GMRC Series 2 - Episode 2 - 'Classic books'

[PhilJ W]

14 minutes ago, noiseboy72 said:

I second this. You will have to wait until Episode 5 to see our full layout, but it featured in a trailer, so you get some shots of it and an idea of the colours and themes we went for. We put operation at the centre of our planning, along with making the layout visually appealing and ensuring we could pick up the bonus points for having more than 1 train running at any one time, points operating, animations etc. 

 

Some might suggest that we were "playing the numbers" in this respect, but looking at the winners so far, we were not the only ones to read the rules

I think I can see evidence of the scratchbuild challenge there.

[noiseboy72]

23 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

I think I can see evidence of the scratchbuild challenge there.

Sorry, no spoilers - and no scratch build challenge items in that shot! I've only shown what appeared on TV on the trailer on Friday night

Edited September 23, 2019 by noiseboy72

[TheQ]

On ‎18‎/‎09‎/‎2019 at 22:39, brack said:

Lots of blowing up the hedjaz railway, shooting holes in the water tank etc. The hedjaz is a fascinating line, but to do it justice would require lots of scratchbuilding. I once built a model set in Sudan, but was never quite happy with the sand in the desert - it always looked not quite right to me, perhaps because I've never been in a proper hot desert... interesting choice though.

Having lived next door to whats left of the Hedjaz railway, at Tabook, in that particular area, it wasn't sand, but dried mud dust. when we got wind combined with rain, the Mud-out  on the windscreen was terrifying, the wipers could'nt cope. But if you stopped some local would run into the back of you at 120KPH.

[2mmMark]

Personally, I think the scratchbuild challenge is just a distracting embarrassment.  "Here's some shite we found in a bin and we want you to waste time trying to make something of it".

Gives entirely the wrong impression of scratchbuilding. However,  I do grant you that sitting down with some nickel-silver sheet and a jewellers saw won't make for gripping TV.

[whart57]

Strange bins that have three of each item in though .......

[noiseboy72]

1 hour ago, 2mmMark said:

Personally, I think the scratchbuild challenge is just a distracting embarrassment.  "Here's some shite we found in a bin and we want you to waste time trying to make something of it".

Gives entirely the wrong impression of scratchbuilding. However,  I do grant you that sitting down with some nickel-silver sheet and a jewellers saw won't make for gripping TV.

And trust me, they only get worse. I guess they try and pick items we would never have thought of in terms of scratch building. They're certainly not picked by the judges and they don't know what they are until just before the challenge either.

 

 

[MarkSG]

2 hours ago, noiseboy72 said:

I second this. You will have to wait until Episode 5 to see our full layout, but it featured in a trailer, so you get some shots of it and an idea of the colours and themes we went for.

 

Some intriguing hints in there. What, I wonder, is the significance of the business name boards? And the backscene appears to be telling some kind of story - but what?

 

I suppose we shall have to wait and see 

[Huw Griffiths]

2 hours ago, noiseboy72 said:

We put operation at the centre of our planning, along with making the layout visually appealing and ensuring we could pick up the bonus points for having more than 1 train running at any one time, points operating, animations etc. 

 

Some might suggest that we were "playing the numbers" in this respect, but looking at the winners so far, we were not the only ones to read the rules

 

Sounds fair enough to me. After all, I don't see much point entering any contest unless you know the brief and work to it.

 

Even allowing for time spent beforehand on prebuilds, the GMRC rules effectively nudge teams in the direction of "speed building". Some people are comfortable with this - some are not - some see the chance to try this (using gear provided by the challenge organisers) as an interesting challenge in itself.

 

Add to this some very "left field" themes - and the need to try unfamiliar techniques - and it isn't too hard to see why some, normally risk averse, people have chosen to get involved in this enterprise.

 

2 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

I think this is what many detractors miss - railway modelling comes in many different forms and it doesn't do any harm to push the envelope a little sometimes. I'm sure there are techniques and ideas we can all take away from this, and ones we wouldn't touch with a bargepole. This last one is just as important though, someone else can make the mistakes you get to learn from!

 

This last point - about learning from other people's mistakes - is also one of the major "selling points" of forum sites like this one. The same goes for some "how to" articles in magazines etc.

 

I also seem to recall something similar on a Rick Stein cookery programme - when, after cooking something, he turned round and said what he'd do differently another time.

