GMRC Series 2 - Episode 8 - The Final - 'Surprise Surprise' - 5.40pm

[LocoLadies CF]

2 hours ago, CharlieJohnson said:

We just got confirmation today. 

 Our Miniature Miniatur-Wunderland layout will be attending Warley as Guests of Bachmann Europe. 

  

So you will all get to see the full 3 boards of the winning team Railmen of Kent, plus the Loco Ladies layout and ourselves. 

 

Hope to see many of you again and see many on your there too. 

What a brilliant advertisement for the GMRC. Altogether there will be six very different layouts on show at Warley. Three from the winners of course, plus ours and now the great layout from WCR.  I also understand Team Granthams semi layout will be there ... so it will be lovely to see the layouts again and have a chance to catch up with all the team members ..... and any one else who wants to come and visit us too.

[70000 Britannia]

5 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

They need viewing figures of a million and it doesn't matter how many railway modellers "support the programme" (whatever that means in practical terms) then you aren't going to hit that sort of number. This has to be entertainment with a capital E first and foremost. If your theme is "Great Western Branch lines" then forget it. As has been said many times before, this show is not being made for us. We just get to reap the benefits.

 

Look past the theme and there is a lot of useful modelling we can be inspired by. The challenge to move loads from one side of the layout to another produced many interesting devices that could easily be re-worked slightly to fit in a more conventional layout. Would we have seen these on something with a more serious theme? I suspect not as the modellers would be hung up on minutiae.

 

Well let's have the viewing figures then: how many are newbies, so to speak, to then understand the degree of interest by current enthusiasts?  I suggest to you that it does matter how many modellers view it, because they can at least have a positive effect on encouraging others.  I try to!  I think you underestimate the programme supporters. Incidentally, my "conversations" have, without fail, shown they have watched numerous episodes!

 

You say "look past the theme" - I am well aware of the strategy being employed in the programme.  It is hardly difficult to understand that various approaches and creativity need to be exploited to open up the hobby to a wider audience.

 

IF you are suggesting that I may be microscopic in only wanting some specialised presentation, e.g. GWR branch lines, then you are being presumptious; although I can recognise that your approach might have been simply to categorise certain players that have some opinions different to you.  For the record, my interest is in model railways of all types, nationalities, activities, and in various scenarios.  Forgive me, if I think that going off at a tangent embracing Volcanoes, Jousting, Giraffes, and rockets to the moon, et al, doesn't exactly hit the right note.  But don't get me wrong, I enjoy the programme - we just have differences of opinion.

 

If there is a next series, I will (without hesitation) look forward to watching it through again, in the hope that there is some progression in the mindset, to convey a little more relevance of what our brilliant hobby can deliver.

 

[MarkSG]

3 hours ago, LocoLadies CF said:

What a brilliant advertisement for the GMRC. Altogether there will be six very different layouts on show at Warley. Three from the winners of course, plus ours and now the great layout from WCR.  I also understand Team Granthams semi layout will be there ... so it will be lovely to see the layouts again and have a chance to catch up with all the team members ..... and any one else who wants to come and visit us too.

 

My daughters (aged 13 and 9) are really looking forward to seeing you. They want to see the winning layouts as well, but they were both particularly pleased to see a team which proved that model railways aren't just for boys,

[RJS1977]

12 hours ago, LNER4479 said:

Well I know I'm obviously biased but we all thought it was a great theme and allowed our creativity to go into overdrive. It also felt right doing something completely different to our Heat layout which was, after all, traditional railway modelling.

 

Once we'd agreed on the medieval knights theme then it seemed obvious (to us) that a conventional railway would be just plain wrong. Thereafter we were free to experiment with scale. Wasted on a general TV audience but I'm sure you erudite folks picked up that we were in fact working in G scale (16mm). The big advantage of this was that everything was four times larger and therefore much easier to see (audience) and work with (us).

 

I also thought that the two Railroad 73 chassis did a sterling job rotating the not inconsiderable weight of the circulate stage (there was no central pivot involved). Rather reminded me of those old b/w pictures of three Hornby Dublo Deltics hauling a train of full size people on a raised track at an exhibition.

