Channel 4 model railway challenge

[Captain Kernow]

Spoiler alert! Claire Barrett let the cat out of the bag in the Breakfast interview. Charlie Stayt demonstrated that put a train set in front of any bloke and out comes the big kid.

 

Richard

Unfortunately I seem to have missed that and cannot find any reference to 'BBC Breakfast' on the BBC catch-up TV service.

[Tricky Dicky]

Unfortunately I seem to have missed that and cannot find any reference to 'BBC Breakfast' on the BBC catch-up TV service.

Watch it on iPlayer it is the last item on the show approx 9:15 - 9:30

[PhilJ W]

Unfortunately I seem to have missed that and cannot find any reference to 'BBC Breakfast' on the BBC catch-up TV service.

I missed it too, I had assumed it was Saturday as nothing had appeared by 08:40. Regretably they don't put the breakfast show on I-player.

[PhilJ W]

Watch it on iPlayer it is the last item on the show approx 9:15 - 9:30

The breakfast show finishes at 09:15 and is not on I-player.

[dhjgreen]

Here, starts at 2:56:00 and a bit

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09kjggz/breakfast-12012018

['CHARD]

..... "Dick's Diamonds".

 

Is that like a vajazzle?

[dhjgreen]

See my link above if you missed the BBC clip

[Geoff Endacott]

Is the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch a model railway?

 

Geoff Endacott

[sir douglas]

just found the thread, i watched a bit of the first episode that i recorded, wasnt enthused by it but not put off, im just not easily glued to the tv screen, it did bother me a little bit as well thats already been mentioned about dick saying were going to do what the victorians couldnt but its not they couldnt its just that they didnt, i came looking for the thread as i recognised jenny from her profile pic. it was completely new to me as i havent been aware of this thread and havent seen the spoilers and such, the last thing i knew was that the production team were looking for people to talk with at Ally pally show last year

[Pacific231G]

Is the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch a model railway?

 

Geoff Endacott

I think you could argue that it is indeed a model railway, a roughly third scale fully working model of a contemporary (in the 1930s) high speed main line, and intended as such by Captain Howey. He also though wanted it to be a "proper" working railway serving real local transport needs, rather than just offering "rides". 

Edited January 13, 2018 by Pacific231G

[Nearholmer]

I’d agree the the RHDR is a model railway and, as I mentioned earlier, Bassett Lowke and Greenly overtly included such large miniatures under the heading ‘model railway’ in their founding works.

 

They tended to differentiate between ‘indoor’, which meant mostly Gauges 1 and 0, and ‘outdoor’, which was largely Gauge 3 and upwards. Gauge 2 was already a bit of a dead concept, even c1910, but they illustrate indoor ‘scenic’ (by the standards of the day) in that gauge. Of course, even from the beginning, some people were using 1 and 0 outdoors, and there is a cracking article in one c1910 magazine, by an Army Officer based in India, who had built a ground-level G1 (IIRC) line round his garden.

 

That having been said, I do think that anything capable of carrying people, and driven by a person riding on it, tends to be termed ‘miniature’ in modern parlance.

 

Of course, the LNWR tended to think of itself as a Model Railway, but that is slightly different.

[RJS1977]

That having been said, I do think that anything capable of carrying people, and driven by a person riding on it, tends to be termed ‘miniature’ in modern parlance.

 

 

But the societies running them are Model Engineering societies ;-)

[Mike Storey]

It is interesting how parlance has changed.

 

For example, we would probably not now regard the narrow gauge railways of North Wales, England, Ireland and of the IOM, as "model railways", or even miniature railways, but that is exactly how the BBC described the Talyllyn when documenting its re-opening by volunteers in the 1950's.

 

Personally, I would describe a model as something that replicates its intended original, either past or future (for engineering design) but that cannot fulfil the actual requirements/intention of that original (which in our case means the carriage of full size peeps or freight). 

 

Whereas a miniature railway can meet some or all of these requirements, especially the carriage of full scale humans. cf RHDR, Lakeside, Ravenglass and so on.

 

How a narrow gauge but otherwise full size railway fits between that and a "railway" full stop, is open to debate, but I would suggest it is simply a railway, albeit running on a different gauge.

 

Any other offers?

 

I offer an opinion on the difference between train set and model railway, as it is about whether something is produced entirely for play value or for reproducing something as a miniature but completely accurate representation of its full size origin. In that respect, I suspect about 95% of the layouts with which we are familiar, are in effect, train sets, by that definition. In reality, most of us would be horrified by that definition. So does it really matter?

[Steamport Southport]

So it's alright to call a narrow gauge railway a toy but not a model a toy?

 

I'll just leave these here.

