April Fools Day 2026

Did you guess it - if so how far had you read before you twigged??? (Keep reading for a thank you gift at the end of this message!)

Yes unfortunately it's really just not possible to control individual locos using high frequency signals without some sort of decoder in them (we know, we've tried!) The only way to have DCC control is by having decoders in each loco - honestly if we could invent something like this... we would!

Did you get all the clues though? Lets go through them (they were all in BOLD)

Firstly our business partner in Sweden - Aprilskämt - well you might want to run that through Google Translate (if you can't already guess!)

Next we had:

Analogue
Pulse
Resonance
Initial
Learning

Frequency
Oscillation
Over
Lines
Well that probably just speaks for itself.

Next was Spaghetti - Have a bonus point if you knew that this was a reference to probably one of the most famous of all pranks here in the UK, and that's when in 1957 the BBC filmed a news report in Switzerland about how spaghetti grew on trees and was harvested.

Then came the unusual electrical phenomenon called Poisson d'Avril. Anyone with some basic French would have worked out this is what they call April Fools Day in France.

Then things got a bit silly with the idea that we would have a left handed version of the product. This is a nod to all those past April Fools jokes about left handed products, everything from Mars Bars to mobile phones have been used in the past.

Finally we got to the tricky one... EEC Council Regulation (EC) 631/95

Double bonus points if you got that this was the regulation in 1995 that the makers of Polo Mints claimed was preventing them from selling "foodstuffs with holes" and they would sell blanks to fill in the hole in a Polo Mint (they actually did for a while!)

So there you have it, I hope you enjoyed our little fun on April Fools Day. We decided to do this because this is a HOBBY and it's FUN. Although we do work very hard here we never take ourselves too seriously!

If you're reading this from a country that doesn't have April Fools Day and you don't get the quirky British Humour I suggest you read all about some of the famous pranks going back to the 1800's on the website hoxes.org/af_database and who knows you might be reading about our little joke in years to come. 

AND FINALLY...

To thank you for being such good sports, we have a little gift for you...

Use discount code APRILFOOL for 20% off EVERYTHING throughout April - remember it's only for people who clicked the links from our special magazine, it's not going to be mentioned anywhere else!

(Valid on UK sales direct on our website only until 30th April 2026 at midnight)