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British Model Railway Awards 2016


Andy Y

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Drop me a PM with your IP address and the approximate time you completed the survey and I'll see if I can identify it

Thanks, but I gave my Peckett a good work out shunting on a friend's layout the other evening and now consider it a dead heat. :onthequiet:

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Thing is, if you restrict yourself to voting only for things you've purchased, that excludes all the things you haven't purchased, some of which may be more deserving of your votes.  Also, it will tend to skew the result in favour of items which are popular by virtue of sales figures, which are meaningless in the context of what you think is 'best model'.  This is why these 'fun' polls are just that; for amusement and interest and not meant as guides as to what to buy for modellers or what to sell for manufacturers.

If you haven't purchased a model, it's of something you aren't interested in, from a company / region / era that you probably also know relatively little about.

 

Therefore, it is likely that you only "know" how good it is from what others have said, rather than being able to make an informed personal judgement.

 

For example, I wouldn't vote for any LNER loco on the basis that I know little and care less about them. It's up to those who do to make their opinions known either way. However, I do run ex-LNER corridor coaches as part of inter-regional sets and when somebody makes a decent one, I might well vote for it. :jester:

 

John

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Quite the opposite for some for us. I would never vote for an item that I hadn't actually purchased, or for which at the very least read numerous consistent rave reviews. So there are plenty of categories for which I did not vote. There is a small number of layout threads I regularly follow, and a couple of these are listed, so that was fine. Manufacturer of the year is entirely subjective. If they made a cherished model for you, but everything else was apparently a dog, how does one vote? Probably not at all.

 

People enjoy polls, most of them harmless. Facebook is full of them, of impressively meaningless content. This is at least relevant to the Forum content.

I reduce myself to saying it is a fun thing to try to make a cop-out for myself. My trouble is the multitude of criteria I have on which to decide what is good.

 

I'm seen a drop-down box where I can choose between nominating an APT-E and a Wickham trolley (and some other source of traction) ... I can think of my own criteria ("I bought one, I'm happy") or criteria for someone else ("fits any 00 layout") or any of a raft of unrelated features ("ease of conversion to P4", "engineering innovation", "gap in the range of RTR products") ... 

 

I looked up this quote when I decide to write this post:

 

“And what is good, Phaedrus,

And what is not good—

Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”

― Robert M. PirsigZen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

 

but I remembered it wrong and it hasn't helped me a jot.

 

- Richard.

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These awards are good fun, but we shouldn't take them too seriously. Some vote because they consider a model is exceptionally accurate and well made (you might say it is an objective vote), others for models that might not be great but because it means something to them such as a model of a particularly cherished prototype (a subjective vote). I think both approaches are perfectly valid. Personally I hope the Peckett gets an award as it is such a lovely little model and it is a game changer for industrial layouts. And I'd like to see Hornby get manufacturer of the year to recognise that after a torrid period they're turning things around with some cracking models and greatly improved interaction with everybody, they have released a lot of models over the last year and are releasing within a reasonable time of announcing. Overall, whilst I know they've had a lot of problems and upset a lot of people, it's quite a turnaround and I think it deserves recognition in the awards. But that's just me.

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I too, Vote for things I purchased but there is lot in the lists that I did purchase, so there are often a few to choose between. However there can be exceptions, like if I had never brought an APR- E, I would still have voted for it.

 

Well I think it is going to be close between the Peckett and USA tank, but I went for the latter.

 

Seeing how Hornby and turning things around, and turning things out, they got my vote for manufacturer of the year.

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Darstaed A4 (0 gauge) not listed either. Coarse scale 3 rail version £745, 2 rail version for Peco track £795. Available in all LNER and BR liveries and most names available. An example for 00 gauge manufacturers to follow.

Given that most votes cast in this sort of poll go to highly authentic and detailed models, do expensive tinplate nostalgia trips really count?

 

John

 

EDIT:

 

Perhaps I'm a little harsh and, yes, I know that most of what goes on in this hobby is nostalgia driven to some extent, but surely the poll is a celebration of the best our manufacturers can produce today, rather than throwbacks to high quality toys of the 1930s through to the early 1950s.

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The 0 gauge items will not get any votes if they are not included in the polls. The Darstaed A4 is not expensive compared with the Golden Age models but it puts the prices of 00 gauge models into perspective. Now that the two rail version will run on Peco track the models are getting closer to realistic models and if a magazine reviewed it we will know how authentic it is.

 

For further information please see https://www.shamrocktrains.com and then click on Darstaed or Ace.

 

In the absence of a ready to run Q class 0-6-0 in 00 and N gauges I bought an Ace 0 gauge version. I thought paying about £250 was a little extravagant but it now owes me nothing. At a model railway exhibition I can put 48 vintage Hornby goods wagons behind it and leave it running all day with no derailments and the locomotive is still cool at the end of the day. In comparison my 00 gauge Q class converted from a Hornby 4F with Crownline parts stopped working after a few circuits of my Swanage layout at an exhibition.

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The 0 gauge items will not get any votes if they are not included in the polls. The Darstaed A4 is not expensive compared with the Golden Age models but it puts the prices of 00 gauge models into perspective. Now that the two rail version will run on Peco track the models are getting closer to realistic models and if a magazine reviewed it we will know how authentic it is.

 

 

The Darstaed A4 is very good by tinplate standards, but it's still tinplate and bears no comparison whatever with anything made by Golden Age Models.

 

"Closer to realistic models......." sums it up exactly - it's an extravagant toy, designed for playing trains. There's nothing wrong with that but it falls into a completely separate market segment from "Models of the Year 2016" which should reflect the current state-of-the-art, not that of 1938. 

 

John

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What's wrong with "current state-of-the-art" tin plate? The Darstaed A4 looks rather good to me - certainly no worse than the Union Mills Dukedog that also got missed from the list.

 

Are Golden Age Models' locos extravagant toys, expensive ornaments or finely detailed models? All depends on your point of view!

 

Happy modelling,

 

Steven B.

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Darstaed's 0 gauge A4 reminds me of the Hornby-Dublo A4 and the 0 gauge locomotives that ran at Model Land at New Romney

Station.

 

It ran very well at the Hornby Railway Collectors Association meeting at Broadstone last Tuesday so perhaps Darstaed's and Ace Trains products could be considered for a future award.

post-17621-0-62639200-1484823257_thumb.jpg

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The Darstaed A4 is very good by tinplate standards, but it's still tinplate and bears no comparison whatever with anything made by Golden Age Models.

 

"Closer to realistic models......." sums it up exactly - it's an extravagant toy, designed for playing trains. There's nothing wrong with that but it falls into a completely separate market segment from "Models of the Year 2016" which should reflect the current state-of-the-art, not that of 1938. 

 

John

Perhaps the categories are wrong.

 

If we voted for models on the basis of mechanical innovation, moulding detail, robustness, performance, sound system, technological achievement and other characteristics (instead of saying "best model of this sort of prototype") then patterns would emerge irrespective of manufacturer and scale.

 

Also, the model of the year and manufacturer of the year would drop out automatically.

 

- Richard.

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