The Johnster

I knew more than a few people who coukd not operate their tvs, never mind VCR. Yet for some unfathomable reason this demographic managed fine if the vcr was built in to the tv. They could manage knobs and switches, but not ‘modes’, wjhhere the same button performs different tasks in different modes. I used ‘NICAM Stereo’ VHS as a stereo audio recording medium, much better than cassettes, more robust and a choice between longer playing times and better audio quality from faster running speeds. I was never really happy until the age of mp3 and streaming though; I no longer possess any audio or video material in any physically existing format, it’s all algorithms and electronic mythology... sounds better, though!

I like my clocks to show the right time if possible, and flashing LED displays drive me nuts (back in the 80s I seemed to be the only person in the known universe who bothered to set the clock on his vcr). There are two battery analogue clocks that don’t though, the layout ‘Cwmdimbath Time’ clock, and one laid on it’s back with the 12 pointing due north, set to 13 minutes after GMT, astronomical time for this longitude; the real time, just to show that I know what the real time is and of absolutely no practical use whatsoever, just because I like that sort of stuff.

Yeah, sod off buses, with your lcd destination panels and poor timekeeping, and your uncomfortable seats with no leg room, and your spine-jarring (lack of) suspension, and your screaming children, and your bad-tempered drivers, and your passengers that stand by the door in my way when there’s seats for them to sit in further back, and your no room for prams. Nobody likes you, you’re just a reminder that my life is a failure and I can’t afford to run a car or get a taxi, sod off!!! Actually, don’t, I need to go to town later…

Even then the fact that the lights were on was barely detectable in all but the gloomiest daylight conditions, a situation that also applies to post-mk2d coaches with tinted windows. Lighting on RTR models in general is far too bright and gimmicky, and if the layout is ambient-lit for daylight conditions (and most are lit for summer sunshine) the only lighting that should be immediately apparent to an observer is the loco high-intensity headlights, and these were unknown in the UK until the introduction of the HST in the 70s, and not until the next decade on other stock (‘Heart of Wales’ line excepted). Not saying lighting is a bad thing, it isn’t, but the RTR approach needs a bit more subtlety and toning down, especially on steam-age locos and stock IMHO. Of course, if this were done, there would be howls of protest from ill-informed modellers complaining that they couldn’t see the lighting that they’d paid for, so the manufacturers understandably respond to the demand, but perhaps we could have a ‘dimmed/realistic-level’ setting as well as the standard ‘retina-burner/visible in normal ambient’. Pre-flourescent coach lighting was by 25watt filament incandescent bulbs powered by the 20vdc dynamo/battery supply. As well as the main compartment lights, which could be dimmed by passengers who wanted to sleep, there were reading lights on the divider walls which could be switched off. None of these were very bright, and even at night were not readily obvious in well lit areas like big stations.

The 1960s saw major changes in the way that general mechandise goods traffic was dealt with, brought about by a sort of perfect storm of co-inciding events. One of these was the 1955 Modernisation Plan, which allowed for more point-to-point block trains, another was the sharp fall in traffic which occurred after the 1955 rail strike, which prompted a major shift to road transport which would probably have happened in the next few years anyway, connected with which was the development of the motorway system and the 40' articulated lorry, then Beeching, which resulted in the closure of large numbers of hundreds of smaller main line stations with their goods yards, and entire branch lines, and the closure of the goods yards of many of those that survived for passenger traffic in order for them to be converted to commuter car parks to take advantage of the quantum increase in private car ownership which also occurred during this period. In the decade between 1955 and 1965 station goods yards more or less disappeared while the remaining traffic was concentrated on the large goods depots found in major towns and cites; these were shortly afterwards handed to NCL. Few lasted more than another decade. Freightliner container traffic began in the late 60s, and revolutionised freight handling in general. In railway terms, again, it was concentrated on strategically placed yards where the containers could be transferred from rail to road and vice versa. Household coal was similarly centralised at 'House Coal Concentration' depots, and, like the freight depot traffic, mostly closed altogether in the later 70s. The demand for domestic coal had more or less vanished, replaced by central heating or gas/electric fires. Some traditional yards survived as transhipment points for industries, especially cement, aggregates, and timber, but in general the traditional local goods yard was a thing of the past before the end of steam!

