BRM May 2016 + FREE DVD

[SteveCole]

Hi all,

 

Welcome to the May issue of BRM. This issue is available to download as a Digital Edition NOW and will go on-sale in shops next Thursday (April 28^th). You can also purchase the magazine from our website now!

 

Remember, the cheapest way to enjoy BRM is to subscribe. Click here to see a very, very special subscription offer!

 

Below is a run-down of what you’ll find in this month’s magazine.

 

The BRM Team

 

 

FREE DVD for every reader

Layout Focus: A day at Aylesbury LNW

Layout Photography: How to get the best out of your equipment

Wheel cleaning: top tips for smooth running

 

The May 2016 issue is packed with great layouts, modelling ideas and projects to inspire you. Here's what you'll find in this month’s magazine:

 

5 quality layouts:

Aylesbury (LNW) - EM

Heaton Lodge Junction - O

Mickleover - N

Kinlochewe – OO

East Coast Mainline garden railway - OO

 

NEW! BRM Trackplan Archive!

Our new monthly series, offering a range of Trackplans for you to cut-out-and-keep. This month you’ll find:

Bodmin North – O

Salmon Pastures – OO

Bradfield (Gloucester Square) – OO

 

PRACTICAL BRM

Personalise your diesel shunters – detailing and weathering

Customise your wagons with weathering 

Conversion project: create a MK1 Courier van

 

GOODS INWARDS – PRODUCT NEWS/REVIEWS        

Locomotion Models APT-E reviewed by Andy York

Heljan Cargowaggons scrutinised by Howard Smith

DCCconcepts unveils new scale OO track and points

Bachmann Large Logo 47/4

Farish Network Southeast Met-Camm

Book Reviews

 

PLUS

Interview: Glendale Junction (modelling in the great outdoors)

Event Diary

Tail Lamp

 

[John M Upton]

What scale is the Courier Van conversion article in please?

[ANT]

Hello John

 

The Courier Van conversion is in 4mm scale OO gauge.

 

Thanks

SEEYA
ANT

[Hroth]

Like the caption for the Aylesbury photo on page 28!

 

(Can anyone translate Lorem Ipsum to English btw?)

[chrisf]

My subscription copy arrived this morning, for which I give due thanks.  Less welcome was the reluctance of the glue holding the DVD to the front cover to leave behind the bits of the cover to which it was attached when the DVD was prised away!  Oh well, another chance to deploy modelling skills ...

 

Chris 

[Tony_S]

Like the caption for the Aylesbury photo on page 28!

 

(Can anyone translate Lorem Ipsum to English btw?)

Lorem Ipsum is a body of text used to check page layout in printed documents. Although it is based on Latin, it is modified to be meaningless.

Dolorem Ipsum does mean something in Latin however.

I remember being sent on expensive courses to learn how to use Aldus Pagemaker, and there coming across the Lorem Ipsum text.

[Hroth]

Yes, a fair few people must have encountered the Lorem Ipsum gobbldygook generator for the first time when using Pagemaker!  Rather than wanting to know what Lorem Ipsum "meant" in English, I was wondering what the filler in the caption should actually have been!

[Isambard Kingdom Brunel]

That would explain why my translator wouldn't. It said it was "Galatian", but, could not translate.

Looking forward to seeing Aylesbury on the dvd when i get out to the shed in a bit

[Isambard Kingdom Brunel]

Enjoyed the item about layout photography by Andy York on the dvd. Very interesting.

[autocoach]

Once again I had to poke around and find the DVD YouTube version for viewing on my PC.

 

I logged onto my account at Pocketmags and selected BRM.

I selected "view Now on the May Issue. 

I found a page 7 that was not visible on my Android notepad version of May that was downloaded and saved to the notepad.

Clicking on that it took me to an HTL5 page with very small window to play the DVD video. Attempting to expand, got a message that full screen was not supported.

At that bottom of that video was the YouTube icon which I clicked on and then expanded to view full screen and was able to play with on my full 24 inch monitor quite nicely.

 

The May DVD was actually very good. Some helpful tips including one on getting nylon brush bristles out of your fingertips with tape will come in handy.

 

One thing I am doing to smooth the running of locomotives is installing Keep Alives as TCS calls them into my DCC locomotives. Only a 1 second keep alive will work wonders on points and track not recently cleaned.

 

The Aylesbury layout was excellent and an interesting presentation. 

