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Just been re-living my boyhood railway modelling days with the 1980 editions.  Bloody marvellous!!!

 

Oh the excitement that was 1980-81. The new Hornby APT and Class 86 and the Lima DMU…

 

Cheers

 

Darius

Edited by Darius43
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4 hours ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

I already had a digital subscription so this initiative is a wonderful one from my POV. I have limited storage generally and ha e embarked on scanning my collection where electronic copies are not available. This will save me a lot of time, plus perfect-bound magazines are difficult to scan and larger-than-A4 is also difficult with an A4 scanner. RM is of course larger than A4 and has been for some time.

 

Perhaps it might be possible in the future to do something similar for BRM, although it would be a long time away: this project might well have taken several years to come to fruition (particularly when you consider the number of issues involved in the case of RM).

 

It would be nice if something similar could be done for Model Railway Constructor or Model Railway News/Model Railways/Your Model Railway. But this may not be practical—Key may not have access to any old copies of MRC and Model Railways (etc) has not been published for some time and I have no idea whether the publisher even still exists in any form.

 

I wonder if Tim Rayner had anything to do with this—he is, after all, a trained librarian.

 

In any case — well done, RM!

 

Model Railway News, etc. was published by MAP (Model & Allied Publications).

 

Definitely still going, but I think are now just a transport book publishers specialising in buses.

 

No idea who has the vast collection of plans though. There was thousands of them for boats, planes and model steam locomotives. Maybe someone who is involved in model engineering will know.

 

 

Jason

 

 

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I’m confused.

 

Is access to the archive only available to those who subscribe ‘digital only’? 
 

If not, how does one access it as a “print and digital” subscriber?

 

I gave away my set of the first five years last year (stampede to the secondhand bookshop at the Bucks Railway Centre to see if any are left!), but rather miss them, so this is of huge interest.

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Cancel that SOS - I simply downloaded the App and I’m in ………. Somehow it seems to know I’m a subscriber, despite me never having looked at the digital copy before …….

 

Nooooo ……. It’s just a tease! It lets me see the covers, but not the content!

 

Reinstate SOS!

 

OK …… half reinstate SOS.

 

This is the way in https://login.exacteditions.com/checkAgency.do?titleId=21465

 

But, it would be better if I hadn’t put the packaging of the latest edition in the recycling, because then I wouldn’t have to start hunting through a load of old rubbish to find my subscription reference number!

Edited by Nearholmer
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On 13/10/2021 at 19:21, Gilbert said:

Its all there - I hope showing a cover is not a big copyright issue - this is the earliest.

 

 

 

RM1.jpg

 

Does anyone know which railway the "R.A.L.R." was? The only miniature line with a Garatt that I know about was the Surrey Border & Camberley.

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37 minutes ago, Andy Kirkham said:

 

Does anyone know which railway the "R.A.L.R." was? The only miniature line with a Garatt that I know about was the Surrey Border & Camberley.

Fortunately I have physical copies of the early Railway Modellers.

From p 41 Volume 1 No. 2 December 1949-January 1950 (page numbering from Vol 1 no 1)

"The Cover Picture

Members of the Harrow and Wembley Society of Model Engineers at a visit to the Royal Aucha (sic) Light Railway, Liphook, and here seen with the 10 1/4" gauge 2-6-6-2 Garratt type locomotive, formerly of the Southern Border and Camberley Miniature Railway. Photograph by C.R.L. Coles" 

 

It obviously was though the railway in the garden of the Royal Anchor Hotel in Liphook of wihch more here

https://www.liphook.uk/?section=interactive&page=talkback_thread_wide&id=1897

The railway was owned by Charles Lane, the then proprietor of the Royal Anchor Hotel, and seems to have had multiple gauges . I don't know when it closed but Lane built an experimental diesel hydraulic loco in 1956 that was bought by the Ravenglass and Eskdale in 1961 from the RHDR- after being found not powerful for them in trials- and was the Ratty's no 6 Royal Anchor until 1978 when they sold it to Steamtown Carnforth. It eventually in 2000 went to the railway on one of  Francis Ford Coppola's vineyards in California (no I didn't know either that Coppola had a railway) . 