 

http://www.festrail.co.uk/cgi-bin/emAlbum_press.cgi?c=show_image;p=General%20Views/TLC%20Pictures/TLC2;i=7;img=Festiniog%20Toy%20Railway.jpg

 

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/lloyd-cameron-and-partners/catalogue-id-srtheau10010/lot-f1473f01-a613-4abd-9194-a422008874c2

 

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/83/74/64/8374649d2b61639d27a02ed9e31ef828.jpg

 

http://farm8.static.flickr.com/7436/16259662337_0a7bd937e4.jpg

 

 

 

 

Jason

[Mike Storey]

So it's alright to call a narrow gauge railway a toy but not a model a toy?

 

I'll just leave these here.

 

http://www.festrail.co.uk/cgi-bin/emAlbum_press.cgi?c=show_image;p=General%20Views/TLC%20Pictures/TLC2;i=7;img=Festiniog%20Toy%20Railway.jpg

 

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/lloyd-cameron-and-partners/catalogue-id-srtheau10010/lot-f1473f01-a613-4abd-9194-a422008874c2

 

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/83/74/64/8374649d2b61639d27a02ed9e31ef828.jpg

 

http://farm8.static.flickr.com/7436/16259662337_0a7bd937e4.jpg

 

 

 

 

Jason

 

I dunno. Is it?

[RJS1977]

I used to get offended when people referred to my model railway as a "train set", but now I believe that all model railways are train sets and vice versa. (Just that they're not all for children!)

 

A child can accept an upturned shoebox over a couple of sidings as "Paddington station", while some adults can find fault with the most painstakingly created model.

 

Likewise most children of the 50s could accept the Triang Princess as a representation of the real thing, whilst adults can pick apart the modern super-detail Hornby equivalent.

 

The Bible tells us that "Unless you become like little children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven", and I believe similar can be said about the hobby. By which I don't mean that we shouldn't strive for greater realism in our layouts, just that we shouldn't look on another's efforts and say "That isn't a model railway." (And we shouldn't be demanding ever more detailed models from the manufacturers if it prices others out of the hobby).

[Pacific231G]

I’d agree the the RHDR is a model railway and, as I mentioned earlier, Bassett Lowke and Greenly overtly included such large miniatures under the heading ‘model railway’ in their founding works.

 

They tended to differentiate between ‘indoor’, which meant mostly Gauges 1 and 0, and ‘outdoor’, which was largely Gauge 3 and upwards. Gauge 2 was already a bit of a dead concept, even c1910, but they illustrate indoor ‘scenic’ (by the standards of the day) in that gauge. Of course, even from the beginning, some people were using 1 and 0 outdoors, and there is a cracking article in one c1910 magazine, by an Army Officer based in India, who had built a ground-level G1 (IIRC) line round his garden.

 

That having been said, I do think that anything capable of carrying people, and driven by a person riding on it, tends to be termed ‘miniature’ in modern parlance.

 

Of course, the LNWR tended to think of itself as a Model Railway, but that is slightly different.

Quite a lot

 

When as a youngster I used to borrow the 1953 revised edition of  Henry Greenly's "Model Railways" from the local library I was, along with his knotted string interlocking system,  always intrigued by this diagram.

 

(I'm afraid my scanner doesn't do well with diagrams in bound volumes)

 

I was of course familiar with narrow gauge railways and also with miniature railways but was intrigued by the the idea of 60cm/2ft gauge being used not for a conventional narrow gauge railway but for a main line in miniature rather like the RHDR but using a larger scale with  "models" about 2/3 the size  of main line stock including corridor coaches  with five separate compartments, a toilet and even steam heating.

 

I eventually dismissed it as somebody's pipe dream until fairly recently when I found about half a dozen articles from 1947 to 1949 in the French Loco-Revue magazine describing the project it was intended for.

It also had a better quality version of the coach diagram though only the side elevation,

The plan by a M. René Claude- apparently well known in model or miniature railway circles- seems to have been to attach some kind of railway oriented technical school to the railway; perhaps rather like the "Pioneer railways of the Soviet bloc. The railway was to be a double track main line loop  roughly two and a half kilometres long around a large estate with loops into stations and a future extension to the nearest main line station about ten kilometres away. There was some idea that it would be used practically to transport timber- it was in a forested area- to the big railway.

 

 

The whole thing does look like the miniature railway of a particularly ambitious model engineering society but also not disimilar from some of the layout plans (usually for 0 gauge) in Loco-Revue.

.

A 600mm gauge version of a main line Pacific built for a pre-war international exhibition in Belgium, was bought and a train of "express" coaches was designed. Other rolling stock, at least at the beginning, would have been more conventionally narrow gauge, at a time when quite a  lot of 600mm gauge stock was available second hand from recently closed public railways. The operation, with colour light signals and block working would though, like the RHDR, have followed main line practice based on that of SNCF. 

The last article about it was in May 1949 and that seems to have been the end of the story. The railway probably was something of a pipe-dream and certainly very ambitious but there were several photos of track laying in progress and Loco Revue's owner and editor,  Jean Fournereau,  was clearly quite enthusiastic about it.

 

The following year Loco-Revue got equally excited about another amateur enthusiast's plan to build a new 60 cm gauge roadside tramway across the Cap Feret peninsula. That railway though did get built, is still in operation today and it does meet a real transport need.

