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

[LNER4479]

6 hours ago, CharlieJohnson said:

It was so hot over those days. I think we spent a lot of time taking breaks inside the tunnel by the station it was lovely and cold inside. Plus I was daft enough to wear that T-Rex outfit during the demonstrations. 

 

Well done Charlie for what you did with the scratchbuild challenge items - inspired!

[CharlieJohnson]

1 hour ago, LNER4479 said:

Well done Charlie for what you did with the scratchbuild challenge items - inspired!

Thank you. Tbh for about the first hour I was totally clueless about what to make using those items but did have loads of fun creating what I did. 

[Billystanier]

2 hours ago, noiseboy72 said:

Ok, bonus point time. 

 

Can anybody identify the loco pulling our circus train and what we did to alter its appearance?

Did you use a WD 2-8-0 (LNER version) with some home made german-style smoke deflectors?

 

Out of interest, there was a James Bond themed exhibition layout that was knocking around the North West a few years ago. They had the circus train, the Goldeneye train, the Orient Express (from Russia with Love) and all sorts of industry such as Drax Shuttles and Goldfinger Smelting Works. For the Mercedes, they used a scale car fitted with rail wheels and towed it behind a train using a small piece of thread.

[LocoLadies CF]

Really  enjoyed watching last nights semi final - especially as it would have been the one we would have taken part in had we gone though. Withdrawing  after our heat  for medical reasons doesn’t hide the fact that we would have been up against some absolutely fierce competition.  The layouts were exciting and the presentations were fabulous.  Well done to all of the teams. Can’t wait to see the final next week.  Bad luck Muddle and Go Nowhere, it was a close run thing. I loved the drunken bus driver!!! 

[noiseboy72]

9 minutes ago, Billystanier said:

Did you use a WD 2-8-0 (LNER version) with some home made german-style smoke deflectors?

 

Out of interest, there was a James Bond themed exhibition layout that was knocking around the North West a few years ago. They had the circus train, the Goldeneye train, the Orient Express (from Russia with Love) and all sorts of industry such as Drax Shuttles and Goldfinger Smelting Works. For the Mercedes, they used a scale car fitted with rail wheels and towed it behind a train using a small piece of thread.

Correct! Had we had a little more time, it would have had red wheels and some German transfers.

 

Yes, we found a number of models of the trains during our research. If we'd built this for the heat, we would have modelled more of the structures, including a representation of the Peterborough sugar works as a backdrop to the Goldeneye train, along with the Zorin quarry from A View to a Kill. In the semi. there just isn't time to build as much as you would like on the day!

[Pacific231G]

3 hours ago, CharlieJohnson said:

Thank you. Tbh for about the first hour I was totally clueless about what to make using those items but did have loads of fun creating what I did. 

I have to say that I was willing Who's Counting Rivets to win after I saw your preserved dino skeleton made I think from the eyelash curler. Using the contents of the bottle that way was  pure genius and I think Kathy's quiet wow! was  genuine . BTW ISTR from the movie that the tour "jeeps" were really guided vehicles tricked up to look like jeeps so using the boring pre-laid oval as the guideway was perfectly authentic. 

I thought this semi-final was the closest competition yet with all three very strong contendors. In the end I agreed with the judging but well done to all of you. 

 

1 hour ago, LocoLadies CF said:

Really  enjoyed watching last nights semi final - especially as it would have been the one we would have taken part in had we gone though. Withdrawing  after our heat  for medical reasons doesn’t hide the fact that we would have been up against some absolutely fierce competition. 

I may have missed an earlier post from you but didn't realise you'd had to withdraw. What a shame.

 

I'm finding the difference between what the presenters are saying and what we know from competitors quite amusing such as, the lack of pre-builds not being to further challenge the teams but because there'd be no time to make them between the heats and the final stages.

Point of possible interest from Billy Stanier's post. The Orient Express in From Russia with Love was the only really authentic one I'm aware of from any movie. It actually departed from the real Sirkeci Gar*  in Istanbul and the formation seemed about right for the train in the 1960s with a couple of CIWL sleeping cars and a diner but mostly non CIWL couchettes and day carriages.

 

*Sirkeci Gar (Sirkeci Station) Is a terminus that certainly deserves to be modelled as it had just one main line platform with a long bay and a couple of later adjoining suburban electric platforms plus a  train ferry to take goods wagons across the Bosphorous to the Asian side. Despite the grandeur of its main building it was, in railway terms, a surprisingly modest terminus for the grand international expresses it handled.