 

All in all, quite a bit of model railway interest within what is primarily a TV entertainment show. Just depends on your point of view?

 

No, I absolutely agree with what you were saying. My comment was in reply to another poster who said that neither of the semi-final themes allowed conventional layouts to be built, and I just meant that whilst that was probably true of your semi, it wasn't true of the other one.

 

I certainly appreciated your ingenuity in getting all the different animations to work :-)

[RJS1977]

I've just had the interesting thought that as RailMen of Kent had already included the Kings Cross frontage in Bodicea Park, they could have modelled the platforms of KX as part of the Harry Potter layout! 

 

Unfortunately to get the two stations to line up correctly would have resulted in a high level terminus at the front of the second layout, making the rest of that layout invisible....

[D9003]

13 hours ago, LocoLadies CF said:

What a brilliant advertisement for the GMRC. Altogether there will be six very different layouts on show at Warley. Three from the winners of course, plus ours and now the great layout from WCR.  I also understand Team Granthams semi layout will be there ... so it will be lovely to see the layouts again and have a chance to catch up with all the team members ..... and any one else who wants to come and visit us too.

Sorry to disappoint, the Team Grantham semi final layout was dismantled immediately after the show, although some elements of it have been kept for posterity.  Graham will have one board of the Team Grantham heat layout at Warley on his demonstration stand.

[LocoLadies CF]

10 hours ago, MarkSG said:

My daughters (aged 13 and 9) are really looking forward to seeing you. They want to see the winning layouts as well, but they were both particularly pleased to see a team which proved that model railways aren't just for boys,

They will be very welcome.

 

Out of interest, we are being sponsored by PECO with a prize draw of a Peco Setrack Starter pack. We wanted to do a little quiz based on our layout for children. We have some stickers and little sweets (so long as they have parental permission for them!) and Peco are helping out with the costs of doing this and a prize as well. We are grateful to them as the printing costs would have been rather high for us. Warley is so popular that we realised we would have to print around 500 sheets!!!  

 

We hope all our younger visitors will enjoy it. 

 

 

[LocoLadies CF]

38 minutes ago, D9003 said:

Sorry to disappoint, the Team Grantham semi final layout was dismantled immediately after the show, although some elements of it have been kept for posterity.  Graham will have one board of the Team Grantham heat layout at Warley on his demonstration stand.

That’s a shame. I misread Graham’s post and thought it was the whole board. I have no doubt what he takes for the demonstration will attract a lot of interest though. 

[wombatofludham]

One surprise that didn't appear was a miniature Cilla Black.  When I reworked "King's Oak" to include a model of Crossroads I included Jill, Adam and the Ghost of Meg stood talking outside the entrance whilst being filmed by ATV so I'm sure someone could have procured a mini Cilla.

[whart57]

36 minutes ago, wombatofludham said:

One surprise that didn't appear was a miniature Cilla Black.  When I reworked "King's Oak" to include a model of Crossroads I included Jill, Adam and the Ghost of Meg stood talking outside the entrance whilst being filmed by ATV so I'm sure someone could have procured a mini Cilla.

 

Wrong "Surprise Surprise". In fact the producers were horrified to realise the theme could be interpreted as Cilla's TV show and told me at least that they didn't want anything Cilla-inspired

[Ballanparkway]

It would be great to meet the loco ladies, Team Grantham and the Railmen of Kent at Warley. Loco ladies were not in any of our rounds but was very impressed in what they did. Here is a picture of Tim Shaw operating the animated detonator which blew the track up in fire!

[Ballanparkway]

I took a close up shot of the core to the centre of the Earth on our first layout in Heat 4. Seemed to work really effective in the end..

[LNER4479]

If it's not too late, now I've actually watched the final (returned home yesterday from a week's trip to the Harz Mountains - not able to view the programme either on TV or catch up - was therefore grateful for Phil's summary on WoR to give me at least some idea!), thought I'd post a few details of our final layout as - inevitably - there were whole chunks the TV missed out.