 

I am into minimal photography but Andy's tutorial was well done. 

 

best

[kermit]

it's almost sublime to ridiculous, the perfect irony, but that  APT is an absolutely beautiful model of an absolutely disgustingly ugly machine....

[Hroth]

The Andy York photo tutorial was rich in practical suggestions.  I would have liked to hear a little more about the focus-adjusting software he was running on his Canon G12 (name, free/cost/how much) as it sounds very useful!

[Andy Y]

I would have liked to hear a little more about the focus-adjusting software he was running on his Canon G12 (name, free/cost/how much) as it sounds very useful!

 

It's called CHDK (Canon Hack Developers' Kit) which is free to download and use and is for Canon compact cameras; the best starting point is to read their Wiki - http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK_for_Dummies -  it's a faff to install, set up and initially understand but it does bring a lot more power to your camera with an awful lot more than just automated focus bracketing. The software lives on the SD card and does not install anything to the camera or overwrite Canon's firmware so once you take the SD card out the camera is back to factory settings. Canon have said that it wouldn't invalidate their warranties and I haven't experienced any damage through using the software but the developers do stress that it's something you undertake at your own risk (hence me not specifically mentioning it in the DVD, just commenting that I use such software.

 

For Canon SLRs you need to look at Magic Lantern software - http://magiclantern.fm/ which works on a similar basis.

 

Next month there's a guide to some of the Photoshop processes.

[Hroth]

Thanks for the info.

 

I've got a G11 so I'll have a look at the website and perhaps have a fiddle about....

 

(Just looked, there is also a version for the A1200, so I may play with it on that as I value my G11!)

[JR1984]

Fantastic introduction to layout photography Andy. Loved the pictures of aylesbury LNWR too. One other benefit to using a compact camera to an SLR that Andy didn't mention is the greater depth of field due to the smaller sensor/shorter focal length lenses. Looking forward to seeing the second part next month.

[SteveCole]

Hi all,

 

Remember, BRM May goes on-sale in shops TOMORROW (April 28th).

 

[David Bigcheeseplant]

I brought a copy today even though I normally get sent a copy as we paid for the Railex advert!

 

The Aylesbury article is good although the beer being brought from Burton on Trent and sent to Aylesbury Brewery Company pubs is a bit of a clanger as beer for ABC pubs was brewed at there own site at Walton Street in Aylesbury up to the last war.

 

This is the first BRM I have brought for a while and am not too sure of the new look the paper seems thin. To my mind the new look is like Model Rail in both look and feel, BRM used to feel good on better quality paper and layout was clear, now it feels cheep and cluttered a backward step in my opinion.

 

David

[westerner]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who is unsure of how the new BRM looks and feels. Somehow there feels less in it. I wonder if it's because of lots of large photos and. not over much text, but I do like the idea of text NOT overprinting colour photos, .

[David Bigcheeseplant]

I have a feeling that the adverts mixed in with the articles is part of the issue, I am not sure where the main body of the magazine starts and finishes.

 

I like the DVD by the way.

[micklner]

Enlarged/shopped photos of a LNWR Loco ( Loco type from memory I didn't buy , seen in Smiths) on a layout  look distorted as do the figures in the same photos.

[61661]

I brought a copy today even though I normally get sent a copy as we paid for the Railex advert!

 

The Aylesbury article is good although the beer being brought from Burton on Trent and sent to Aylesbury Brewery Company pubs is a bit of a clanger as beer for ABC pubs was brewed at there own site at Walton Street in Aylesbury up to the last war.

 

This is the first BRM I have brought for a while and am not too sure of the new look the paper seems thin. To my mind the new look is like Model Rail in both look and feel, BRM used to feel good on better quality paper and layout was clear, now it feels cheep and cluttered a backward step in my opinion.

 

David

Dear David,

Thanks for the message. The information about the beer trains from Burton came from the author. His grasp of Aylesbury's local history is excellent, so I'd be surprised if the reference was incorrect. I note the link to the Railex website on your signature. If you're also a member of Risborough club, maybe you could ask him about it next time you see him?

