Garden Railway Forum

I thought you might find this of interest. I was contacted on my blog by the creator of this website for comment and suggestions.

www.modeltrainprices.com

It trawls model railway shops around the world for products and prices. I've done a quick search on some G Scale items and am surprised by how much the same model differs in price around the world. He's in the process of adding more UK shops to his database so it might be worth monitoring the site for a couple of weeks.

I was concerned that it would be a flash in the pan resource but Mads assures me that the site automatically trawls and updates once the data have been entered and so he just needs to maintain and manage.

Rik

Interesting, as you say.
The most obvious point, to me, is that he hasa "G Scale" option but no mention of 16mm/SM32 that I can see?

philipy wrote: ↑Wed Dec 14, 2022 10:25 am Interesting, as you say.
The most obvious point, to me, is that he hasa "G Scale" option but no mention of 16mm/SM32 that I can see?

Hi, I'm Mads - the person behind the Model Train Prices website

Good point about the missing 16mm/SM32. I don't know much about those scales, so can you recommend some shops selling 16mm/SM32 + brands are producing models in 16mm/SM32?

I did wonder about that but 16mm stuff is fairly niche so I doubt there will be much variation across shops - though, of course, I could be wrong.

Rik

ge_rik wrote: ↑Wed Dec 14, 2022 8:23 am I was concerned that it would be a flash in the pan resource but Mads assures me that the site automatically trawls and updates once the data have been entered and so he just needs to maintain and update.

Thanks a lot for mentioning my site Rik

Concerning the site being updated, my daytime job is in programming, so I have written some code that checks the 400+ shops ~2 times per week for new/removed models + price changes etc.

Thanks for the clarification, Mads. I have trouble checking my emails twice a day - I can't imagine how anyone could check 400+ websites and 600 000+ prices twice a week without a little bit of assistance ..... .

Will your algorithm be able to show on the page when a price has risen or fallen?

Rik

ge_rik wrote: ↑Wed Dec 14, 2022 11:14 am Will your algorithm be able to show on the page when a price has risen or fallen?

It could, but there are shops that prefer not have price changes shown. i.e. they don't mind having their prices shown, but don't want me to mark if prices have for example gone up/down within the last week.

Mmmmm, unless you save each update you won't be able to see any change then.
No problem really but it would need a separate file and then kept elsewhere. It all depends on what size the original file from Mads will be. Like you say though, if a page was given for whatever scale you run, it would take a long time looking for what you run.