 

The Garratt seems to have been sold at auction (Bonhams)  in 2004 where it fetched £9200

1005450422_Garratt2004auctionBonhams9500.jpg.e92b87388f49f8f797432741a4a00d15.jpg

Edited by Pacific231G
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4 hours ago, micknich2003 said:

Can someone who has bought a subscription please tell me the quality and definition of the various pages when printed out? Many Thanks, Mick.

A valid question, because sometimes scanned articles (in this case entire magazines) can be virtually impossible to read.

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On 14/10/2021 at 04:19, spamcan61 said:

Sounds like somebody's lockdown project...

I suspect it's been going on for sometime, as RM has in recent times had 'whatever happened to XXX layout' articles, with it's current status, in several issues.

Photos have shown original items, which have been scanned well.

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Good news but long overdue, I have full access to Meccano mags from 1916, and exact editions at my local library.

 

What I look forward too is pre 1958 mags, since I have paper ones  after  some reason they are rare even my local club has not got any. Was there a limited area distribution?

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19 hours ago, Chris M said:

The search seems to work pretty well too. I can only give the search 8 out of 10 because I can't find a way of looking for a phrase rather than a word. Does anyone now how to do this?

Remembered I had a print+digital RM subscription so downloaded the Exact Editions app and logged in.
 

From a bit of experimenting there *is* a sort-of phrase search function which seems to use the Boolean logic operators AND OR NOT to create multiple term searches. 


So, if your search terms are Gresley and Pacific, a search for Pacific NOT Gresley (typed exactly like that, with the operator in all caps, but otherwise not using quote marks or any other punctuation) will bring up all the pages that contain the word Pacific but *don’t* mention Gresley.  Searching Gresley AND Pacific brings up all the pages that contain *both* terms.  Searching Gresley OR Pacific brings up all the pages that contain *either* of the search terms.

 

It appears that you can combine multiple operators in a search ( e.g. Gresley OR Raven AND Pacific).

 

 I think (from my brief experiment) that the base search level is the magazine page, not individual sentences of text, so the searches return *the pages* matching the search phrase including operators, not necessarily the precise phrase you might want. So a search for Gresley AND Pacific will return a page containing both those words *somewhere* in the text on that page, but not necessarily together in the phrase “Gresley Pacific”.  


The search terms are highlighted in blue on the page when you open it in the search results.

 

The search function is searching the OCR text created when the pages were scanned. It’s obvious from some search results that the OCR scan has worked less well on some of the older editions where it’s had difficulty reading the older/smaller/fainter type.  Search results thus sometimes return what appears to be a search word in a sea of random characters - especially when it’s trying to search the text in all the adverts!
 

Looking at some of the 1960s issues online the scan quality of type and photos is distinctly poorer than the quality of the original printed magazine (I have a full set of RMs from issue 1 to Dec 1990)

 

However, I think this online archive will be a very useful searchable index for my hard-copy bound RMs, which I’ll hang on to; and also means that I don’t have to buy any more post-1990 back issues in search of useful articles as the search facility is much better for the more modern mags.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Richard T

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9 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Fortunately I have physical copies of the early Railway Modellers.

From p 41 Volume 1 No. 2 December 1949-January 1950 (page numbering from Vol 1 no 1)

"The Cover Picture

Members of the Harrow and Wembley Society of Model Engineers at a visit to the Royal Aucha (sic) Light Railway, Liphook, and here seen with the 10 1/4" gauge 2-6-6-2 Garratt type locomotive, formerly of the Southern Border and Camberley Miniature Railway. Photograph by C.R.L. Coles" 

 

It obviously was though the railway in the garden of the Royal Anchor Hotel in Liphook of wihch more here

https://www.liphook.uk/?section=interactive&page=talkback_thread_wide&id=1897

The railway was owned by Charles Lane, the then proprietor of the Royal Anchor Hotel, and seems to have had multiple gauges . I don't know when it closed but Lane built an experimental diesel hydraulic loco in 1956 that was bought by the Ravenglass and Eskdale in 1961 from the RHDR- after being found not powerful for them in trials- and was the Ratty's no 6 Royal Anchor until 1978 when they sold it to Steamtown Carnforth. It eventually in 2000 went to the railway on one of  Francis Ford Coppola's vineyards in California (no I didn't know either that Coppola had a railway) . 