 

Nothing wrong with that, as far as I'm concerned.

 

 

Huw.

Edited September 23, 2019 by Huw Griffiths

[Pmorgancym]

Quite enjoy this week, better than the natural disaster theme last week.

I felt the idea of incorporating books into the scenary was under utilised, I envisaged a railway winding along, with bookself/book scenic breaks and each scene placed on an open book.  It's quite an interesting idea that could make a very differemt exhibition layout, I'd probably select a single book though.

[Phil Parker]

2 hours ago, 2mmMark said:

Gives entirely the wrong impression of scratchbuilding. However,  I do grant you that sitting down with some nickel-silver sheet and a jewellers saw won't make for gripping TV.

1

 

How? Can scratchbuilding only be carried out with materials approved by MRJ?

 

People have been making models out of all sorts of odd items for years. OK, this might be taking it to an extreme, but it's not that out-there. The trick seems to be to ignore what something is and focus on the shapes and materials. Last weeks tutu re-workings were quite imaginative and I was impressed with the watering can to gasometer this time.  I could have seen me being inspired to give that a go as a youngster.

[Huw Griffiths]

48 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

 

How? Can scratchbuilding only be carried out with materials approved by MRJ?

 

People have been making models out of all sorts of odd items for years. OK, this might be taking it to an extreme, but it's not that out-there. The trick seems to be to ignore what something is and focus on the shapes and materials. Last weeks tutu re-workings were quite imaginative and I was impressed with the watering can to gasometer this time.  I could have seen me being inspired to give that a go as a youngster.

 

For some reason, this reminds me of a TV advert for a well known brand of washing up liquid  - and some nipper getting fed up of waiting for an empty detergent bottle, so he could use it to build a model rocket.

 

I know - some people get so impatient sometimes. Some people might be tempted to get own brand liquid from Aldi next time - so the bottle's a different shape. Kills this "impatient nipper" malarkey stone dead ... what's wrong?

 

Seriously though, I can't see too many people buying a particular brand of washing up liquid, just because of the shape of the bottle - even if most of us would never actively stifle a child's creativity, either.

 

Anyway, even as a 54 year old "grown up", I am certainly not averse to repurposing packaging (or even cheap objects, from pound shops and the like) into models or "proof of concept" part builds.

 

Much the same goes for cheap models and parts. Let's think - a traverser using parts from a YMRV Mk 1 anyone? OK - perhaps not - but I'm sure you get the general idea.

 

 

Huw.

[JohnR]

48 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

 

How? Can scratchbuilding only be carried out with materials approved by MRJ?

 

People have been making models out of all sorts of odd items for years. OK, this might be taking it to an extreme, but it's not that out-there. The trick seems to be to ignore what something is and focus on the shapes and materials. Last weeks tutu re-workings were quite imaginative and I was impressed with the watering can to gasometer this time.  I could have seen me being inspired to give that a go as a youngster.

 

True, but I think perhaps a more realistic challenge would be t provide a box of stuff, and ask the competitors to use some or all of it to scratchbuild something. Bit more realistic then, but also more flexible. 

 

[Huw Griffiths]

2 minutes ago, JohnR said:

 

True, but I think perhaps a more realistic challenge would be t provide a box of stuff, and ask the competitors to use some or all of it to scratchbuild something. Bit more realistic then, but also more flexible. 

 

 

This could certainly be interesting - but the current style (akin to the mystery ingredients baskets, from the US cookery show "Chopped") seems to generate some interesting builds and viewing.

 

 

Huw.

[Pmorgancym]

Yes a standard box of junk and a bonus item for that week.  Even maybe spin the wheel to see what the team has to build and rather than a simple 2 points for the winner everyone is score 0-5 with a bonus point for most imaginative use of the bonus item.  

 

it's more how scratch building works, most of us don't think hmm I must make something out of a ping pong bat, high heel.shoe and a collendar, but we do think I need to make a water tower, now what have I got that's water tower shaped.

 

Edited September 23, 2019 by Pmorgancym
added thought

[john new]

42 minutes ago, Huw Griffiths said:

 

For some reason, this reminds me of a TV advert for a well known brand of washing up liquid  - and some nipper getting fed up of waiting for an empty detergent bottle, so he could use it to build a model rocket.