 

Team Grantham - Grand Final layout design description.docx

This is the layout description that we submitted to KBG (before we'd even participated in the Heat, remember!). The 'model of the model' was at least featured on the programme (and seemed to get us off to a flying start with the judges) so won't bore you with that. The starting point however was the trackplan, which was all that I had done at the point of submission to KBG.

 

I think one of Team Grantham made a comment along the lines of: 'what evil mind came up with a trackplan like THAT?' Whatever, I think this gives a fair idea of what lay beneath the surface. It was all constructed on site exactly as per this plan but - as was evident - took too long to enable the scenic team to do their bit as intended. The letters are as referred to in the layout description document.

The various numbers in circles are the heights in mm above baseboard level which gives an indication of clearance at the various points where the lines cross and also the gradients involved. Both of these had to be workable for the design to work overall, so a lot of head scratching and fine adjustments to get to this finalised.

Note also the radius numbers (R1, R2 etc). These are of course the set track curve references. This all had to be worked out so as to be able to place the orders accurately (although I did order a few over of each radius, just in case). There are 5 short radius points, one short crossing and 20 yards of streamline.

 

This is the situation at (roughly) lunchtime on day 1. The 'level 0' tracks have been laid; track thereafter was on raised trackbeds and all these sections had been pre-cut (KBG agreement sought for this) and can be seen below, all waiting to be installed - this was perhaps the most useful aspect of the 'model of the model' as it indicated accurately the size and shape of these pieces.

It might not seem a great deal done at this stage but there was an awful lot of marking out required first to ensure track was going to be in the right place before starting to fix it down. Crucially, four out of the five points have been laid as this then allowed Andrew to get started on the electrics - he'd had the morning to make a start on his Carousel. At this point. the overall plan was working quite well.

 

This is what the programme never showed! Andrew  (being Andrew) had worked out an automatic stop, start and point switching arrangement which makes the operation of the trains TOTALLY automatic. This works by a combination of reed switches on the track and magnets underneath the locos. The trains activate (change) the points, stop at pre-determined points, start again once the other train has caught up, etc such that the three key choreographed effects always work in unison as designed. Each train switches to the other circuit at the end. This was all working correctly by the time of the demonstration; what scuppered us - to my eternal shame - was a derailment which we traced afterwards to a slight misalignment where a piece of track was joined to a point using double plastic insulators. These (plastic insulators) never hold the track in alignment as well as metal ones so had led to a situation when it (occasionally) threw off a wagon (not the loco) and of course that man's law dictated that it would happen with the cameras rolling.

 

This shot gives an idea of how it works in practice. The train to the left (Train 1) is held at a stop section whilst Train 2 negotiates the points to get it from Track 2 to Track 1. Once it has done so, it runs over a reed switch which releases Train 1 and changes the points ahead to allow Train 1 to get to the start of Track 2, whereupon it waits. And so on. Ad infinitum. The push buttons and switches on the panel allow manual sequencing if things get out of sync, together with switches activating the other moving features (carousel, swing boats, Go-Karts, etc)

One very amusing moment was when Andrew was first wrestling with all this and had momentarily lost track. 'I have no idea where these trains go!', he yelled! I think that explains the presence of the trackplan with the electrical sections all marked up.

The two trains are identical in appearance (Paul's work, unusually turning his hand to stock building whilst waiting for some scenery base to work on - a long wait, as it turned out) to maximise the impact of (in particular) the first 'surprise' which is the illusion of elevation at the end of the run through the ghost train section. This did work well.

 

Backtracking slightly, this shows the work in installing the elevated sections of track. It's all designed to come apart into its three boards (more anon) and on this board, the Go-Kart track and the miniature railway all had to be installed before the higher level tracks could be put in place. By this stage, the plan was starting to run away with us. When I got a clear run at it (ie no interruptions), installation of these sections took no time at all, but I was undone by the constant 'shhh!'-ing from the production team - I seem to recall the static grassing of James' head going on at this sort of time.

