Trainspotting TV Show

[Steamport Southport]

It's got a good review on The Telegraph's website.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2016/07/11/trainspotting-live-review-a-sleepy-valentine-to-that-most-eccent/

 

 

Personally I thought it was alright. Seemed a bit like Springwatch for trains. The younger presenters seemed a bit nervous doing the live broadcast though.

 

 

Jason

[Pacific231G]

Anyone remember the last time the BBC conveyed 'railway modellers'? 

 

Its actually quite funny,

 

 

It was a Sketch on radio 4 extra a while a go. 

 

EDIT: Bad link

I thought the last time the BBC did a feature on railway modellers was the very sympathetic Time Shift "The Joy of Train Sets" from 2013. Was this radio sketch more recent?

[Coppercap]

Its not only trains; ships and planes are often treated this way no doubt with the same cringes!

 

Brian.

Oh yes. I expect all of us who cringed at this effort cringe along with the plane and ship buffs when TV makes a hash of their favourite subject.

After all, any film clip showing a 4-funnelled liner has to be the Titanic, and any single engined fighter is always a Spitfire.

 

 

 

Isn't it?

[Baby Deltic]

That bloke on the platform at Doncaster , banging on about how good the 66 is and that it has roller bearings all round!?!?

Other than some early 24s with athermos boxes all mainline diesels were roller bearings

Next time I'm on a 66 either sweating or freezing my balls off I'll remember that I'm on roller bearings and feel great about it..... not!

Don't forget the radial steering bogies.

[tamperman36]

The producers of this program could have spent the licence payers money far better if they had contacted one of the companies that produce comercial railway DVD's to help with the content and production of the show. They could have made the enthusiast look like a knowledgable and everyday type of person instead of the excitable strange bodies at the end of a platform in anorack with notebook in hand. These days with modern technology we use mobile phones, digital cameras and dictaphones, and for the Dick's info most loco classes have a spotting nickname as in "sheds", good job he didn't see and "duffs" or "choppers"

[rockershovel]

I never really noticed the numbers on lamp posts, apart from one - the lamp post outside my parents' church has the number 6201 - also the number of my father's first 00 gauge loco!

Don't know about lamp posts, but there is a throw-away joke in Waugh's "Sword of Honour" trilogy about numbers on telegraph poles (inexperienced older officer during post-Dunkirk chaos, reports that certain local telegraph poles have been numbered "by fifth columnists" to aid invading Germans. Equally inexperienced junior officer sent to verify this, confirms it and reports several more. Royal Signals regular officer discards report, on the basis that ALL telegraph poles are numbered by the GPO)

[rockershovel]

Saw a few minutes of this :S while stranded in a Tyne and Wear Premier Inn attending another tedious course .... seemed to fit the general ambience. Poor stuff, indeed. The Flying Scotsman montage at the end was good, but why is a generic modern diesel named "Evening Star"? Private Eye hack, Phil Space seems to have found a new occupation..

[br2975]

 It would be unrealistic to expect a whole production team to be railway fans but at least have someone vet the finished product before release.

 

Its not only trains; ships and planes are often treated this way no doubt with the same cringes!

 

 

But I know a lot less, if anything, about planes and ships - probably as much as I know about a WMD.

.

However, I do know about railways, and hoped I would be entertained, NOT embarrassed.

.

Perhaps the production company should have watched  (and learned from)  this effort from twenty-five years ago ?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXv-wy1oft8

[Legend]

I agree the best thing about this program was the one following, which I wouldn't normally have known about, looking at the war at sea in WW1 .

 

I think this program will do little to discourage the general populations view on train spotters. The faux enthusiasm from Peter Snow , that guy at Doncaster.......what a pain. And what's this mathematical equation crap ..........maybe to give an air of seriousness to the show......err I don't think so. And they say the BBC isn't dumbed down. Sorry this is it at it's most dumb! Really the program after was such a contrast, the BBC at it's best.

 

Oh dear. The program back in 1989 Railwatch about the workings of the railway was far superior. I think I've still got it on vid somewhere

[Gwiwer]

Completely missed Andy's initial post and therefore this topic until the volume of new posts today caused it to trouble the VNC button several times.  

 

Not sure I'd have had anything worthy to contribute had I been aware early enough but you never know.  And now we, the universe at large, may never know

 

I received a number of emails and messages alerting me to the airing of the show and more asking if I'd watched it.  Not so easy when a lot of UK content is geoblocked and / or paywalled here.  I'll go back to underlining those class 66s while I swig my Tizer and wipe my nose on the sleeve of my anorak

[Phil Parker]

seemed to fit the general ambience. Poor stuff, indeed. The Flying Scotsman montage at the end was good, but why is a generic modern diesel named "Evening Star"? Private Eye hack, Phil Space seems to have found a new occupation..

Evening Star is the last 66 built for the UK, hence the name and livery. As explained in the program...

[Kylestrome]

So, on balance, can we agree that it was the start of a great new comedy series? 

