What is your one compromise too far?

[Steamport Southport]

Locomotives and stock that don't really match at exhibitions. Do what you want at home.

 

I don't just mean wrong era, railway company, etc.

 

But also different standards or era of models. Please don't run your collection of Hornby Dublo with modern RTR and well built kits. It just looks wrong. Run it with stock from the same era, it looks better. I like a good "retro" model, but not a hotpotch, it just ends up looking like a total mess.

 

 

 

 

Jason

[Il Grifone]

Catenary masts without the wires! Can cope with pantographs not touching the wire or even if the wire is not totally in alignment due to train set curves but the wire or a representation needs to be there. I also realise at a scale size it probably wouldn't be visible!

Cheers

Mark

 

The same applies to telegraph wires. The lack of the wires is obvious. Getting the right amount of sag is another matter....

[Nearholmer]

Given the niche of the hobby that I’m in, a lot of what upsets others positively motivates me: I rather like subtle hint of the toy and can suspend disbelief to a great height.

 

But, I do get ‘turned off’ by utterly implausible speed and acceleration.

 

Even ancient models, some clockwork aside, can be run at sensible speeds and sensible acceleration rates.

[Butler Henderson]

Single line termini layouts were a departing train is quickly replaced by an arriving. I always try to bring an arriving train in then send the departing; the time taken to shunt the arrival to form a departure being long enough IMO for an another arriving train to turn up

[jonny777]

The same applies to telegraph wires. The lack of the wires is obvious. Getting the right amount of sag is another matter....

 

 

 

The problem with wires is their size. Even if an individual cable is half inch in diameter (which is rather on the thick side) that equates to 1/6th of a mm in 4mm scale. 

 

The only time I ever had a convincing looking telegraph wire on a previous layout was when a group of tiny money spiders found their way onto the top of the telegraph poles and began to put threads between them. 

 

I'm not sure this method can be relied upon very often. 

[Joe MCMLXI]

Layouts that have great looking realistic track work, but then have left those great big blobs of plastic on the ends of the Peco Tie bar !  -  ( obviously applies to layouts with electrically / mechanically  operated points )

[The Johnster]

Just painting stuff yellow and putting Network Rail stickers on.......................

 

Cheers,

Mick

 

Hang on, isn't that what Network Rail did on the prototype?

[The Johnster]

Model figures

 

I know my dad dressed as if the 1950s never finished but not everyone else did. Lack of contemporary clothing when all the rolling stock is correct.

Spacing of figures on platforms, many of us were trainspotters but we never observed the other human beings in our environment. They don't plonk themselves evenly along the platform but cluster around the entrance. Many not arriving until 5 minutes before the train. So crowed platforms are not normal near empty ones are.

Most of you are reading this sitting down, are your feet dangling in mid air? No. So why do so many modellers allow their passengers seated on platform benches to look like they are patients on 1970s geriatric ward.   

 

Many of us realise the compromises we put in the railway features and our rolling stock but not the humans it serves.

 

 

 

As for lorries parked in goods yards where even a horse and cart would have problems maneuvering..................

 

I moan about the lack of suitably dressed 1950s people, especially working class ones, Clive; you do not suffer alone.  And they are all so handsome/attractive immaculately dressed and coiffured 20-something straight backed fit and healthy types as well, even the railwaymen; definitely wrong for 1950s South Wales...

 

Where's my tin hat?

[yelrow]

My compromise was to only build a 9x5 layout. john

[The Johnster]

The extent of the length to which I am prepared to compromise is a Hornby 2721, admittedly worked up and re-liveried.  I love this little engine, full of character and a pannier oddity, but I cannot pretend to anyone that it is anything but a crude toy, with boiler skirts, a cab roof sheet about a foot thick, and (originally) a chimney, dome, and safety valve cover that were unlike anything on any GW loco I have ever seen, seen a picture of, or seen a drawing of.  To quote Captain Jean-Luc Picard, 'The line is drawn here. No further'.

 

I would replace it like a shot if somebody brought out a decent modern RTR version.  But I'll never throw the old lady, as I call her, away; I am ridiculously fond of her.

 

As for moans about exhibition layouts, all of the above and also; buildings over tunnels that do not have enough clearance above the tunnel roof for the foundations (I have seen video of a layout where a coffin being lowered into a grave in a churchyard keeps coming back up, presumably to avoid being hit by the trains), overbright led lights especially any flashing ones, poorly executed road markings, road vehicles too close together in traffic (even for traffic jams), any attempt to model flames, tail lights on locos illuminated while they are hauling trains, anything involving emergency vehicles, trains not carrying the correct lamps, trains too brightly lit inside with cold lighting that should be warm or vice versa (come to think of it, anything involving lights),  

 

Trains of unfitted vehicles without brake vans, passenger trains with no guard's accommodation, fun fairs which always have the rides going way too fast, and rock faces that do not relate to the geology or formations of the area modelled, or often any British geology at all.  Helvetica font on steam age layouts.  Oh, and enamel adverts on the walls of engine sheds or retaining walls and the like, where no passenger train ever passes; no advertising agency would have ever wasted it's money in this way.

 

Trains which arrive at a branch terminus or bay, run the loco around, and then the loco buffers up to the train and unceremoniously shoves the coaches, in reality immovable because the vacuum brakes are hard on, up to the buffer stops without stopping!!!  It will depart immediately without having had time to carry out a brake continuity test, but I never hang around that long!  I will simply walk away from any layout I see this happening on as my life is too short and important to be polluted with this sort of utter dross.

 

O gauge (for some reason) layouts of superbly scale appearance as regards buildings track and scenery with all vehicles in showroom condition down to shiny polished steel buffers.  We know you have pretensions in the direction of miniature engineering, but real trains in service don't look like that!

