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Meursault 2019


Philou
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Hello chums,

 

My first topic in the Continental section!

 

Andy Hayter, of this parish, and I, met up in Meursault for their tri-annual show. Meursault is to be found in the Bourgogne (Burgundy) area of France about 40km south of Dijon. It lies within a wine making area and is surrounded by vineyards - acres of it (hectares if you wish). Lots of famous named wines all around such as Nuits St Georges, Pommard etc.

 

The show was held in the local sports centre and takes place every three years. 7000 visitors last year and they were hoping for 10000 this year.

 

There were three very big layouts, a couple of medium sized ones and the remainder were small to very small - I didn't count them up but there were around a dozen or so. I was really impressed by the standard of the layouts in terms of décor but unfortunately I came away with the feeling of 'MEH' and I wasn't the only one. Hon. Chair and Hon. Sec of my club were also there together with three lads of the junior section and they were of a similar view. Why?

 

The issues were these: All had proscenium arches that limited the view - not one had their fiddle yards in view (which I like to see) - and of course because they all had backgrounds no interaction between the public and the operators. All save one were at a height that neither children nor persons of limited mobility could see (though a couple did have some hop-ups for children to get a better view - nothing for handicapped persons). Too many operators being on the outside of the layouts thus cutting down on the viewing area and of course being busy - no interaction. To cap it all (being France), nothing much was running between 12 and 2. I know people need to get a bite to eat but c'mon, there is the possibility of doing shifts - no?

 

 

On the positive side, the standards of modelling, I thought, were very good (though a lot of layouts seemed just a little too 'clean'). The trade was well represented - you could buy just about anything you wanted. Whilst all the rolling stock was continental (well it was in France:D), Peco, Gaugemaster, Romford wheels and other UK based accessories were available.

 

Here are some photos, though they're not brilliant as the camera I used was a small compact and I tend to press too hard on the shutter :(. (I have no names for the layouts - but if anyone wants them, I'm sure Hon. Chair will help me out.)

 

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General view of one of the trade areas - saw a lovely 4-2-0 Crampton that I thought could go with the proposed 'generic' 4- and 6-wheelers proposed by Hattons. Unfortunately at €380 for a kit - NBL!!!

 

I'm going to have to upload pictures two at a time due to their size.

 

A bientôt,

 

Philou

 

 

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............. and some more ........

 

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Nice rake of fuel tankers

 

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Another urban/industrial theme ............... I want to come back to this one in the next post as I thought the décor was exquisite. Spot the 'bus-on-a-bridge' :).

 

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

 

 

Edited by Philou
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Coming back to the layout above .................

 

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Note the trees above the tunnel - here's a detail below. Someone took a long time doing these .........

 

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More to come ..............

 

 

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This next layout (diorama?) was based on a real location ................

 

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But look at the sleepering (perhaps a little clean) bleached but more correctly the split ends wire-strapped just like the real thing and all in HO. Also I spotted that the timbers were spaced out more correctly reducing the distance apart on approaching the fish-plates - top marks IMHO ....... (next post)

 

 

 

 

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........ the sleepers .......

 

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The detail really impressed me!

 

I'll that for tonight and I'll post some more tomorrow that will include a working ferry, viaducts, HOm, some possible ideas for a 'cake-box' challenge and a question from me regarding some rolling stock.

 

Cheers and bonsoir,

 

Philip

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It was good to met up with Philou having battled with operation escargot ( a convoy of trucks running up the motorway at 5kph) to get to Meursault. 

 

I have to agree with Philou's overall impression.  Many good layouts in their own right but put together there were many which were too similar - the big (no huge) layout set in a big (mainly forested) scene with trains running on the main line(s) but nothing else.  These rely then on the high quality of the modelling to hold interest for the time when no items of rolling stock are in motion or view.  

 

I was unsurprised by the thin services on the layouts between noon and 2pm.  This is after all France, where lunch, if not quite a religion, is certainly an art form.  Unfortunately from what I could see lunch was more of an impressionistic offering than a masterpiece.   Lunchtime did give the P87 layout (docks - ceinture) the chance to run near enough prototypically - ie almost nothing happening.

