GMRC Series 2 - Episode 3 - 'Best of British'

[That Model Railway Guy]

Have to say I enjoyed this episode a lot more. Not that I didn’t enjoy the previous two but it was nice this time that the focus seemed to be less on the animations and more on the actual railway. The animations themselves also seemed more subtle and better integrated into the rest of the layouts too, which in my opinion actually made them much more effective. A big well done to all involved so far and I look forward to tuning in next week for more excitement!

[noiseboy72]

1 hour ago, Neil said:

A fair assessment if winning were the goal. However for the majority of our team victory was the least of our ambitions. I don't know how my bits to camera were edited as I haven't yet seen the program but I attempted to make clear I wasn't in it to win it. The team were undoubtedly left short by me leaving on the last day of filming as I wanted to be at home for my wife's birthday the following day. Living in a remote location in mid Wales and travelling by train pretty much forced this on me. I guess that from the other episodes I've seen the competitive element will have been ramped up by the production company, don't believe all you see on telly.

Yes, we're waiting to see how we are portrayed as well.

 

We were short of 2 team members on day 1 due to GCSES and prior commitments and I know this disadvantaged us to a certain extent.

 

Funnily enough in the build up we weren't really thinking beyond the heat and were in it for the experience, but I must say that once we started building, the competitive nature's came out and we got our game faces on!!

[steve1]

Talking of interest in the programme outside the hobby, this was said on hi-if forum of which I am a member:

 

"Do you mean; The Great Model Railway Challenge Competition - on Channel 5 ?

The model railway constructors i know of tend to be quite talented, clever engineers, with historian knowledge, and are very artistic, hate to be a killjoy saying this but personally i find programs like TGMRC to degrade the activity into a cheap thrill play ground for peoples who may prefer to trivialise the model railway for a 5 minute muck-about wonder toy. Including subject matter such as soap opera or science fiction films makes me cringe : /

As far as the competitors on said program are concerned, i do respect the skill, ingenuity, experience, and ability to do an imaginative bodge job against the clock with the eyes of the world looking in, but TBH i’d far rather see a more relaxed program which demonstrates the superb detailing skill of building the serious and authentic model railway, with a chosen theme of a time and place.

I’ll get off my soap box now ; )"

 

An intriguing comment for a non-modeller.

 

steve

 

 

[LocoLadies CF]

4 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

Can I ask how the lifeboat worked? I rather fancy adding something like that to a future layout.

 

Obviously, with my lifeboat nerd oilskins o, I'll point out the Rother is out of period. Nicely made and painted Langley kit though, and I can forgive anything for orange boats...

We decided we wanted a lifeboat and had difficulty finding one apart from the Langley one. Chrissy had to do a lot of additional work on it to make it as good as it was so if the era was wrong we were still very happy with it.

 

it is a shame that this bit was seen as a ‘damp  squid’ as we had a chain going round on cogs underneath with magnets attached and with a magnet on the lifeboat. The ‘water’ was dry at the end of the second day but humidity (possibly the additional cameras and lots of extra visitors) left it a bit sticky and it didn’t move initially. It should be working seamlessly when we go to Warley as it has now had months to dry properly!! Come and see us at Warley if you are going and Chrissy will show you how she made it work!! 

[Phil Parker]

13 minutes ago, LocoLadies CF said:

We decided we wanted a lifeboat and had difficulty finding one apart from the Langley one. Chrissy had to do a lot of additional work on it to make it as good as it was so if the era was wrong we were still very happy with it.

 

it is a shame that this bit was seen as a ‘damp  squid’ as we had a chain going round on cogs underneath with magnets attached and with a magnet on the lifeboat. The ‘water’ was dry at the end of the second day but humidity (possibly the additional cameras and lots of extra visitors) left it a bit sticky and it didn’t move initially. It should be working seamlessly when we go to Warley as it has now had months to dry properly!! Come and see us at Warley if you are going and Chrissy will show you how she made it work!! 

 

I'm looking forward to seeing it as it sounds like an amazing mechanism.  The work done on the boat looked good too, it's not an easy kit to build and the painting is even harder but Chrissy did a cracking job. This is just the thing I'd like on my layout.