 

 

Edited October 20, 2019 by Pacific231G

[LocoLadies CF]

11 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

I may have missed an earlier post from you but didn't realise you'd had to withdraw. What a shame.

There was no reason to make anything of our withdrawal as it was a decision that the whole team made. The lady with the crutches, Chrissy, in particular had problems afterwards and she was such an important member of our team, we decided we couldn’t have carried on without her. It wasn’t ever mentioned on the show but that is fair enough. 

 

Anyway, the fact that we have been invited to show our layout as special guests to the Warley NMRE next month is just so amazing that we are more than content. Especially as the rebuild we have done ready for it has sorted out some untidy bits we couldn’t quite finish!!

[Phil Parker]

1 hour ago, noiseboy72 said:

Correct! Had we had a little more time, it would have had red wheels and some German transfers.

 

Or you could have gone "From Russia With Love" and painted a Black 5 green to pretend it was German!

 

[Phil Parker]

1 hour ago, noiseboy72 said:

Correct! Had we had a little more time, it would have had red wheels and some German transfers.

 

Or you could have gone "From Russia With Love" and painted a Black 5 green to pretend is was German!

[Phil Parker]

My summary of this edition is now on-line: https://www.world-of-railways.co.uk/reviews/Others/the-great-model-railway-challenge-series-2-semi-final-2-blockbus

[jcm@gwr]

1 hour ago, Phil Parker said:

 

Or you could have gone "From Russia With Love" and painted a Black 5 green to pretend it was German!

 

 

20 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

 

Or you could have gone "From Russia With Love" and painted a Black 5 green to pretend is was German!

 

We appear to have the 'New York Syndrome' here, so good they named it twice!

[Pacific231G]

11 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

Or you could have gone "From Russia With Love" and painted a Black 5 green to pretend it was German!

 

Still on Blockbuster fims but going a bit

 

The steam locos in From Russia With Love are a mixed bunch. According to location sources "Zagreb" and "Belgrade" were  shot at Sirkeci terminus  in Istanbul though the geography doesn't quite work for this shot (the train would be arriving from the buffer end) so I think it may have been shot at  station in the outskirts though the background to the acted sequences does look like Sirkeci. In any case the loco appears to be a 45501 class Consolidation built in France in 1924 for the Chemin de Fer Oriental (Istanbul-Sofia)

According to Trains of Turkey, the other loco with smoke deflectors was 56501, one of 53 BR52 Kriegsloks built for supply to Turkey by Henschel in 1943

There is though another loco that appears in one passing shot without smoke deflectors that looks at first sight to be of French origin. I think it's a 4-8-0 or a 2-8-0 but either way it doesn't   accord with any Turkish type I can find all of which in any case seem to have had round buffers

Looking more closely, the lettering on the buffer beam may possibly be RENFE and the square buffers, and the format of the buffer beam characters do look Spanish.  The train it's hauling appears to be made up of a brake van (fourgon) a teak CIWL vehicle followed by six blue Voitures Lits. Since From Russia with Love did no filming in Spain, this was probably a stock shot (a shot either not filmed for a specific production or filmed for another production)

The other "Orient Express" that appeared in the movie was the notorious couple of shots clearly filmed on BR but colour reversed to make BR maroon turn magically into "continental" green.

 

Until I spotted the green  shunting disk I'd always just assumed that these were shots of Southern Region trains but these were presumably either taken from stock or specially filmed in Britain when the editor Peter Hunt found that there weren't enough shots from the Turkish filming for his style of fast editing.

 

 

Edited October 20, 2019 by Pacific231G

[TheQ]

5 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

 BTW ISTR from the movie that the tour "jeeps" were really guided vehicles tricked up to look like jeeps so using the boring pre-laid oval as the guideway was perfectly authentic. 

 

 

 

Jeep..???.  JEEP??? 

That was a landrover 110 station wagon.  None of your American rubbish please.. 

[Billystanier]

I’m pretty sure the greened BR clip from From Russia With Love is a stock clip as I’ve seen it in ungreened form in another film. The problem is I can’t remember which film! Anyone help out?

[Pacific231G]

1 hour ago, TheQ said:

Jeep..???.  JEEP??? 

That was a landrover 110 station wagon.  None of your American rubbish please.. 

Well they used American rubbish in the movie . The tour vehicles were converted Ford Explorers powered and guided by a track in the ground (in the book they were Toyota Landcruisers), Petrol engined  Jeep Wranglers were  used by park staff for getting around on the island.

