GMRC Series 2 - Episode 7 - Semi-final 2 - 'Blockbusters' - 6.15pm

[Pacific231G]

6 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

In Avalanche Express the locomotive occupied by the 'baddies' could not have had an engine as the engine compartment was an empty space. Such an awful movie anyway that I can't remember the plot, if it ever had one.

Even worse than The Cassandra Crossing? Burt Lancaster should have stuck to wrecking art trains without damaging their contents. Portraying one of the world's best known railway bridges, the Garabit Viaduct, as a generic bridge in Poland was almost like using the Forth Railway Bridge the same way.

Edited October 22, 2019 by Pacific231G

[Ian Morgan]

or the Crumlin Viaduct in Arabesque

 

 

 

[RJS1977]

4 hours ago, whart57 said:

Anyway, we didn't make the semis so this is what you missed:

 

 

And a cunning way to get more time for your challenge....

[PhilJ W]

2 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Even worse than The Cassandra Crossing? Burt Lancaster should have stuck to wrecking art trains without damaging their contents. Portraying one of the world's best known railway bridges, the Garabit Viaduct, as a generic bridge in Poland was almost like using the Forth Railway Bridge the same way.

I think I might have got the films mixed up. Yes,  checking my movie guide the film I was thinking of was 'The Cassandra Crossing'. The revue states 'When Burt Lancaster tries to blow up the train he should have made sure that all copies of the film were aboard.'

[Pacific231G]

1 hour ago, PhilJ W said:

I think I might have got the films mixed up. Yes,  checking my movie guide the film I was thinking of was 'The Cassandra Crossing'. The revue states 'When Burt Lancaster tries to blow up the train he should have made sure that all copies of the film were aboard.'

Hi Phil

I'd agree with the review but I think you may  well be right about Avalanche Express being even worse; I did at least manage to sit through the whole of The Cassandra Crossing. In that film there weren't any actual baddies on the train,  just soldiers under orders to stop, with deadly force,  anyone leaving the train  The loco, at least at the end, was an ordinary SNCF BB66000. The collapse of the Garabit viaduct itself was quite well done, the problem was the two hours leading up to it. The pity was that it could easily have been a very good film.

Avalanche Express seems to have been a mess from start to finish, not helped by both the director, Mark Robson, and the lead actor, Robert Shaw,  dying during production. It's a great shame that Shaw's career ended with such a lemon. He was terrific in  one of the best films set aboard a train - albeit a New York subway train- and Robson had also had a fairly distinguished career.  

The Google entry for Cassandra Crossing is amusing as it gets the wrong end of most available sticks.

Edited October 22, 2019 by Pacific231G

[PhilJ W]

Perhaps movies with trains could have a thread of their own?

[Professor Yaffle]

On 20/10/2019 at 01:27, CharlieJohnson said:

IPlus I was daft enough to wear that T-Rex outfit during the demonstrations. 

 

 

You should of had a medal for wearing that costume in the heat of the weekend.

 

I thought your use of the tat we were given to cobble something together with was inspired, specially making use of the eye thing for the animated dinosaur - top marks

 

Chris

 

[Professor Yaffle]

So after a bit of searching Ive found the snaps of my scratch build

 

The Jaguar chase car with the camera jib.

That used the eye lash doh dah thingmy bob. I got the camera in the wrong place it should have been slung under the jib, not balanced on the end of it - I blame the lack of mobile signal at Fawley for poor research,  honest.

 

The soundman with his fishpole and boom mic.

That was the end of the head massager wires with a modified Russian soldier. It was just a joke for the TV crew more than anything, they seemed to appreciate it.

 

The studio light lamp stands.

Again the head massager wires chopped, bent and glued. With a 3D printed lamp on the top. I think this is where I lost a lot of time as I tried to make a lot of lamp stands. For whatever reason the araldite was not going off properly and there was a lot of re-gluing of these. I suspect sweaty fingers was the main cause in hindsight. 

 

War Memorial.

The thing I was most pleased with and it seemed to get left on the cutting room floor. Yet gain the head massager wires for the tree trunks and part of the handle as the base for it. Some basic green foliage screwed into a ball using a tad of PVA to hold it for the top of the trees. An interior part of the head massager made the statue plinth and 2 Russian solders to top it off.

 

One x Wonky Chimney.

Oh the shame of it, I spent too much time doing the rest and this was a 15 minute panic, it was frankly shocking.

Other thoughts what to do with the baby bio bottle were;

• Matt suggested a grounded steam boiler - I thought it was a bit big for this (sorry Matt).
• Pour the liquid into something and use it - I rejected that as we had done it in heat 5 with the tanning oil and thought it would have been seen as a obvious rehash.
• A water tower - Not carried forward because I couldn't work out how to do it at the time, however looking back I can see exactly how it could have been achieved and I had already cut all the bits or disassembled them that I needed, but just couldn't envisage the next move required - so annoying now. The plastic handle of the head massager upside down on the top half of the baby bio bottle. All I had to do was stick them together and then pour the liquid into the top, job done. DOH!

As a team we did wonder what would be broadcast of the Wonky Chimney judging. The long silent pause of Kathy and Tim was the acceptable version. The one that didnt make the cut had Tim 'examining' the Wonky Chimney in a particular way. He did ask if his gestures and comments would make it past the edit and the director said 'Well it is Channel 5'. And contrary to what you may think, Kathy can smile.