Tbh your problem is going to be that very few British shunting engines looked much like this loco. Typically, those used by BR did not have the large platforms ahead of the bonnet, though some had the structure behind the cab, and all had coupling rod drive, often from jackshafts. The Lima, even as a basically H0 model running on 00 layouts, is physically enormous, close to the loading gauge limits, whereas the BR prototypes were much smaller (except the 350hp family). You could probably fit a 6-coupled mech in there... Industrials could be more like this model in general appearance, but, again, the majority had inside frames and coupling rod drive. Your photos illustrate another issue; the buffers are far too high when you compare the height above the rail with those of the 7-plankers. Buffer heads need to be a larger diameter as well, as engines with wheelbases as short as this were usually required to work around sharp curvature, and large buffers were needed to prevent override or buffer locking. There are/were some outside framed industrial shunting locos in the UK, notably some chunky Brush/Bagnalls used in South Wales steelworks; these are too big for the main line loading gauge.

OCD, or at least an element of it, is to my mind an essential component of good modelling. Scale modelling demands some obsessiveness on the part of it's practitioners, and we all try our best to go the extra mile to tbe best of our varying ability, probably to an extent that most 'normal' (whatever that means) folk would consider unhealthy, and perhaps it is... I would probably be happy with a 120 with generic 64' dmu coach underframes, were I interested in one in the first place, but that is because, while I am I think fairly familiar with them in service in the 70s, I am not by any means an expert in the subject. Once I am aware of details, of course, I expect to see manufacturers include them in RTR models. All of which means that I want my RTR models to be as accurate and detailed as they can be, and it sits uncomfortably with me when they are not, but of course at the same time all models are compromises and are compromised, and the market demands a certain price level. Double standards of course; I want to see revolving drive shafts on dmus, and working internal motion on steam locos, and working windscreen wipers on diesels, but I don't want to see price increases... That puts me in both your 20% (when I'm aware of detail) and your 80% (when I'm not) simultaneously. Moreover, as my own modelling is not (and never will be) of a standard that enables me to even roughly approach that of current RTR in general, I have a bit of a nerve in demanding more and better detail. I try my best to hold to the attitude that a model that is to scale (we'll ignore the 00 discrepancy for now, life's too short) and runs well can be worked up if the level of detail it has out of the box is insufficient, and I have been doing exactly that with varying degrees of success to RTR models for six decades now. I'm happy with this state of affairs. I applaud your committment to realism, Ben. Better scaled, better detailed, and better running models improve our lives, and are a joy to own and use; moreover they promote more and better models in future, and eventually drag up the standards of even ancient bodgerigars like me! There are plenty of us, even on this site, who consider that models should be more robust and less detailed and delicate, but properly designed models are intricately detailed and can be handled without disintegrating (though there is one particular RTR company that seems not to understand this in a way I'd like). Nothing wrong with the more basic standards of previous times, and many people get immense pleasure from models of that sort, it's just not for me, thanks. My main objection to older models, especially those from the pancake motor/spur gear/traction tyre period of the 80s, is the poor running, especially at low speeds, but there was much else amiss with them as well; horrible oversized tension-lock couplers, silly little mushroom-head buffers, moulded brake detail. Hurray for current standards!!!

What is the state of the 2007 tooling for the Bachmann 2251? ISTR (happy to be corrected if I’m wrong) that the chassis was a development of the original Mainline split-block retooled to take an improved can motor with worm/idler gearing, a significant improvement but hardly up to current standards*. The bodyshell tooling was based on the original ML model as well, and this is seriously compromised as the original had no backhead detail or glazing. I think the 2007 retool had glazing but I am less certain about the backhead detail, given that the chassis blocks were developed from ML originals they protruded into the cab. More seriously than that, the ML bodyshell had an enlarged firebox to accommodate the original ML pancake motor housing and the carbon brush springs; not even up to the better of 1980s standards! If this is the case, the 2007 tooling is out of scale around the firebox and poorly detailed, which would confirm that a completely new tooling with no connection whatever to the original ML loco is, indeed, needed. The chassis block and mech from the 94xx could be modified to take the 2.5mm larger diameter driving wheels, to go with a new-from-the-ground-up body tooling, with the detail missing from the old one such as a proper smokebox dart, and lamp irons. *I have a Hornby large prairie (the previous to the current model, last of the line that originated with Airfix, moulded shovel on tank top fireman’s side) running with a Bachmann 43xx chassis from this period; split block with can motor and worm/idler cog drive. It is an excellent, smooth, and quiet runner, and I’m happy with it but the well-known ML split pickup axle problems may yet plague it. Work at Cwmdimbath is pretty undemanding, though, and with gentle driving I should get a few years out of it! I wouldn’t pretend it is able to cut the modern mustard, though!

