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This sub-forum is for the 2019 series and any individual entry topics. Content from the 2018 series can be found in the Challenges Archive.

What have you done with your layouts?


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I thought it might be nice to see what's happened to the layouts from the 2 series. I know some are being exhibited, some have found new homes and some have been broken up and recycled. 

 

I'll start the ball rolling...

Team Muddle and Go Nowhere have loaned theirs to a local model shop in Grantham and he's rented extra space so that they can both be displayed. He's also putting out some feelers to see if there's any interest in setting up model railway club in the town. If this goes ahead, we'll donate the layouts to the club.

 

 

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Edited by noiseboy72
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We will be exhibiting our Bucolic Britain layout as guests at Warley NMRE. After that the board will be split - we got the baseboard that was 4x4x2. I am having the 2ft section either to incorporate in my layout at home or turn it into an exhibition layout.  Never having exhibited before, I will decide after Warley as to whether I would want to carry on exhibiting!!

 

Chrissy is having the rest  of the board. She will make a revised layout and scenics on it with her grandchildren. 

 

We are a loose affiliation of friends and family leading busy lives, so LocoLadies will come back together again if invited ..... for instance a chance to go to the third series GMRC as visitors  (if it happens)  would be great fun!!! :)

 

There are going to be a number of articles about us in various model railway magazines, and any fees negotiated have been passed on to Breast Cancer Awareness.  

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Edited by LocoLadies CF
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Component recovery for the Cambrian Coasters. Here are my pre-build  (how I hate the overuse of pre these days)  items placed where they will end up on my home layout.

 

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The photo was taken about a week after our heat so you can see that we didn't hang about. In fact I built these structures with recycling into my home layout in mind as it seemed pointless to build something just for the challenge. My comrades have all got bits and pieces from the layout appropriate to their interests and I'm told that the baseboards will next be seen underneath an O gauge layout.

 

 

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Our Luctor et Emergo layout was dismantled on its return home. It was never a practical proposition for the exhibition circuit and our team members either avoid exhibitions or are already committed to other layouts on the circuit. I did approach the Watersnoodmuseum in Zeeland back in April whether they'd be interested in taking it over after the recording but they never got back to me. Not until after our heat had been broadcast and they'd had a tip off from another source ..........

 

The upshot is that we are going to take some of the features - the lock gates, the signal cottage, the causeway - and make a small diorama which will then hopefully go into their museum.

 

I think I can give a quick plug here - the museum website is https://watersnoodmuseum.nl/, click on the union flag for the English language version. The province of Zeeland is a great place for a long weekend or week's holiday, only three hours from the Channel Tunnel terminal at Calais or a bit over an hour from Hook of Holland, with typical Dutch towns (Veere is particularly good tourist eyecandy), massive sandy beaches and, as you'd expect for the Netherlands, uber cycle-friendly.

Edited by whart57
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War of the Worlds will be at LFORM at Ally Pally. Currently it is stored inside Hattons’ warehouse thanks to their kind offer of space. It has been carefully split into three sections to be transported which took a little doing. 

 

Long term future for it is uncertain. Despite impressing a lot of people and generating a lot of questions and interest from the public, it has no long term home at the moment and will likely get stripped after Ally Pally. 
 

Halloween and Dr Evil’s volcano lair were dismantled on site at end of filming of the final. The boards were donated to Team Corby for their club. Scenery bit and pieces have been recycled into several members’ own layouts. I have the Bates motel from Halloween on my own layout; it was a very nice Noch card kit and too good to junk despite Simon hating building it up. 
 

 

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This was how we stored our layouts prior to splitting them...

The layouts survived very well with minimal damage. We've now split them and have almost finished rewiring the animations and all the track is operational. 

 

Getting them into the van in 1 piece at Fawley was "interesting"! Many thanks to the other teams and TV crew who all lent a hand. Getting them back out was a lot easier, as we had a forklift and expert operator who extracted them in a few minutes. The layouts we then put onto some old stage decks with 7' legs. A bit of bracing and we had some nice storage that was out of the way of idle hands until we had located a permanent home for them.

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Here is our winning layout from Heat 5 (the Swiss one with the radio telescope) back at team HQ, having some of its rough edges attended to by team members Paul and Tom.

 

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Despite the constraints of the rapid build, it was designed and built to be capable of being split down into three, including our usual sliding rail joiners at baseboard joins, so there was little work required to transport it back safely from Fawley Hill. It is the intention to develop it further as an exhibition layout in its own right as a bit of light relief from our 'hardcore' exhibition layouts Grantham and Shap. The idea is to add a fourth board on the right hand side and to re-lay the branchline as a HOm (metre gauge) line, as many of the Swiss mountain lines are.

 

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In the meantime, I shall be taking one of the boards (the left hand one, as above) along to the NEC at the end of the month as part of my layout planning / design demo at Warley (stand A82).

We can also now announce that the full layout will be on display and working (as per the GMRC episode) at the Warners / BRM 'National Festival of Railway Modelling' show at Peterborough in just under five weeks time (7th/8th December). At least four members of Team Grantham will be there with the layout so, if you're coming along, be great to see you there.

 

In other news, our semi-final layout (knights of the roundabout table) is no more (although the removable items have been kept for old time's sake) but the final 'funfair' layout has been taken in hand and is currently being rebuilt as we would have wanted it to be finished. It will make its first appearance at next year's Hartlepool show, together with the Swiss layout (Paul is Hartlepool show manager).

 

Edited by LNER4479
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  • 3 weeks later...
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So, a few of this year's layouts were to be seen at Warley:

 

One board of Team Grantham's 'Race to the Stars' layout was on a layout planning demonstration stand, along with the scale model of their fun fair layout.