 

The other teams use of the items were top notch and I was much impressed with were they were used. Good work lads

 

Chris

 

 .

[noiseboy72]

I thought it was a real shame they didn't show the war memorial, as I thought that was an excellent piece of work. I think the audience would have thought it was a much closer thing if they'd seen it.

 

(And yes, you should have done the grounded boiler  )

[CharlieJohnson]

2 hours ago, Professor Yaffle said:

 

You should of had a medal for wearing that costume in the heat of the weekend.

 

I thought your use of the tat we were given to cobble something together with was inspired, specially making use of the eye thing for the animated dinosaur - top marks

 

Chris

 

Cheers Chris. I did rather like your scratchbuild items and I thought you using it to make the camera crew was a lovely touch and I wish they had shown your war memorial, it was very lovely made. 

 

And tbh I was so nervous doing the scratchbuild challenge as both you and the young lad from the railmen of Kent had won your SBCs in your heats and I hadn't so I felt I had to give 110% this time round. I thought I might be able to win it during our heat just just missed out. 

 

With both you having a win under your belts I thought one of you might win it. 

 

Plus in that suit was very cool inside due to the fans and was definitely collet indoors than outdoors. 

[noiseboy72]

Hi All.

Our layouts will be on display at Rocket Railways this Saturday, complete with Chris's wonky chimney and and my gaffa taped road surface.

 

We'll be there from about 9.30 - 4.30 and it would be great to see you all. Come and poke fun, pass comment or just watch us trying to get the trains to run...

 

Address is

Rocket Railways

Unit 6 The Old Maltings

Springfield Road

Grantham

NG31 7BG

[Pacific231G]

On 23/10/2019 at 00:36, PhilJ W said:

Perhaps movies with trains could have a thread of their own?

I think there is one but, for this thread, We were really just musing about "blockbuster" movies that might have been chosen for this GMRC semi-final and inevitably got into them a bit.  Assuming there is a series three they're bound to have a movie theme for at least one heat.

 

That leads me to a question. Did the sponsoring suppliers include the catalogues for their non UK ranges?

Hornby International now includes Arnold, Electrotren, Jouef, Lima and Rivarossi. Arnold is N and TT (handy for forced perspective) but the others are all 16.5mm gauge.

Bachmann has Liliput (though their H0 product range isn't vast)  and Gaugemaster havea large international range.

[noiseboy72]

2 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

I think there is one but, for this thread, We were really just musing about "blockbuster" movies that might have been chosen for this GMRC semi-final and inevitably got into them a bit.  Assuming there is a series three they're bound to have a movie theme for at least one heat.

 

That leads me to a question. Did the sponsoring suppliers include the catalogues for their non UK ranges?

Hornby International now includes Arnold, Electrotren, Jouef, Lima and Rivarossi. Arnold is N and TT (handy for forced perspective) but the others are all 16.5mm gauge.

Bachmann has Liliput (though their H0 product range isn't vast)  and Gaugemaster havea large international range.

We had access to a certain amount of Bachmann product, but nothing much from the others you mention.

[whart57]

34 minutes ago, noiseboy72 said:

We had access to a certain amount of Bachmann product, but nothing much from the others you mention.

 

We ordered a couple of NS vans from Bachmann (Liliput) and I had an American ALCO Mogul, a "Western" style combine (aka brake 3rd) and a couple of box cars on the order for the semi-final. Whether those would have actually appeared if we'd got through is unknown of course. The Hornby International stuff wasn't available.

 

Nor was everything Gaugemaster had on their website, only certain manufacturers. I pointed out the the producers that as most Blockbusters were American it might be useful to be able to buy American style buildings and KBG did get GM to add the Walthers building products to the list of available products.

[CharlieJohnson]

On 23/10/2019 at 19:43, Professor Yaffle said:

 

One design I had come up with for our layout was based on the Hunger Games but this would have been far too difficult to build in the 3 days so this idea was dropped. But I was happy with our Jurassic Park layout. And as it doesn't have a railway in the movie it ment we could be a lot more creative when it came to rolling stock. blockquote widget

Edited October 25, 2019 by CharlieJohnson

[iL Dottore]

A belated reply, I know...

 

I greatly enjoyed the modelling and thought that all the teams were very much on top of their game (not so much the production, but I've commented upon that elsewhere...) But what did puzzle me was why didn't The Railmen of Kent use any of the excellent Harry Potter models from Hornby (or did they? I don't recall seeing them...).

 

Is my impression correct that only a small percentage of their products were available from the sponsors?

[noiseboy72]

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

A belated reply, I know...

 

I greatly enjoyed the modelling and thought that all the teams were very much on top of their game (not so much the production, but I've commented upon that elsewhere...) But what did puzzle me was why didn't The Railmen of Kent use any of the excellent Harry Potter models from Hornby (or did they? I don't recall seeing them...).

 

Is my impression correct that only a small percentage of their products were available from the sponsors?

They probably weren't in stock. Hornby in particular had quite poor stock levels for some items. We found the choice of locos quite limited, but rolling stock was generally better.

[JohnR]

Second semi-final saw a drop in viewers down to 784,000 from 822,000 for the previous episode. It was the 17th most watched program on C5 that week.