 

The less said about the scenic finish the better. And that's in no way a criticism of the work of Paul, Richie and Pete (vice Tom, who couldn't make the final). There simply wasn't the time for them to do it properly. That having been said, the right hand board was showing the most promise and the various different levels work quite well here I think. The Victorian style lattice arch design was inspired by places like Happy Valley in Scarborough; it was that kind of 'faded glory' seaside holiday camp feel that we were aiming for. Note however that the third piece of track in the background has no supports at all so it is ridiculously suspended in mid-air. Oh, the embarrassment...

 

And here is the scene literally ten minutes after filming ended - the dreadful grass matting being unceremoniously ripped off. I think there was a certain amount of frustration being vented here - you don't often get the chance to hack a layout apart quite like this! It does however reveal more of the internal workings of the design. Another thing not shown incidentally is that the so called 'star train' (in our case the D11 and two Royal Mail coaches) did in fact make its way round a fair chunk of the layout before getting to a point where it fouled a piece of scenery. Amazing to see a 4-4-0 tackle such a roller-coaster track like that.

 

Team Grantham's final layout 'All the fun of the fair' lives on! Despite the disappointment on the date, we unanimously decided that we WOULD finish the layout as we had intended to, so here it is reassembled at Andrew's Dad's (Howard) house where, with the time pressure off, it is being carefully rebuild with decent scenery, etc. I'll try and get some better pictures posted (I think Andrew may have some); the work done by Howard (of GWR Broad Aston fame) is excellent and should hopefully result in an attractive / unusual exhibition layout, to go with our Swiss Heat layout, as a permanent reminder of our unforgettable GMRC experience.

Edited October 31, 2019 by LNER4479

[LocoLadies CF]

3 hours ago, LNER4479 said:

The Victorian style lattice arch design was inspired by places like Happy Valley in Scarborough; it was that kind of 'faded glory' seaside holiday camp feel that we were aiming for

This is a real insight into just how hard the finals were - and in all fairness you have made us really glad that we withdrew because we would not have been able to achieve what we intended doing with all the interruptions and the truncated time you had. So very well done. Your other layouts give a good indication as to what you could have achieved. 

 

I really liked your Victorian lattice arches. Were they scratch built or did you find a kit for it. If so I never found anything as attractive and I have somewhere I would use something similar on my own layout. 

3 hours ago, LNER4479 said:

Team Grantham's final layout 'All the fun of the fair' lives on! Despite the disappointment on the date, we unanimously decided that we WOULD finish the layout as we had intended to, 

So pleased you decided to complete it how it should have been. Hopefully we will be able to see it at an exhibition one day soon. 

[LNER4479]

39 minutes ago, LocoLadies CF said:

I really liked your Victorian lattice arches. Were they scratch built or did you find a kit for it. If so I never found anything as attractive and I have somewhere I would use something similar on my own layout. 

Hi Carol,

 

The arches are a standard Wills item, available through the Peco catalogue (product code SS-26. I think I ordered 16 of them in total!

 

            

They are nice and can be adapted for lots of uses - I have used them for the underneath of one of the bridges on our Grantham exhibition layout, as they seemed a reasonable match for pictures of the bridge we were working from.

 

 

Edited October 31, 2019 by LNER4479

[JohnR]

The Final got 796,000 viewers, up very slightly on the second semi-final, but down on the first semi-final. 

 

Hopefully the disappointing viewing figures dont harm the case for a 3rd series, but its clear that moving it to Saturday and playing about with the timeslot didnt help.

[Keith Addenbrooke]

On 06/11/2019 at 07:36, JohnR said:

The Final got 796,000 viewers, up very slightly on the second semi-final, but down on the first semi-final. 

 

Hopefully the disappointing viewing figures dont harm the case for a 3rd series, but its clear that moving it to Saturday and playing about with the timeslot didnt help.

Thank you for sharing these - interesting to see them.

I agree that the change of day and progressive changes in time can be expected to have an impact, but I wonder if the very different theme given for the first semi-final might also have had a bit of a knock-on effect which can't be quantified? The discussion here on RMweb (and, I guess, elsewhere) after SF1 suggested it took the series further out of the comfort zone for some viewers.  Just a thought.