 

Will I be going again? - quite probably yes.  Despite the criticisms the standard of modelling was exceptional.  Further, the number of exhibitions in my part of France means that each is to be cherished as an event to enjoy.  

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The Docks - Ceinture layout is above with the well displayed winter wood scene.

 

As promised, here are a couple more photos - I may not be able to upload many this lunchtime as 'other things must be done' -_- :

 

Here's a working ferry - something that's not seen everyday. The layout was based on a real island in the Baltic. They were quite open in that they used standard gauge instead of narrow gauge stock as that was what was easily available in RTR (should have waited for all the new Bachmann/Peco stock ;)):

 

Upload failed - I'll try again in another post

 

 

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Thanks very much for these Philip. I've had the same impression of French exhibition layouts. It's very rare to see a layout being operated as opposed to simply having trains running through often beautifully modelled scenery. In the case of modules, its often the same train passing through each scene repeatedly as it meanders its way around a circuit of separate scenes. The club layouts seem to be the most prone to this and it's often the personal layouts that offer something more. That's not to say that many British exhibition layouts aren't exactly the same but you're more likely to see someone shunting a yard or a station on the next layout. Though it's something of a cliché, the classic British BLT (Branch Line Terminus) and even more so its big brother Main Line Terminus does require that something is done to each train. 

 

There are exceptions- Gaël and Olivier Taniou (who are a delightful young couple) do operate their relatively small layouts and I was fascinated by Somatfer when I saw it at RailONorm in Pacy some years ago,

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This was a small but very well modelled  industrial shunting layout with a few wagons operated by a simple but effective system  .

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  Requiring every dispatched wagon to be weighed was also a nice idea that added quite a lot to the work required to shunt each train. I saw their current Atmofer at Trains Mania in Lille in 2017. That was an excellent show but, apart from the Smiths with their 1:32 scale Mers les Bains, there were few other layouts actually being operated in our sense of the word. 

 

The other operating layout that has impressed me is Jenesaizou which I finally got to see at the large biennial Orleans show in November 2016

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This is a reasonable sized terminus and, whenever a train wasn't arriving or departing, the yard was being shunted. It's a privately built layout by Christophe Pitault, one of the local club's members, who can call on a team of operators to keep things moving.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdPZGT1pkGw

There were a couple of other layouts with some degree of operation, mostly H0m terminus-fiddle yards but the undoubted stars of the show were Gordon and Maggie Gravett and Pempoul's gare did get shunted.

These and a few others apart, most of what I've seen at French exhibtions are either large club boucles with a station or stretch of open line in view in the foreground and storage loops behind or a series of linked proscenium module. There's usually plenty of very nice, sometimes superb, modelling but whenever I've helped operate a layout over there, we've generally been the only ones doing so and certainly the only ones using a timetable or an operating schema. 

 

All this has led me to conclude that, with many exceptions; Americans tend to model entire sections of railroad or even a complete short line  with trains running from station to station (but too large to exhibit ; British modellers prefer to build a single individual station;, French modellers, scenes of la Belle France with trains running through them; and German modellers, very busy scenes with lots of trains going in every direction. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Edited by Pacific231G
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Things 'that had to be done' have been done and I am back. I'll post some more in an hour or so, as, France being France, the evening meal is being sorted as I write, so it'll be 'down tools' but not 'en grève' 'til about 8:30pm (or 20h30 if you wish).

 

Toodle pip,

 

Philip

 

 

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5 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

I recollect crossing the Rhone on something similar, owned by Salins du Midi. That would have been about 1980.

A picture of it here https://www.flickr.com/photos/91759729@N08/45777807062/in/photostream/

and the preceding  image. It always seemed odd having the shunter going over with the wagons but presumably  it was more economic than keeping one each side. ISTR that the Salins du Midi ferry coud only carry the loco and a couple of wagons.

I rather like the idea of the equivalent of the Freisian islands off the French coast. I can't help tihnking that had tout auto France had the same attitude torailways as Germany. Oleron and Re might have kept their metre gauge railways  and even remained car free. one could envisage a wagon ferry  to move goods to and from the islands.