 

Update; I've located the aproximate site of this project* which was about twelve kilometres SSW of Orleans but looking at local maps and aerial mapping photos from I.G.N (France's equivalent of the Ordnance Survey) from the 1950s and can find absolutely no trace of it or the villa marked on the plan.  Whatever track was laid must have disappeared whenever it was abandoned. A shame because it would have been interesting.

 

*Philou has found the precise location and the villa is there. The angle of the D15 is the identifier of the rough areas but I was fooled by commune boundaries so was looking the wrong side of the aerodrome

Edited January 14, 2018 by Pacific231G

[45156]

Well, staying firmly off topic until tonight's episode which I'll watch tomorrow, is this a model, miniature, toy, or what?  Whichever it might be, it's a very very good example of it, and probably didn't come cheap.  It's a garden railway near my home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 14, 2018 by 45156

[Jol Wilkinson]

I used to get offended when people referred to my model railway as a "train set", but now I believe that all model railways are train sets and vice versa. (Just that they're not all for children!)

 

A child can accept an upturned shoebox over a couple of sidings as "Paddington station", while some adults can find fault with the most painstakingly created model.

 

Likewise most children of the 50s could accept the Triang Princess as a representation of the real thing, whilst adults can pick apart the modern super-detail Hornby equivalent.

 

The Bible tells us that "Unless you become like little children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven", and I believe similar can be said about the hobby. By which I don't mean that we shouldn't strive for greater realism in our layouts, just that we shouldn't look on another's efforts and say "That isn't a model railway." (And we shouldn't be demanding ever more detailed models from the manufacturers if it prices others out of the hobby).

A train set is a collection of items put together by a third party in a box to enable a young person to put together a working toy, as those that started with Hornby Dublo will know. Your own (or someone else's) collection of discrete model railway items, when put together, is a model railway. A model of a railway or a railway model are something else (and both different).

 

This post is offered in the spirit of reasoned debate. We all have a different take on what we do, different wants, beliefs and preferences and to lump it all together under one "simple " heading is inappropriate.

[Bedders]

That having been said, I do think that anything capable of carrying people, and driven by a person riding on it, tends to be termed ‘miniature’ in modern parlance.

 

Some of the shorter passengers may be approaching scale

[Torper]

Well, staying firmly off topic until tonight's episode which I'll watch tomorrow, is this a model, miniature, toy, or what?  Whichever it might be, it's a very very good example of it, and probably didn't come cheap.  It's a garden railway near my home.

 

This is one of these occasions where i feel that an "envy" button would be appropriate.....

 

DT

[RJS1977]

A train set is a collection of items put together by a third party in a box to enable a young person to put together a working toy, as those that started with Hornby Dublo will know. Your own (or someone else's) collection of discrete model railway items, when put together, is a model railway. A model of a railway or a railway model are something else (and both different).

 

This post is offered in the spirit of reasoned debate. We all have a different take on what we do, different wants, beliefs and preferences and to lump it all together under one "simple " heading is inappropriate.

 

I see where you're coming from - though it does raise the question of how many items have to be purchased before the line is crossed between train set and model railway. ISTR one Hornby catalogue suggesting the moment that the track is pinned to a baseboard it starts to become a model railway.

 

My philosophy is simply that (excluding models built for commercial purposes - museums, illustrating construction projects etc), most model railways are the plaything of their owner, regardless of level of detail/accuracy or scale.

[Captain Kernow]

A train set is a collection of items put together by a third party in a box to enable a young person to put together a working toy, as those that started with Hornby Dublo will know. Your own (or someone else's) collection of discrete model railway items, when put together, is a model railway. A model of a railway or a railway model are something else (and both different).

 

Are we still talking definitions, then?

 

Perhaps it's a good thing that tonight's episode is not far off now, hopefully that will give us all something new to discuss on this thread!

[ejstubbs]

Four more.

 

For those interested, Claire Barratt and Lawrence Robbins will be on the BBC breakfast sofa tomorrow from 8:00am with the Silver Lady locomotive. Despite what the loco went through in Scotland, it apparently fired straight up yesterday without complaint as a testament to the fine engineering of the Roundhouse product.

 

Thanks for pointing this out.

 

I managed to record it and have just got around to watching it now.  Disappointed that Naga Munchetty introduced it by repeating the assertion that it was "a challenge that had defeated the greatest engineers of the Victorian era."  Redeemed somewhat by Claire explaining later on that it was the politics between the railway companies that stopped it happening, not a lack of engineering capability.

Edited January 14, 2018 by ejstubbs

[Nearholmer]

231G

 

What did the ‘DS’ in CFDS signify? Is ‘S’ the Department?

 

It’s fascinating whatever. The nearest I’ve seen a German military training railways, also 60cm, but unpretentiously narrow gauge. Your one looks as if Heywood’s french cousin designed it!

 

K