 

I know - some people get so impatient sometimes. Some people might be tempted to get own brand liquid from Aldi next time - so the bottle's a different shape. Kills this "impatient nipper" malarkey stone dead ... what's wrong?

 

Seriously though, I can't see too many people buying a particular brand of washing up liquid, just because of the shape of the bottle - even if most of us would never actively stifle a child's creativity, either.

 

Anyway, even as a 54 year old "grown up", I am certainly not averse to repurposing packaging (or even cheap objects, from pound shops and the like) into models or "proof of concept" part builds.

 

Much the same goes for cheap models and parts. Let's think - a traverser using parts from a YMRV Mk 1 anyone? OK - perhaps not - but I'm sure you get the general idea.

 

 

Huw.

 

AH but the point was not that you would short-cut the wait and go out to buy AN Other's brand of washing up liquid but would remember from the ad that the content of the bottle lasted ages and the associated brand name next time you shopped. On that score a 100% success to the Ad Agency that produced the idea, you can still remember the advert and on your own admission the brand is well known. 

 

Edited September 23, 2019 by john new
Reworded to make better sense.

[Phil Parker]

18 minutes ago, Pmorgancym said:

it's more how scratch building works, most of us don't think hmm I must make something out of a ping pong bat, high heel.shoe and a collendar, but we do think I need to make a water tower, now what have I got that's water tower shaped.

 

The point is they are competing against each other with the same materials. Each modeller needs to bring skill, but more importantly, imagination, to the table. If they have a big box of stuff and get to chose what they want then it's no different from the rest of the competition where they decide they want a water tower and chose what to use for materials.

[TheQ]

3 hours ago, whart57 said:

Strange bins that have three of each item in though .......

and none of Val's knickers elastic

[Pmorgancym]

12 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

 

The point is they are competing against each other with the same materials. Each modeller needs to bring skill, but more importantly, imagination, to the table. If they have a big box of stuff and get to chose what they want then it's no different from the rest of the competition where they decide they want a water tower and chose what to use for materials.

Ahh but that's where the Bonus mystery item comes in, that can be as ridiculous as you like.

 

[MarkSG]

Part of the issue with the scratch build challenge is that the programme-makers are using the term somewhat differently to how we perceive it. Most of us, I'd hazard a guess, treat scratchbuilding as a goal-oriented task - we start by deciding what we want to make, and then choose the materials and techniques necessary to achieve that. But on GMRC, it's more of a process-oriented task - the teams are given the materals, and then have to decide what to do with them.

 

The show does feature plenty of scratchbuilding in the more traditional sense - a lot of the pre-built scenic items are scratchbuilt (or kit-bashed), and we saw some pretty good examples of those this week. And the effectiveness of them does contribute to a layout's score. So it's not as if those skills are being disregarded. It's just that the programme-makers are throwing something else into the mix as well.

[LMS29]

4 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

The point is they are competing against each other with the same materials. Each modeller needs to bring skill, but more importantly, imagination, to the table. If they have a big box of stuff and get to chose what they want then it's no different from the rest of the competition where they decide they want a water tower and chose what to use for materials.

It is worth adding that you loose a team member for part of a day doing the challenge so limiting the size of the challenge helps to keep the balance between the main task and the scratch build challenge.

Edited September 23, 2019 by LMS29

[Phil Parker]

We have an interview with the Scarborough Flyers on World of Railways now:

https://www.world-of-railways.co.uk/brm/techniques/other/the-great-model-railway-challenge-scarborough-flyers?fbclid=IwAR0wMy_aoCwKzmkqhk9SrsOU806ylADoaAkQ2lxYVEqUvxp-wl9lroboGpY

[whart57]

I did suggest to the producers some months before recording that a Scrapbox Challenge might be more realistic. Give the contestants a selection of broken Dinky toys, half-built kits and off-cuts of Plastruct and see what they come up with

[PhilJ W]

I'm getting used to a thread for each episode but some people aren't. Might I suggest that when each episode is aired the thread for the previous episode is locked with a link to the next episodes thread. All threads can be unlocked after the final episode.

[2mmMark]

6 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

How? Can scratchbuilding only be carried out with materials approved by MRJ?

 

 

 

You can't fool me, I've seen you in a tweed jacket. 