 

There were other wagon ferries  (as opposed to fully fledged train ferries) in Europe. There used to be  wagon barges (US car floats) in the port of Venice and, until the 1950s, tug propelled "car floats" similar to those used in New York also took wagons across the two and a half miles of the Bosphorus from Europe to Asia from slips close to Sirkeci (terminus of the Orient Express) station in Istanbul and to Haydarpaşa terminus on the Asian side. The barges were replaced on 1958 by fairly large ferries with three sets of rails served by  two three track links spans on each side. These seem to have continued until the Bosphorus rail tunnel opened in 2013 though with a road bridge and later a tunnel also crossing the Bosphorus I think its traffic had fallen considerably with only one link span each side in operation from at least 2000

There are some photos of it here

http://www.trainsofturkey.com/index.php/Network/TrainFerry

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Here I am again ......... This next picture was an N gauge model based on a real location - just a station built partly on a bridge between two tunnels. The original is in the Ardennes - not sure if it's the Meuse or the Moselle river ............

 

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Though this one wasn't as good scenically, I've included it as the theme was a little different - HOm but representing a mine/mineral line with OLE - not seen often as a model .......

 

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The Causses viaduct and a 'Micheline' on approach in the second shot - nicely executed (if a little too 'clean' ;)) .......

 

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Onto the next ones ...............

 

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Here is an O gauge model representing the Chemin de Fer Vicinaux (or Departemental). I think it was 16.5mm gauge trackwork. The line would have been based in the Doubs not far from the Swiss border and some of the metre gauge lines would have linked with the ones in the Haute Saône - where I'm based. The station building is very typical of those that can still be found dotted around the countryside today - some as dwellings or storage sheds and some abandoned .............

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....... and there's more ......

 

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This one I loved and well executed - not your standard layout but very buccolic, atmospheric and a charm all of its own. It was of an O gauge size but may well have been freelance. It seemed to be based either in the Carribbean or central America .......... somewhere exotic :) ..........

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.... another one follows .......

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This was the rolling stock - a beat up railcar that was just going round and round slowly appearing every three or four minutes. Unfortunately the photograph doesn't do it justice as your 'umble correspondent was fighting for space in the small TV sized aperture with another person that had a camera with a lens upon it about a mile long :angry: ...........

 

 

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We're coming to the end (soonish)................

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The next set of photos are two of the larger layouts ........ the first pair is of a layout that had telephone lines individually strung up to each pole AND across each base board joint - can you guess how they would pack them away?

 

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As expected the level crossing gates worked correctly .....................

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@Northroader Thanks. The backgrounds looked better in the flesh than on film - I'm not sure if it was down to the lighting being used (a lot of it was overhead LEDs with may have affected how the camera picked up the colours.

 

These next ones are of the Maurienne - a well-known layout on the French circuit and it has been in the modelling press a few times. The original upon which it is based is on a steeply graded section of the SNCF mainline in the foothills of the Alps. The trains operated off a third rail and locos were specially adapted to run off OLE or the third rail. It wasn't uncommon to have trains triple headed, or double headed with an assisting loco, or on the downhill return trip, to have a rear loco as an additional braking force ..........

 

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I thought the scenery was superb - I just hope I can just do 10% of what they did - and look at the trees - they were everywhere!!!

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Still with Maurienne ..... as it was a very popular layout I couldn't get anywhere close enough to get a decent shot of the graded section, but here is another shot of the scenery and one of the section of the layout with OLE that leads into the graded part with the third rail - the whole thing is quite long ..............

 

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We're nearly done .....................

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The Cakebox Challenge! The show had its version of the cakebox challenge - just very small dioramas (about the footprint of a cakebox) but with a common theme - you had to have a signal box on show. It didn't matter the style or size - a signalbox. The ones on display were from the very small to big (I suppose a UK ground frame size upwards). One had an oops! with two shunting movements entangled outside the 'box. Would there be any mileage in having a similar one for the BRM challenge - just think of all the different varieties of 'boxes in the UK let alone Europe and the rest of the world? Anyway, here are two of them........

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We are at the end. The very last photo (honest) is some rolling stock, and I have a question to ask ............

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