 

I like the designation Station Wagon. It suggests that the proper use of a car is to drive no further than to the local station and then drop or pick up people who sensibly use the train for the main part of their journey; also to collect the things delivered by train to the station's parcels office. They were originally known as "depot hacks".  We can but dream. 

Edited October 20, 2019 by Pacific231G

[CharlieJohnson]

It's fun to see what clips in the episode are shown out of order to how they were filmed. 

 

Cause one of my scratchbuild items is on the layout during day one in the show. Plus WCR were filmed first for the challenge then Railmen of Kent and lastly M&GNW. 

 

There are also many other clips shown out of order so it makes the layouts look like they are rapidly progressing then suddenly double back. 

[CharlieJohnson]

6 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

I have to say that I was willing Who's Counting Rivets to win after I saw your preserved dino skeleton made I think from the eyelash curler. Using the contents of the bottle that way was  pure genius and I think Kathy's quiet wow! was  genuine. 

 

I still love watching her reaction back and playing it over. To get that reaction and an audible wow from Kathy really had made my day. 

Plus during day one it was my 28th Birthday so got to enjoy my birthday doing something I love. 

 

Nothing I made for the SBC was planned everything was made up there on the day as I had actually forgot there was a scratchbuild challenge on until we were called up to stand in our spots. 

 

I ended up making the weather detection system to use the metal from the head scratcher, the skeleton in the Amber was the first one built as I wanted it to mirror the mosquito in the Amber from the end of John hammonds cane. 

 

And the nodding Dino was a quick 10 mins build as I wanted something to move and after playing with the thing I saw a nodding animation take shape. 

 

Really happy with how they all turned out and as I say (or lack of) I was speak less when I was told I had won. 

[RJS1977]

11 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

Or you could have gone "From Russia With Love" and painted a Black 5 green to pretend is was German!

 

Complete with Midland signal box!

[whart57]

22 hours ago, CharlieJohnson said:

Thank you. Tbh for about the first hour I was totally clueless about what to make using those items but did have loads of fun creating what I did. 

 

Your SBC in the heat was pretty good too.

 

(Steve Flint told me my effort was the most creative he had seen in a SBC, Kathy had a very different opinion though)

[Hroth]

15 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

I like the designation Station Wagon. It suggests that the proper use of a car is to drive no further than to the local station and then drop or pick up people who sensibly use the train for the main part of their journey; also to collect the things delivered by train to the station's parcels office.

 

Depending on its use, a vehicle could be called different names and still be the same!

 

A station wagon would be one for as you say, moving people and goods to/from the railway, or it could be an estate car doing general work around a large estate, ot it might be called a shooting brake when carrying a shooting party out to slaughter some pheasants or grouse.

 

Horse-drawn or motorised, the names stuck (more or less!)

[RJS1977]

And of course the same vehicle could carry out all three functions in the same day!

[RedgateModels]

On 19/10/2019 at 20:55, noiseboy72 said:

We was robbed!

 

 

Well Chris, not so much robbed, but I thought you were not last. Seems that the scratchbuild challenge decides the results as the modelling is so close these days.

 

Really looking forward to welcoming your "007" layout to our little show next March [Shameless Plug]

[noiseboy72]

29 minutes ago, RedgateModels said:

 

Well Chris, not so much robbed, but I thought you were not last. Seems that the scratchbuild challenge decides the results as the modelling is so close these days.

 

Really looking forward to welcoming your "007" layout to our little show next March [Shameless Plug]

Actually, this is Matt, the team captain... Professor Yaffle is Chris!

 

And yes, looking forward to bringing the layout. If you are free this Saturday, they are on display at Rocket Railways in Grantham from 09.00 - 17.00.

[Guest CLARENCE]

Yes a fascinating show, with some great modelling, but one thing spoilt it for me; the shameless and very childish "puns"

scattered about all the time! Please stop!

[Ian Morgan]

For the series 1 final, instead of a scratch build challenge, they gave each team an open wagon that we had to adapt and load to depict our theme and our team. All 5 wagons were to hauled through all 5 layouts as a goods train at the end. After all the wasted time trying to get the Hitachi 800 train to run at an acceptable speed (it only did either 5mph or 200mph) there was no time to run the goods train, or the Flying Scotsman and Pendennis Castle tribute to the late Sir William McAlpine, and the wagons were almost entirely removed from the final edit.

 

This appears to be the only photo I have of our wagon, at the end of the train. It had Brunel operating his steam powered time machine, which consisted of part of a beam engine and some flashing lights built around a PP3 battery.