ardbealach

Thank you 'Samedan' and '03060' for your kind words on my efforts on the Bewdley backscenes. Backscene painting is certainly one part of the hobby I enjoy. In my opinion all layouts should have a backscene to help focus the viewer on the layout. They certainly can also help enhance the layout. For me too many layouts have backscenes with the green and blue colours which are just too vivid, and these colours just spoil the hoped for overall desired effect. And for me, the Best in Show at Wigan was the N Gauge Alston. [Alisdair]

Bewdley moving from Ewloe to Wigan this afternoon. Is it me putting a jinx on it, for every time I have been involved in exhibiting at Wigan it rains. (Alisdair)

Love your mobile / cell phone mast. Not really a pocket model? (Alisdair)

Excellent railway modelling with a diference. (Alisdair)

As already posted, I would agree that the Archbishops - and especially Baroness Scotland - came over, with great excellence, at the Abbey. The reading by Truss was as if she had just been handed the paperwork, to read out without any rehearsal, and then given without any sincerity. Her general demeanour always appears to me to be that of a Head Girl of a second rate secondary school. (Alisdair)

Contacting an exhibition manager for possible exhibiting? A couple of thoughts. 1 Exhibition managers tend to be a bit savy on what they are looking for for their exhibitions. They are the best judges on what the visitor wants to see. 2 Operating layouts in a exhibition enviroment is totally different to playing trains at home. At an exhibition you are putting on a theatrical performance which goes on all day without a break. As a first timer exhibitor are you really up for that? 3 Is the layout being offered to an acceptable standard for reliability? Layouts can often take a bit of a hammer at exhibitions. Regular derailments and sloppy running doesn't go down well at exhibitions. 4 As Phil says, if you have a layout which you think is suitable for a show, then go along to a show - ideally being run by a club locally to where you live - and find the exhibition manager, and talk to the manager. Take along photos and the layout details, its size and number of operators required. Even better it has been featured in a model magazine. You might strike lucky and get booked. 5 If you get a negative response - read Paragraph 1 above again. (Alisdair)

Ideal lunch to add atmosphere to a layout setting by the seaside. All that is then required for full effect are seagull sounds. (Alisdair)

Waves in tins? How big would the tins need to be? [Alisdair]

Do we believe him? A wave soldering machine? Hmmm ---would it not get wet unless the tide was out? (Alisdair PPrGrandRivetter)

Maybe he just counting the number of coaches in the train - out loud of course! (Alisdair)

To me she comes across to me - a bit like a Deputy Head Teacher of a primary school. (Alisdair)

I recall back in the day the Lord Provost's limousine in the City of Glasgow had the registration G0. It seems the owner of G1 refused to sell their plate to the corporation. (Alisdair)

Is this where the phrase 'back to front' comes from? (Alisdair)

Another enjoyable show and a good selection of layouts. (Alisdair)

Oops! Shoulda checked before hitting the keyboard! (Alisdair)

I have found the easiest way (for most diesel locomotives) is by the position of the fan on the roof. It usually at one end which I take as the Front. So F for Fan and F for front. On DMUs with DCC I switch on the lights for the direction. (Alisdair)

I was guessing the distance, and maybe my one metre was a bit excessive. But I agree that layouts are best viewed when set out at around four feet above floor level. The viewer is then in the landscape and not in a hot air balloon. I might upset a few when I say that N Gauge layouts always seem to me to be set out at a height of 700 - desk height - above floor level which certainly dissuades me from spending time looking at them. Why? [Alisdair]

Has anyone else encountered the moving barriers syndrome at shows? The organisers set out the barriers at say one metre from the layout front [around three feet in old money] we have found that as the exhibition progresses the barriers move and end right up close to the layout. This problem is more critical with a front operated layout and operator access is required. My response to the problem is to wait until there is a derailment, or other minor mishap, when the audience usually loses interest and slips away. We then reset the barriers back to the original three feet [or one metre in new money] position. [Alisdair]

HF was the Wallasey Borough registration suffix and not Liverpool. [Alisdair]#

Oh and I should have added that I get my news from certain presenters from LBC - especially James O'Brien. [Alisdair]

I think much of the problem today is that, as a society, we have become totally polarised politically. I am old enough to have voted back in the Sixties when the main parties fought for the centre ground. At the last general election the fight was over the polarised extremes of Corbyn and ERG / UKIP, and it did not address the needs of those in the political centre ground. There was nothing on the ballot paper at that last election for the average centrist voter like myself to make a mark, unless it was to produce a spoilt ballot paper. The BBC has been caught in the middle of the polarisation, a place in which it is impossible to serve two extreme masters. I have to say that I do not follow any television news, or tv current affairs programmes, but rely on the written word of the broadsheets [and Private Eye] for my news. And it is certainly not the right wing press, such as the Torygraph and Mail. This has allowed me to decide what I want to take in for my news, and what I wish to ignore. I have no wish to be force fed my news direct from my television screen. I am sure that there are many political centrists, both left and right, who would welcome a voice somewhere in the middle of the present political extremes right now. Sadly given what is now unfolding before us in the Tory hustings, I fear the polarisation has a few miles to run yet. The start of the end might happen when the reality of the promised "sunny uplands" hoped for by the 52 percenters has turned out to be somewhat less than what was said on the side of the red electioneering Brexit bus. [Alisdair]

Cabling looks a lot neater, I bet, than what is lurking under many layouts. (Alisdair)

Among the other items in this topic on the “whitewashing” of layouts we have seen racism and German insignia being discussed at some length, with opinions on whether contentious items of modelling might, or might not, be omitted for the purposes of what has been called political correctness. Model railways are not places to make political statements. For me railway modelling is all about modelling reality, and I am never convinced with the end result which has been achieved by those modellers who have created, by skilled modelling, an immaculate perfect little model world described by a previous poster as ‘Miss Marple Country’. Too many models seem to have engine sheds with neat, clean ballast everywhere, no sign of coal and ash on the ground, nor water leaks from dripping water columns. Cleanliness was not something I remember back in the days bunking around sheds, with or without a shed permit. I do accept diesel maintenance depots today are more like operating theatres than the dark gloomy MPDs of years gone by, and many layouts based in recent times reflect this improvement in working conditions. And then there are good yards and their neat ballast, no weeds to be seen anywhere, quite unlike the reality of what those workplaces actually looked like. And as for ex-works locomotives, coaches and goods wagons running everywhere without any weathering…... I know we are all escaping into our safe model worlds, but for me I would rather model the real world and what it actually looks like, warts and all; with leaking downpipes on buildings, broken down fences and certainly not roads full of shiny road vehicles straight out their showroom boxes with not a speck of road dust on them running on road surfaces with no patches and pothole repairs. Nor have I seen in my travels the monotone green fields everywhere that abound Miss Marple Country. So yes I believe there is whitewashing of layouts - but not in a political sense. I would suggest that a layout set in the period sometime around 2016 would raise too many issues, especially at exhibitions, if there was graffiti on the layout on the topic of Brexit. However, ‘Down with the Corn Laws’ or ‘Marples must Go!’ would both be acceptable as the background of the slogan has been lost for most in the mists of time. [Alisdair]

Love the Scouse pronunciation for the Bampton layout on the list of layouts attending the show! [Alisdair]