Exactly, and water came out of it. Then I couldn’t turn it off. I didn’t open it fully, just enough to see what it did, but it came on with some force and stuck. The real problem of course wasn’t that the tap was stuck, it was that the drain was blocked; ‘76 was a full-on drought and there had been no rain for months and very little over the winter, so the drain was solid with fag butts, crisp packets, general carp, and a lot of dust. Apart from flooding the subway, of course leaving a tap running contravened all sorts of emergency regulations because of the drought. There were rolling water cuts but in Colum Road they’d surfaced over the stop tap and couldn’t find it, so I had a continual water supply throughout the drought. That meant a summer of girls wrapped in towels and nothing else borrowing my shower; it was hell, but I coped, somehow….

As in ‘what are you going to do when the 4-minute warning goes off? What are you going to do in the other 3 minutes?

Mwa ha ha ha ha…

The fountain outside City Hall, Cardiff, between the clubs and where the students lived, was a frequent victim. Back in the 70s when it was still fairly new, I had a flat in the middle of student territory, in Colum Road, and was walking home from Canton shed at about 03.00 one balmy summer night in 1976, passing through the subway under Boulevard de Nantes that comes up next to the fountains, which were switched off for the night by a timer mechanism. It was a pleasant warm night, great to have some respite from the relentless heat of the day, and I was enjoying the walk, more a stroll. As I passed through the subway, I noticed a small inspection hatch door, about 5 feet up on the right hand side and open. I’d never noticed it before, and, being the sort of cove that takes in interest in things if I’ve never noticed them before, I stopped to see what amazing piece of secret subway technology was in there that had to be concealed from the great unwashed by a door. It was a brass tap, well weathered and a bit battered. ‘What’, I wondered to myself, ‘would happen if I turned it on?’. I turned it on, and to my mild disappointment, water came out of it; I was expecting some sort of magical brew or something, water seemed most mundane, why would anyone hide that behind a door. ‘I suppose I’d better turn it off then’, I continued my internal discourse; as I say it was a warm night and getting a bit splashed held no terrors for a ruffytuffy Canton goods guard! It was at this point that my control over events slipped a little; the tap was jammed open and could not be turned off. A puddle of water was spreading because this was 1976, it hadn’t rained for months, and the subway drain was blocked with dust and rubbish, so I decided that the best thing to do was to leave it in case I made matters worse; if it was hidden behind a door, clearly it was not the business of the likes of me, unqualified to deal with it as I was. So that’s what I did, went home, had a shower, and went to bed to sleep the off-duty sleep of the just and the guiltless… Later in the day, refreshed and content, I had occasion to go back into town by the reciprocal of the same route. As I passed in front of the City Hall I noticed that the fountains were empty, and a group of council workmen were clearing up the last of the flood that had closed the subway during the morning rush hour. ‘Woz ‘appened yer, then?’, I asked one of them, with my best completely innocent face on. ‘Firkin’ stoodents innit, emptied the firkin’ fountains, dinnthey, ‘stards thinks it’s funny, firkin’ useless the lot of ‘em’, was the reply, prefacing a general rant about kids deze daze and how a spell of National Service would do ‘em all a bit of good, teach ‘em some respect &c &c (and how to blow things up), which all seemed reasonable enough. I still think of this every time I pass the spot, and smile inwardly…

Let’s face it, any model is good so long as it’s close to scale. Supply it and someone will buy it! Big gaps in pre-grouping provision; no Midland, LNW, GN, GE, GC, NE, Caley, or NB coaches, and these were big companies whose stock remained in service for many years post-grouping.

It is. Rovex/Triang Princess (open axlebox trailing axle) with Britannia leading bogie (bogie steps). Looks like it’s been badly cobbled together to make a loco that works, but the front overhang is fearsome. Aligning the driving wheels with the Duchess splashers improves it up as far as the merely ‘dreadful’ condition; cobbling a new, longer, frame for the pony would lift it further, into the ‘fairly dreadful’ category. Two crude toys do no make a good model if they are combined in this way. I love this sort of thing, makes me feel better about my own dismal standard of modelling…

Not quite; the ordinary open thirds had central vestibules which the catering opens did not have.