[Ian Morgan]

11 minutes ago, Keith Addenbrooke said:

The discussion here on RMweb (and, I guess, elsewhere) after SF1 suggested it took the series further out of the comfort zone for some viewers.  Just a thought.

 

It may have taken it out of the comfort zone of 'serious' modellers, but might have drawn in more general TV viewers, maybe?

 

 

[D9020 Nimbus]

22 minutes ago, Ian Morgan said:

 

It may have taken it out of the comfort zone of 'serious' modellers, but might have drawn in more general TV viewers, maybe?

 

 

Only if they were watching it in the first place... it's always easier to lose viewers than gain them, IMHO.

[Legend]

I think moving it to Sat night probably had the single biggest effect . I must admit that I have both the second SF and the final on my Virgin box but I havent bothered to catch up as yet as I found the first SF to be a bit far out for me . I doubt I'll bother .  Thats no reflection on the folks that took part , clearly some great modelling going on ,and I hope that it has attracted some to the hobby,  but I really do think the style of the program , making incursions into fantasy, turned some people off .

 

I wonder of the viewing audience how many were modellers that were turned off v general public that were turned on .  Possibly a tricky balancing act. Maybe there were more modellers initially watching than some people think.   I still believe the program portrayed railway modelling as something it wasn't what with volcanoes, earthquakes and dinosaurs . So even if folk took an interest  their first exhibition is probably not what they will be expecting . Still hopefully the colour , movement and engineering of model railways will keep them on board and in that respect any TV exposure can only be a good thing.

[Corbs]

Many of you may already have seen/heard this already, but for those who may be interested, I chatted to Callum and Adam of Series 1's Railway Video Division team, and they were also able to give insight into how the show works behind the scenes. They were also full of praise for the series 2 teams, as the ante was most certainly upped. Grantham got a special mention for mixing so many different types of 'gimmick' (a word often used in a derogatory sense, but here I say it with affection).

 

Here's a link to the interview:

 

[noiseboy72]

6 hours ago, Legend said:

I think moving it to Sat night probably had the single biggest effect . I must admit that I have both the second SF and the final on my Virgin box but I havent bothered to catch up as yet as I found the first SF to be a bit far out for me . I doubt I'll bother .  Thats no reflection on the folks that took part , clearly some great modelling going on ,and I hope that it has attracted some to the hobby,  but I really do think the style of the program , making incursions into fantasy, turned some people off .

 

I wonder of the viewing audience how many were modellers that were turned off v general public that were turned on .  Possibly a tricky balancing act. Maybe there were more modellers initially watching than some people think.   I still believe the program portrayed railway modelling as something it wasn't what with volcanoes, earthquakes and dinosaurs . So even if folk took an interest  their first exhibition is probably not what they will be expecting . Still hopefully the colour , movement and engineering of model railways will keep them on board and in that respect any TV exposure can only be a good thing.

 

As a team captain in SF2, please give it a go, as there's real railway modelling from all 3 teams and much less fantasy. In fact in the final there's plenty of transferable skills and Whose Counting Rivets in particular produced a really good "traditional" layout with some really fun animations and effects to boot.

Edited November 7, 2019 by noiseboy72

[Railpassion]

I thought I wasn't going to enjoy but by the end I really did. Yes I wanted to see more of the layouts and the build, but it's a good effort.

I lived in Switzerland and went to exhibitions in France where I would say the average age was at least twenty to thirty years younger. 

We need younger people to be inspired. Generation X has not committed to clubs and societies (across all pursuits) in the way the previous generation did. There is a significant gap. There are war game shops and this is thriving, if we can stimulate war gamers to try railway modelling. Fun layouts, diaromas and puzzles is a great way to get people started, or indeed started again. 

 

My local model shop reports a significant increase in sales since the show began. 

 

 

[Zomboid]

I've just caught up on the whole series (having missed it when it was broadcast, but with a 5 week old baby there's plenty of opportunity to watch catch up through the night...).

 

Personally I thoroughly enjoyed it. A shame that Grantham were a bit too ambitious in the final, given another day that would have been magnificent. I was impressed by everyone involved though.