. There’s some freight running. And then we’ve got some steam locomotives with prototypical coaches, Mark III coaches and Orient coaches being pulled by some steam locomotives.
We’re quite a blended group of young and old, male and female across our departments, and I think that’s what really keeps us vibrant, buoyant, and interested. Chris has been here 10 years, I’ve been here 30+ years, and we’re not the odd people. Many, many people have worked here longer much longer than me. And I would say we don’t have a massive turnover of staff here, because to be truthful, you’re designing toys for adults, so it’s good fun. It’s escapism. You’re giving people something to go and do in their free time that lets them escape from a world that can be tough sometimes.
That was Jamie Buchanan and Chris Parker Joy. Now, hearing about Hornby and Airfix there has definitely evoked a lot of childhood memories of model trains and scale model kits. But it’s the detail to scale and acute engineering details that really bring the final products to life for their customers. And for that, they use Creo. Time to meet our expert Brian Thompson, who heads up PTC’s CAD division. Brian, Airfix’s product design engineers follow the top-down methodology supported by Creo. Can you tell us what that is, please?
Yes, sure. Thanks for having me again, Paul. It’s great to be here. The top-down design methodology is typically used in CAD to simplify the development of products that have really complex interdependencies and relationships between components. They might be driven by different team members, different groups, and so forth. So it’s really helpful with structuring complex work where there are a lot of groups working across the different products on different timelines and so forth. But in the case of Hornby or Airfix, they have a vast number of products in the company’s portfolio with a lot of similarities and differences that they’re trying to develop and manage much more effectively, and the complex interdependencies are more about product portfolio complexity than anything else. And that is really, really powerful for them to be able to use the same technology for complex projects to manage complex interdependencies across their product portfolio. It’s really, really cool. What I mean by that in particular is, you can imagine the geometry that Hornby and the Airfix team is developing, it refers often to more than one part that will be developed into a single skeleton model. So across multiple, say, versions of a product line. That’s referenced down into individual part files that might vary, and as they change something on the top-level model, that will filter down into the child model. So you can really manage significant complexity with this technique, even with the complexity being variations of a particular product family design. So this is the kind of thing that Airfix uses, even when they’re trying to, say, de-emphasise a particular product in their portfolio. They call this “concept resting”, where they temporarily withdraw products from the market. But all of the structure and relationships of their product portfolio are still there in their models, and that is really, really valuable when they re-release a design – they take it out of their resting period because they can sort of re-implement the design very, very carefully and very easily with all those relationships still there, all the history still there, and the design intent available. So it’s a powerful way of handling this multi-dimensional product portfolio that they have with a very, very structured approach.