[luckymucklebackit]

They missed a trick by not getting Mark Found to be one of the presenters, I thought his dry sense of humour on the original Trainspotting series would have been a brilliant counterpoint to the gushing "enthusiasm" of that clown that was at Banavie.

 

Jim

[Willy]

I caught the last 10 minutes of this pile and unfortunately that is 10 minutes of my life that I will never get back. Why on earth do the BBC always drag out the likes of Snow and Shawbridge for these programmes and what was the “mathematician” supposed to be doing? I seem to remember that she ruined the recent BBC program “City in the sky”!

[Colin_McLeod]

Agreed. It is the "gushing enthusiasm" which gave the programme its cringe factor. The idea of getting "so EXCITED" just feeds the stereotype view.

 

I dealt with the program by literally turning the sound down to zero and glanced at the footage from time to time whilst catching up on my RMweb reading.

[Guest]

Oh dear. May take up golf. Truly embarrassed to admit to liking trains after watching that sh*te. That's just given the public another decade's worth of ammo against the saddos that they think we already are. Totally bl**dy awful. I do hope no-one from RMWeb was actually involved... I'd keep your head down for a bit.

[LNER4479]

It was so utterly, cringeworthingly awful that it made for compelling viewing!

 

I'm out photographing HSTs today

 

(and another vote for the WWI naval programme that followed - that WAS well put together)

[RJS1977]

Evening Star is the last 66 built for the UK, hence the name and livery. As explained in the program...

 

But was it? Later in the programme we saw five more new 66s arriving at Newport....

[ben racey]

I enjoyed it, was a bit of fun on a Monday night. Will be tuning in for the rest!

 

Cheers for now

 

Richard

[JohnR]

But was it? Later in the programme we saw five more new 66s arriving at Newport....

Yes. Although they didnt mention it - that was recorded footage. The loco that was under wraps in the middle of that convoy was none other than 66 779.

[gismorail]

Well what an absolute p**s take on our hobby totally disgraceful and a waste of money. Just goes to show how out of touch the Numpty BBC is from the real world or is there something more sinister behind this     

[JohnR]

I watched the programme hoping for so much more. As someone who has watched the Springwatch/Autumnwatch series for many years, I was hoping for something along similar lines. We didnt get it - although to be fair the BBC Natural History unit has had many years of perfecting this type of show.

 

It would be obvious that there would be little that you could actually show "live" at 8pm on a Monday night - so why not take a leaf(see what I did there?) out of SW - record footage before hand, and then explain it. Go back "live" and see whats changed, and explain that. Have short films giving a more in depth view of a subject (Why was there not a film shot aboard the NR NMT 'Flying Banana'? I cant be the only enthusiast wondering what goes on inside!). And above all, have presenters that KNOW their subject. Nothing stopping you bringing in "experts".

 

Also - pick better camera locations. It seemed that every 5 minutes Jon Snow would shout "There's another 66!" or something - the camera would then try to pick it up, only for it to be behind trees - or worse, it would have gone by the time the camera got to it. Despite being based at the Didcot Railway Centre, they didnt actually have any cameras that could see the main line AT Didcot. We didnt have any explanations of WHY things were the way they were, or even what was unusual. For instance, we had commentary of Jon Snow talking about how the 66 was a freight engine, over footage of one pulling coaches!! Why not explain that was very unusual, and it was actually a charter, etc.? The result was, that even to the lay person, Snow & co looked like they didnt know what they were talking about.

 

My train mad boy was allowed to stay up to watch it. He's always desperate to watch videos of trains. He loves 66's and HSTs (he calls them 43s!) He likes units too (no accounting for taste!). He got bored, but even he was able to tell Mathmatician Hanna that she got the number wrong.

[Huw Griffiths]

I caught the last 10 minutes of this pile and unfortunately that is 10 minutes of my life that I will never get back. Why on earth do the BBC always drag out the likes of Snow and Shawbridge for these programmes and what was the “mathematician” supposed to be doing? I seem to remember that she ruined the recent BBC program “City in the sky”!

I'd actually been thinking of making the point about it being time none of us will get back. As for the next episode, I don't know when it's on - and I don't care.

 

I usually enjoy watching Peter Snow (and his son Dan, for that matter) and Dick Strawbridge - but what I saw of last night's programme was pure "car crash" telly. As far as I'm concerned, the series belongs on the scrapheap.

 

As for the mathematician, I can only assume she was there to do some "number crunching". I'm in no rush to find out for certain, though.

 

 

Huw.

[RJS1977]

One other thing - despite their repeated 'send us photos', I don't remember them ever saying where to send them to!

[Ian J.]

Having not watched the programme, and having read the replies here, I have just one question really - why did the producers of the programme think that trainspotting is a particularly relevant hobby in today's world? It's heyday was in the 50s and 60s, and it started diminishing across the 70s, 80s and 90s to become something of a lost idea today. Now, if it had been called 'Trains Live' or 'Railways Live', and actually dealt with the live operation of the railway with a lot of behind-the-scenes access, that would have been worth doing.