 

Thomas and friends, except on a TTTE layout.  They have no place elsewhere.

Edited April 28, 2018 by The Johnster

['CHARD]

I can hardly talk, as in recent years all my layout building has remained virtual, but whilst generally agreeing with most of what has been said above, I would add:

 

• use of implausible private owner wagons out of period - whereas subtle ones 'in' period, like archaic LGW cottage wagons in the late sixties, are really rather exquisite and nicely rendered
• inaccurate coaching stock formations that don't follow prototype practice
• overcrowded or over-provisioned engine sheds - less is more at most locations
• shiny cars with deeply recessed windows, but with frames overprinted in black or silver - Oxford I'm looking in your direction here

[APOLLO]

OOOOOhhhh you are a fussy lot !!!!!

 

Bit of good, bad, pleasant and unpleasant on every layout. I never walk away tut-tutting, rather seek out the good (to me) bits.

 

Brit15

[bike2steam]

Wasn't gonna join in, but sod it I will. Layouts set in the 'mechanical' age without point-rodding, badly sighted signal-boxes set in the middle of nowhere without external equipment such as a 'lead-off bed'. Track work that goes straight into a set curve with no transition. Track-bed with no drainage, no cess. And the wife's telling me the ADHD is getting worse  (but I'm not alone !).

Edited April 29, 2018 by bike2steam

[coachmann]

If I were to post a critique of other members compromises, I would make sure it didn't include a link to my own modelling! 

[Pete the Elaner]

Shiny rail sides. Painting them a dirty rust colour is a boring task but it makes so much of a visual difference.

Seeing track disappear into a tunnel with no attempt whatsoever to make the tunnel itself look dark.

Clean permanent way, particularly on steam era layouts. Railways were filthy places.

[DCB]

Wrong heights, solebars, buffers, cant rails which should be pretty standardised annoy me as do too high platforms.

 

Trains running too slowly at exhibitions, accelerating implausibly slowly driven by modellers who copy other modellers instead of actually watching  real trains....

[Pete the Elaner]

 

 

Trains running too slowly at exhibitions, accelerating implausibly slowly driven by modellers who copy other modellers instead of actually watching  real trains....

I see a lot of modelling which seems to have copied other models instead of the real thing. I think this is a shame because the real one has a very odd mixture of things (brick patterns, lineside equipment etc) which make it interesting.

Edited April 29, 2018 by Pete the Elaner

[Il Grifone]

The problem with wires is their size. Even if an individual cable is half inch in diameter (which is rather on the thick side) that equates to 1/6th of a mm in 4mm scale. 

 

The only time I ever had a convincing looking telegraph wire on a previous layout was when a group of tiny money spiders found their way onto the top of the telegraph poles and began to put threads between them. 

 

I'm not sure this method can be relied upon very often. 

 

1/6th of a millimetre is still visible though. The limit of resolution is allegedly 1/10th mm / 1/250", but this would make BR orange lining invisible (1/8th inch - 24th millimetre in 4mm).

 

The spider web is also sticky, which rules it out. 

[Mallard60022]

Arbouretum Valley..............................say no more.

P

[Il Grifone]

Shiny rail sides. Painting them a dirty rust colour is a boring task but it makes so much of a visual difference.

Seeing track disappear into a tunnel with no attempt whatsoever to make the tunnel itself look dark.

Clean permanent way, particularly on steam era layouts. Railways were filthy places.

 

The ground around steam locomotive sheds was always a black colour from a mixture of oil and coal dust. (From my days of 'bunking' them. We did ask permission sometimes....). They are often portrayed as clean and with weeds. The latter tended to be dealt with back then and couldn't grow in the muck anyway.

[Barry O]

Trains which accelerate faster than a rocket car...a Q6 leaving our pit with a string of 21 ton hoppers fully loaded took miles to build up speed..not 5 to 10 yards...

 

And why have spotlessly clean locos and stock?

 

I can live without lamps on locos and brake vehicles for the time being..my major compromise

 

Baz

[Happy Hippo]

My biggest gripe at exhibitions is the valence added to the front of a layout to hide the legs and accumulated detritus that is mandatory under a layout at a show.

 

Invariably stuck to the front of the  baseboard facia with some form of pins, and hanging there all creased and slack, not unlike Fanny Flopdrawers' unwashed and un-ironed bloomers.

[jonny777]

1/6th of a millimetre is still visible though. The limit of resolution is allegedly 1/10th mm / 1/250", but this would make BR orange lining invisible (1/8th inch - 24th millimetre in 4mm).

 

The spider web is also sticky, which rules it out. 

 

 

 

Sadly yes, and on my old layout the spider "wires" went everywhere overnight; across to the trees, down to trackside fencing, even over to the wagons in the goods yard. 

 

I demand that the next Wishlist includes a request for Hornby to produce a range of specially trained spiders.  

Edited April 29, 2018 by jonny777

[Kris]

The compromise I won't make is to run very obviously wrong stock together. The only exception that I make to this is for young children who love to see brightly coloured wagons on a train, something not frequently seen in my chosen modelling era. 

 

As for when other people run obviously wrong stock together, that's their choice for their model and who am I to complain about this. 

[bike2steam]

My biggest gripe at exhibitions is the valence added to the front of a layout to hide the legs and accumulated detritus that is mandatory under a layout at a show.

 

Invariably stuck to the front of the  baseboard facia with some form of pins, and hanging there all creased and slack, not unlike Fanny Flopdrawers' unwashed and un-ironed bloomers.

 

Some shows insist on it, to help hide the 'detritus'.