[Harlequin]

'Damp squid'   (Aren't all squids rather damp???)

 

That's a lovely twist of the English language!

 

[Jenny Emily]

I sympathise with the 'chauffeur' comments. For many years it has narked me at exhibitions that when I take a male friend as my +1 to operate my layout, men still almost exclusively turn to him to ask questions about the layout. They take great delight in answering "I dunno. Why don't you ask Jenny, as she built it" whilst pointing back at me.

 

I'm very impressed at the number of women modellers in the series. We had two on our team, and the first episode had a few too. Perhaps a better showing than series one got. I would have been team captain of the Rail Riders, but the TV company bumped me from the role and made Les captain; a role he did not want to do. Perhaps I had annoyed some-one in dropping out of series one, though it suited me as when five expectant faces turn to me and ask "what now, Boss?" my response is usually "I was going to ask you guys the same question"

[chuffinghell]

25 minutes ago, Jenny Emily said:

........I would have been team captain of the Rail Riders, but the TV company bumped me from the role and made Les captain; a role he did not want to do......

 

 scandalous!

 

I’m impressed with the number of teenagers taking part

 

It makes a change from them getting up first thing mid afternoon after spending all night on the Xbox (speaking as a father of three lads)

 

 

Edited September 29, 2019 by chuffinghell
Atrocious spelling as per usual

[noiseboy72]

I think to get more teenagers involved, you'd need to change the filming schedule... Not sure how the 8.00am call time would go down...

 

On a serious note, how do you think a kid's special would go down? Our team members have enough kids to all but put a team together, but I would be interested to know if people think it would make good TV. We did suggest it to the producers and they liked the idea - maybe as a Christmas special, but there's nothing more discussed than that at the moment.

[Ian Smeeton]

I, for one, would love to see a 'youngsters edition', with perhaps, one older person to contribute necessary experience.

 

Although Tony Wright has shied away from the programme, when I had him as a captive audience for an hour or more on the way to a 2mm Area Group meeting last week, I pressed the point that we needed to attract youngsters to the hobby, and GMRC was a 'Good Thing' if it injected 'fun' (whimsy) to the hobby.

 

His  response was mostly printable, but in his case, 'fun' was running Little Bytham as prototypically as possible and building loco kits to  very high standards. We all get 'fun' in different ways, and if it takes volcanoes, earthquakes or giant Yorkshire Puddings to pique their interest, then why not.

 

All in all, though, I am enjoying the series, even if I have to watch it on a tablet, rather than being allowed near the Missus' TV.

 

Regards

 

Ian

[JohnR]

11 hours ago, noiseboy72 said:

I think one thing the program highlighted was that the whole team needs to work together and at speed. With all due respect to the Cambrian Coasters, it appeared on TV that some of their team were not really prepared to embrace the speed modelling approach needed to compete effectively. One or two beautifu but smalll models won't really win the competition and losing the capacity within the team will hurt the overall build.

 

 

 

I got the same impression. The guy who said he would make the model to satisfy himself, and it would be ready when it was ready really didnt understand the nature of the competition. 

[Neil]

15 minutes ago, JohnR said:

 

I got the same impression. The guy who said he would make the model to satisfy himself, and it would be ready when it was ready really didnt understand the nature of the competition. 

That would be my mate Ian and I would respectfully refer you to my earlier post about the majority of our team having little interest in winning despite the best efforts of the production company to get us to pronounce otherwise.

Edited September 29, 2019 by Neil

[PhilJ W]

1 hour ago, noiseboy72 said:

I think to get more teenagers involved, you'd need to change the filming schedule... Not sure how the 8.00am call time would go down...

 

On a serious note, how do you think a kid's special would go down? Our team members have enough kids to all but put a team together, but I would be interested to know if people think it would make good TV. We did suggest it to the producers and they liked the idea - maybe as a Christmas special, but there's nothing more discussed than that at the moment.

I know of a young man who might be interested.

[Professor Yaffle]

On 27/09/2019 at 22:46, LocoLadies CF said:

 

The trees seem to have been very popular though. More than Kathy thought they would be maybe ......  