With regard to the paper, it's exactly the same stock as before. The only difference of any sort is the cover, from which we've removed the glossy finish in favour of a more tactile (and I would argue classier) matt finish. Interestingly, the design is more sophisticated and far less cluttered than it was before. Eliminating the messy, cluttered and disorganised look of the previous design was our No. 1 priority when we discussed and developed the new format. Bearing in mind my previous job, I was also very keen for it to NOT look like Model Rail (and avoid any accusations that I was turning BRM into a clone), and that is definitely the case if you compare the two magazines as they stand today. At the same time, we were fully aware that this is a conservative hobby and so we did not want to introduce anything too radical. However, design is an entirely subjective topic and while the feedback so far has been almost entirely favourable, we know we can't please everyone.

Hope this helps.

 

Ben

[Joseph_Pestell]

Entirely possible that a brewery in Burton would supply some specialist bottled beers to ABC pubs. No shortage of breweries in London but still plenty of wagons full of Burton beers unloaded below St Pancras where the Eurotunnel standard class terminal is now.

[The Stationmaster]

Dear David,

Thanks for the message. The information about the beer trains from Burton came from the author. His grasp of Aylesbury's local history is excellent, so I'd be surprised if the reference was incorrect. I note the link to the Railex website on your signature. If you're also a member of Risborough club, maybe you could ask him about it next time you see him?

With regard to the paper, it's exactly the same stock as before. The only difference of any sort is the cover, from which we've removed the glossy finish in favour of a more tactile (and I would argue classier) matt finish. Interestingly, the design is more sophisticated and far less cluttered than it was before. Eliminating the messy, cluttered and disorganised look of the previous design was our No. 1 priority when we discussed and developed the new format. Bearing in mind my previous job, I was also very keen for it to NOT look like Model Rail (and avoid any accusations that I was turning BRM into a clone), and that is definitely the case if you compare the two magazines as they stand today. At the same time, we were fully aware that this is a conservative hobby and so we did not want to introduce anything too radical. However, design is an entirely subjective topic and while the feedback so far has been almost entirely favourable, we know we can't please everyone.

Hope this helps.

 

Ben

 

I think you've succeeded in not making it look like MR  because in my view it doesn't although a 'sameness' comparison will no doubt be inevitable for all sorts of reasons but mainly because both mags have some similarities in overall style and market targetting (which again is, I think, unavoidable because you're both after roughly the same market).  But overall the new layout is, I find, more readable and a lot 'cleaner'.

 

 

My only gripe (sorry) - although it is much better than it was - is the insertion of advertising pages among copy.  I got used to it years ago in the US mags but then they are 'foreign' so some peculiarities could be understood.  However for someone weaned (almost) on 'Railway Modeller' the mixing in of advertising pages still jars - but no doubt their presence helps to keep down the cover price.

[61661]

Thanks Mike,

You're spot on. Advertising is essential to the existence of magazines in the model railway market, and every other market for that matter. Without it, we might be in a similar situation to the French railway magazines, which have minimal advertising but cover prices equivalent to £8-£10. Some of their bookazine type publications are now closer to £20! How many UK readers would pay that?

I'm prepared to be proved wrong, but RM is possibly the only magazine in the world to group its advertisements either side of the editorial section. This used to allow readers to pull out and keep the middle bit in proper bound volumes, but now that it is perfect bound rather than saddle stitched, it's very difficult to extract those pages so, to me at least, the one advantage of that format is lost. Without doing a page count to confirm, I suspect that Railway Modeller still has more advertising pages than any of the other UK model railway magazines and of course many people will still tell you that they "buy it for the ads", so they serve a useful purpose to readers of all magazines. They allow many businesses, suppliers and societies to promote their products and events to the maximum number of people in their target audience.

 

Just out of interest, if you buy magazines on other subjects, does it bother you when advertisement pages are mixed in with the editorial? It's been a standard publishing practice for decades and some of our advertisers do request (or demand!) to be placed opposite editorial pages in prominent positions. Unlike some markets (think of the high-end women's and men's lifestyle/fashion mags) the demarcation between editorial and advertising is very clear in our market. In mags such as Vogue or GQ it's often difficult to tell what is an advert or even find the editorial pages! That might suit their readers, but I don't like it. However, I see no problem with running a limited number of clearly defined adverts among the editorial.

 

Ben

[The Stationmaster]

The only magazines I tend to read nowadays are occasional forays into those related to shipping (adverts are mixed with text in most titles), and occasional purchases (or gifts from my occasionally travelling offspring ) of mainland European mags or bookazines - which are definitely pricey compared with UK equivalents as are hardcover books on railway subjects.  But, merely as an observation, Irwell do very well at keeping ads out of the copy areas of their two prototype mags.