 

All three of the 'Men of Kent' team's layouts were on show. They are moving to the Ashford Model Railway Museum 'Pop-Up' museum today.

 

The LocoLadies' charming layout was being displayed for a final time before being split up to form new layouts for their grand children. They sold off the crocheted trees on the Sunday afternoon in aid of a breast cancer charity, and also formally presented one to Kathy Millatt, as she appreciated them so much ;)

 

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On 25/11/2019 at 12:28, Ian Morgan said:

The LocoLadies' charming layout was being displayed for a final time before being split up to form new layouts for their grand children. They sold off the crocheted trees on the Sunday afternoon in aid of a breast cancer charity, and also formally presented one to Kathy Millatt, as she appreciated them so much ;)

 

 

Lovely gestures - which I trust were greatly appreciated and well received by everyone on the "receiving end".

 

To be honest, I would have really loved to have been there - I'd have welcomed the chance to see some of this year's GMRC entries and meet their builders - in fact, I'd actually been looking forward to this show for the previous 12 months.

 

However, I didn't get any choice in the matter - due to a close (and elderly) relative being in very poor health. (This is neither the time nor the place to go into any detail on this matter ... .)

 

Anyway, that's more than enough about me and my family.

 

 

I hope "Warley 2019" was enjoyed by everyone who was there - in whatever capacity.

 

I also hope I'm able to be there next year - with any luck also getting the chance to admire the handy work of entrants in another year's GMRC.

 

Here's hoping.

 

Regards,

 

Huw.

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On 25/11/2019 at 12:28, Ian Morgan said:

The LocoLadies' charming layout was being displayed for a final time before being split up to form new layouts for their grand children. They sold off the crocheted trees on the Sunday afternoon in aid of a breast cancer charity, and also formally presented one to Kathy Millatt, as she appreciated them so much 

Thank you for this. We had a great time at Warley and I am still stunned at the enthusiasm for buying the crochet trees. We got over £300 for them and in total were able to give £480 to breast cancer charities.  This included Corina and my fees for writing articles, and a percentage of her superb railway art cards sales. Sorry to have to dismantle Bucolic Britain but we had a lot of fun with it. What a year!! 

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All set to take Per Ardua Adastra to the Warner's Peterborough show this weekend. Here are a couple of pix immediately prior to stripdown - did I tell you we're in current edition in Continental Modeller?(!)

 

Come and say hi if you're going to the show.

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We now have 3 shows confirmed for 2020.

 

29 Feb - 1 Mar Lincs MRS @ Newark Showground - Semi-final layout

7-8 March Mansfield Railway Show - Semi-final layout

4-5 April Bingham MRS @ Cotgrave Miner's Welfare - Heat layout

 

The layouts are still on display at Rocket Railways and can be viewed most Mondays and Fridays, 9-5.

 

Further info on our website - www.mgnr.uk

 

Edited by noiseboy72
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  • 1 year later...

After the inevitable long hiatus ...

 

Thought I'd resurrect this thread as we're due on display this coming weekend with our two surviving layouts. The Great British Model Railway Show at the British Motor Museum, Gaydon is the venue https://gbmrs.com/

 

As well as our Team Grantham's Heat 5 layout (with working radio telescope), it will be the public debut of our rebuilt Final layout 'All the Fun of the Fair'. I last posted about it on the Episode 8 - The Final thread as below:

At risk of a slight 'spoiler alert', here are a couple of low-res pix to whet your appetite:

 

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It's now almost entirely automated. So just needs one of us to supervise at a time. Various of the 'features', like the water slide and the miniature train are push-button operated from the front (for the younger - and not so young? - members of the audience). The ferris wheel you can see is the standard Faller product and is fully working, with all gondolas lit (this was not available for purchase from Gaugemaster at the critical moment in the build up to the competition so is a new addition, to belatedly achieve the original layout plan). There are a few more scenic items waiting to be attached on Friday evening(!)

 

Both layouts will also be at next year's Hartlepool show and we'll see if any more invites come along in the meantime. Do say 'hi' if you happen to see us at either show.

 

Graham, 'Team Grantham'

 

 

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Update following GBMRS Gaydon show appearance.

 

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Here is the rebuilt final layout with all the remaining details added (for now), set up at the exhibition. Numerous working features can all be push button operated by the viewing public (young and old!)

 

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Although still very much - and always will be - a GMRC layout, we've tried to achieve a 'reasonable' finish, to the level we would have liked had we had the original time allocated on the show. There's a fairly crude attempt at forced perspective / compression going on as the main scale is 7mm but with OO/HO nearer the backscene.

 

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The ferris wheel is the major addition. It was always part of the plan but Gaugemaster did not have the Faller kit in stock at the time of ordering for GMRC 2019.

 

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We also took the Swiss layout, which is an opportunity to further scratch a continental / HO itch.

 

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However, it reverts to pure audience entertainment mode for the rocket launch sequence.

 

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Much to our surprise and delight, the two layouts together were voted 'best in show' by the visiting public. Apologies therefore to all 'serious' layout owners for such a result!

 

Edited by LNER4479
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Congratulations on your success. Despite being in the process of building a "serious" if fictitious layout I thoroughly enjoyed the GMRC programmes and have great admiration for the imagination and modeling skill shown by the teams. I was able to see your swiss layout at Peterborough last time and have a chat with the team. It really does make a great model railway.

I think the ideas and "tricks" of the fairground railway were great and I'd love to see the completed version in action if you are ever showing it anywhere near Norfolk. It's a pity the model is somewhat more entertaining than my experience of real "fairground" railways in most cases.

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