 

Stroke of genius - I seem to remember in the rules somewhere about a sense of fun and humour

[Professor Yaffle]

3 hours ago, noiseboy72 said:

Our team members have enough kids to all but put a team together

Are you going to tell them or shall I?

I think a 6am call time would much more fun, especially when its hotter than hell...

[Professor Yaffle]

On 24/09/2019 at 10:48, LocoLadies CF said:

Discovered to my amusement that

Also enjoyed your Channel 5 weather forecast on facebook

[TravisM]

6 hours ago, Jenny Emily said:

I sympathise with the 'chauffeur' comments. For many years it has narked me at exhibitions that when I take a male friend as my +1 to operate my layout, men still almost exclusively turn to him to ask questions about the layout. They take great delight in answering "I dunno. Why don't you ask Jenny, as she built it" whilst pointing back at me.

 

I'm very impressed at the number of women modellers in the series. We had two on our team, and the first episode had a few too. Perhaps a better showing than series one got. I would have been team captain of the Rail Riders, but the TV company bumped me from the role and made Les captain; a role he did not want to do. Perhaps I had annoyed some-one in dropping out of series one, though it suited me as when five expectant faces turn to me and ask "what now, Boss?" my response is usually "I was going to ask you guys the same question"

 

I sympathise with you Jenny about being dumped as team captain by the production company as I was originally the team captain of Corby Steelmen but as I couldn’t make the first morning of filming because of a prior engagement which I couldn’t change, I got booted to “co-captain”, never got a look in and it caused a lot of bad feeling.  The production companies excuse was they needed all six members walking together on the opening shot but I’ve noticed our team was not the only one member short.

[Neil]

7 hours ago, jools1959 said:

 

I sympathise with you Jenny about being dumped as team captain by the production company as I was originally the team captain of Corby Steelmen but as I couldn’t make the first morning of filming because of a prior engagement which I couldn’t change, I got booted to “co-captain”, never got a look in and it caused a lot of bad feeling.  The production companies excuse was they needed all six members walking together on the opening shot but I’ve noticed our team was not the only one member short.

That seems a bit of a hollow reason from the production company. Our team walk for the opening shot was filmed late afternoon on the second day due to rain on day one.

[whart57]

11 hours ago, Neil said:

That would be my mate Ian and I would respectfully refer you to my earlier post about the majority of our team having little interest in winning despite the best efforts of the production company to get us to pronounce otherwise.

 

That did get a bit wearing. Though I can see KBG's point, it's a competition, if you don't want to win then why are you here? We took the line that we wanted to achieve something memorable. You'll have to watch this Friday to see whether we achieved that

Edited September 30, 2019 by whart57

[Neil]

1 hour ago, whart57 said:

 

...., if you don't want to win then why are you here? We took the line that we wanted to achieve something memorable. You'll have to watch this Friday to see whether we achieved that

In our case the motivations were comradeship and that old fashioned Olympic ideal of taking part.

[AY Mod]

19 hours ago, Neil said:

The team were undoubtedly left short by me leaving on the last day of filming as I wanted to be at home for my wife's birthday the following day

 

I did see that you weren't there at the final scenes but only because I was looking out for you. They didn't make anything of it so I'm sure they're quite understanding that needs arise.

[RLWP]

7 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

 

I did see that you weren't there at the final scenes but only because I was looking out for you. They didn't make anything of it so I'm sure they're quite understanding that needs arise.

 

I imaging the production company has to. Managing three teams of railway modellers must be like herding cats!

[JohnR]

46 minutes ago, Neil said:

In our case the motivations were comradeship and that old fashioned Olympic ideal of taking part.

 

But how would the other teams feel if they knew you wernt trying? 

[RLWP]

4 minutes ago, JohnR said:

 

But how would the other teams feel if they knew you wernt trying? 

 

Successful?

[Neil]

1 hour ago, JohnR said:

 

But how would the other teams feel if they knew you wernt trying? 

We were trying in the sense that we wanted to be satisfied with the work we did, even if we weren't bothered if we won.