 

And the answer, obviously, is yes.  It's the reason I get so little modelling done.

[Pacific231G]

On 21/09/2019 at 13:51, Phil Parker said:

 

Worse, as I mention in the summary, the Thunderchild is destroyed in the book and the layout is set in the second Martian invasion so either the MOD thought "That one worked well, let's build another", or the modellers GOT IT WRONG (screws up fists, has a tantrum) AND HAVE PERVERTED HISTORY!!!! (Gets out a green pen, writes a stern letter to the editor of the Railway Modeller). Down with this sort of thing!

 

Incidentally, did anyone notice the music for the layout was based on the Jeff Wayne album?

 

Actually, with my pedant head on:

• Tripods are rubbish as fighting machines. As soon as you lift a foot, the thing falls over. The makes of the BBC series The Tripods had a real issue with this and invented some sort of anti-gravity device to make them appear to work.
• Tieing some one to the tracks as at the start of this show, never actually happened in a silent movie.

Hi Phil

To answer your pedantry with more pedantry and even some literary and film snobbery .

• Tripods are what H.G. Wells came up with so if you're doing WotW you can't really avoid them. Wells clearly wanted to get away from bilateral symmetry to emphasise how alien his creatures were and Nigel Kneale's gargoyle inspiring Martian creatures in Quatermass and the Pit were also tripedal  (If you're being really pedantic about H.G Wells' ideas, firing your space vessels from cannons and crashing them into the earth would probably guarantee their crews arriving dead but I don't think anyone had really thought of long distance rockets when he wrote the book. Also, if they were completely alien with no common DNA I don't think that human blood would be of any nutritional value to them.) 
• Tying the heroine to the RR tracks was apparently a common trope in Victorian stage melodramas. It first appeared on film in "Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life " a Mack Sennet silent short from 1913, a year earlier than the well known Perils of Pauline series which is well known for never including that particular peril. Race for Life was a comedy but that particular gruesome villainy has always been more associated with comedy than more sinister cliff hangers like the gun/crossbow/harpoon etc aimed at the bound and gagged heroine, its trigger attached to the door with the aim of causing the hero to inadvertedly slay the love of his life,  or more simply the time bomb ticking down to zero.
• H.M.S. Thunderchild MOD? War Office or Admiralty surely;  Jackie Fisher will have you keel hauled. Anyway the Thunderchild of the second invasion that appeared all too briefly in GRMC was clearly either a replica or the salvaged original, built or restored to honour the courage of the original crew in allowing the civilian evacuation fleet to escape and pressed back into service when the RN's more modern ships had been destroyed. See the 2012 film Battleship for a suitably stars and stripes filled equivalent.

 

 I did also wonder whether some of the scenes were inspired by film or TV adaptations of the books rather than the books themselves.

• The Death in the Clouds scene featured a DC-3  as in the 1992 TV adaptation with David Suchet. The DC-3 is a gorgeous aircraft of course but it never appeared on the London (Croydon)-Paris route in the 1930s. Agatha Christie published Death in the Clouds in 1935 and the aircraft she described was a  Handley Page H.P. 42. The DC-3 didn't enter service until 1936 and the first were eagerly snapped up by American airlines (in fact by American Airlines itself followed by various others) It is true that KLM had them very early on for their long distance routes to Batavia etc. but no pre war British or French airlines flew them.  Also. The "DC-3" in GRMC was a C-47 built in 1944.  Nitpicking I know but a BR built pannier tank in a GWR scene in the 1930s would not go unnoticed here.
• The Murder on the Orient Express scene included a very dramatic avalanche and, in the TV version it was an avalanche that marooned the train for a day or so. In the book it was simply a snowdrift that bloked the train, based on a real incident in 1929 when the Orient Express was trapped in snowdrifts sixty miles west of Istanbul for six days and Agatha Christie's own experience in 1931 when the train was trapped for twenty four hours by flooding of the line following heavy rain. Avalanches tend to have far more disastrous effects on trains as in the 1910 Wellington, Washington disaster when the Spokane Express of the Great Northern Railway (the American one)  that had been stuck in snow for almost a week was swept into a canyon (along with a mail train and the station itself) killing 96 passengers and railroad staff who'd mostly been asleep on the train. 

 

Edited September 23, 2019 by Pacific231G
improved pedantry