LocoLadies CF

Thanks for subscribing. I was only saying to my husband today that your videos and monochrome concept for a layout are a breath of fresh air. Model Railways are very popular in Japan. Like you, I come from a craft and artistic background and I am so glad my grandkids got me into railway modelling. Mind you, in the 5 years I have been doing this they have completely grown up but still love to come and see what I have been doing. Who would have thought I would end up on tv four times and have upwards of 20 articles in British Railway Modelling and Railway Modeller. Not me certainly!!! Do you go to exhibitions. I will be at the Warley National Exhibition at the NEC with my Winter Magnorail Village with two of my fellow LocoLadies* on stand D41. Come and see us if you do go. We have cake!! * I was team leader of the LocoLadies who took part in the Great Model Railway Challenge on Channel 5. We withdrew after the first heat due to illness in a team member BUT ended up with tons of publicity and invitations especially to Warley where we joined the winners.

Hi. My name is Carol Flavin. I have been active in the model railway scene for a few years. I have an article on my Winter Magnorail Village in the latest issue of British Railway Modelling and will be taking it to The National Model of Railway Exhibition at the NEC in November. I have previously modelled in OO and also have an oo9 Narrow Gauge called The Harland Light Railway. I started railway modelling for my granchildren but have ended up modelling for myself because I love doing it. They were the ones that encouraged me to set up a YouTube channel which I call Model Railway Scenics with Carol Flavin. Are you new to this or have you been railway modelling for a while?

Well deserved Jamie. So pleased I voted for you as the contest was such a close one!!

Thanks for all the hard work that has gone into this. I enjoyed dipping in and out of it over the two days and definitely appreciated Phil’s layout creation videos. Picked up some good ideas from it just at the right time too. Some amazing layouts to look at as well. Well done all.

The Locoladies were the first (and at the moment only) female team to take part on last years The Great Model Railway Challenge on Uk Channel 5. It is still available on catch up and we were in Heat 3. We were a team of 5 rather than 6 as it was hard for me as team captain to find females who were interested in joining me - mostly I think because they were afraid of publicly making fools of themselves. In the end more of my team were crafters than railway modellers. We definitely didn’t make fools of ourselves and were invited to go to the Warley Exhibition last November to show off our layout. We were in the National and local press as well as two of the most significant model railway magazines (British Railway Modeller and Railway Modeller). Unfortunately due to the ill health of one of our team we withdrew at the end of our heat but were invited back to be in the background at the final. By the way ... we had an absolute ball. We became well known for having a forest of crochet trees which we sold off for Breast Cancer Awareness at Warley and made £350 for the charity. We had to dismantle the layout after Warley as we are not members of a club and had no where to store it, but have had many invitations to undertake demonstrations at exhibitions. We were or are due to go to Warley again this November (??). I thought you might like to see a few pictures. Two from the tv programme and two from Warley.

We gave Kathy a pink glitter tree mounted like a trophy. To be fair, I genuinely think she was pleased with it.

Thank you for this. We had a great time at Warley and I am still stunned at the enthusiasm for buying the crochet trees. We got over £300 for them and in total were able to give £480 to breast cancer charities. This included Corina and my fees for writing articles, and a percentage of her superb railway art cards sales. Sorry to have to dismantle Bucolic Britain but we had a lot of fun with it. What a year!!

This is a real insight into just how hard the finals were - and in all fairness you have made us really glad that we withdrew because we would not have been able to achieve what we intended doing with all the interruptions and the truncated time you had. So very well done. Your other layouts give a good indication as to what you could have achieved. I really liked your Victorian lattice arches. Were they scratch built or did you find a kit for it. If so I never found anything as attractive and I have somewhere I would use something similar on my own layout. So pleased you decided to complete it how it should have been. Hopefully we will be able to see it at an exhibition one day soon.

That’s a shame. I misread Graham’s post and thought it was the whole board. I have no doubt what he takes for the demonstration will attract a lot of interest though.

They will be very welcome. Out of interest, we are being sponsored by PECO with a prize draw of a Peco Setrack Starter pack. We wanted to do a little quiz based on our layout for children. We have some stickers and little sweets (so long as they have parental permission for them!) and Peco are helping out with the costs of doing this and a prize as well. We are grateful to them as the printing costs would have been rather high for us. Warley is so popular that we realised we would have to print around 500 sheets!!! We hope all our younger visitors will enjoy it.

What a brilliant advertisement for the GMRC. Altogether there will be six very different layouts on show at Warley. Three from the winners of course, plus ours and now the great layout from WCR. I also understand Team Granthams semi layout will be there ... so it will be lovely to see the layouts again and have a chance to catch up with all the team members ..... and any one else who wants to come and visit us too.

What sticks in my mind is how much interest has been shown in our crochet trees. They were meant to be something different, a bit of fun, to add some colour and shape and were definitely a bit tongue in cheek. I think Kathy’s antipathy probably helped as it engendered a fair amount of sympathy for us. As someone on this forum said - you don’t go outside and see plastic trees either!! Half expected to be ridiculed, so really pleased people have taken them in the spirit we intended.

We were at the final and were so impressed by all the hard work and beautiful modelling that took place. It was fun to be in the audience - probably less so for those taking part. It will be great to catch up with you and whilst we are planning to have cake at Warley (which you are welcome to join us for) we aren’t sure how long it will last!!! This was Jill’s cake for our heat.

I don’t think they asked for volunteers to join next year’s GMRC or did I miss it? Hope this doesn’t mean there won’t be another series.

A well deserved win. But it was very tense and exciting waiting for the results. So pleased we were asked to go back to Fawley Hill and watch the final presentations.