 

The Garratt seems to have been sold at auction (Bonhams)  in 2004 where it fetched £9200

1005450422_Garratt2004auctionBonhams9500.jpg.e92b87388f49f8f797432741a4a00d15.jpg

 

Thanks.I found this photo of what looks like a DMU in the guise of a Santa Fe locomotive, along with a couple who are pesumably Mr & Mrs Lane

 

https://picclick.co.uk/Qkl-98-The-Royal-Anchor-Hotel-Liphook-Miniature-Railway-233896588414.html#&gid=1&pid=1

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1 hour ago, Darius43 said:

Now half way through 1982.  I had forgotten about the “Junior Modeller” section.  I wonder how many of those featured are on RMWeb today?

 

Cheers

 

Darius

 

Had my first contribution to Railway Modeller published in 1979 as a mere 13 year old.

 

44 years later, still modelling and exhibiting layouts - hobby for a lifetime!

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2 hours ago, Darius43 said:

Now half way through 1982.  I had forgotten about the “Junior Modeller” section.  I wonder how many of those featured are on RMWeb today?

 

Cheers

 

Darius


Im still here. Albeit a ‘student modeller’ not a junior one. 
 

July 97 in case you’re interested!

Was rather weird to see my article that I hadn’t read for 20+yrs!

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Thanks for this thread, I get the paper copy so rarely look online and I hadn't noticed that all copies are now available - what nostalgia! I always wondered when they (wrongly in my opinion) dropped reference to Christmas from the December cover, resulting in me singing "do they know its Christmas" when the December copy arrives. As far as I know only MRJ gives any nod to Christmas.

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I’m sure it’s because publication has crept so early - the December edition arrives just after Bonfire Night, and even the January one, which used to turn-up in the few days before Christmas now arrives two weeks earlier.

 

Its not like when I was a boy!

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Just a word of warning — the archive is not quite complete and some magazines appear under the wrong year.

 

The first magazine I looked for — September 1969, the first issue of RM I ever read — is not there, at least under 1969. So it’s fortunate that I reacquired a copy a couple of years ago from eBay which I can scan to "preserve" it, although I have no intention of parting with the physical copy…

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7 hours ago, Andy Kirkham said:

 

Thanks.I found this photo of what looks like a DMU in the guise of a Santa Fe locomotive, along with a couple who are pesumably Mr & Mrs Lane

 

https://picclick.co.uk/Qkl-98-The-Royal-Anchor-Hotel-Liphook-Miniature-Railway-233896588414.html#&gid=1&pid=1

I found a few phoots of RALR locos, mostly Royal Anchor on the Ratty but the Garratt only re-emerged from what I assume was the auctioneer's catalogue image. Information about the railway is frustratingly dfficult to find but I gather that, as proprietor of the Royal Anchor Hotel, Charles Lane wasn't easy to deal with. There is one account of a couple who'd gone there being offered a menu and when they said they'd just come in for a drink being asked to finish their drinks and leave because he diodn't want to encourage "locals" to use the place (I'm sure that's a violation of the licence for a pub)   There was though a small local MRC that met in the Royal Anchor's "pavilion" but I suspect the railway was private rather than being an attraction for the Hotel. The pub still exists but apparently there's no trace of the railway in its gardens. From what little does appear it looks like it was predominately 10 1/4 " with perhaps short running lengths of 15" and 18" though there is a reference on the 10 1/4" Ingfield Light Railway's site, who now own the 4-4-4 loco "John Terence" that was previously owned by Charles Lane, to the RALR being regauged.  Lane was said to have had one of the largest private collections of miniature locos in the country.  

Edited by Pacific231G
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7 hours ago, Andy Kirkham said:

 

Thanks.I found this photo of what looks like a DMU in the guise of a Santa Fe locomotive, along with a couple who are pesumably Mr & Mrs Lane

 

https://picclick.co.uk/Qkl-98-The-Royal-Anchor-Hotel-Liphook-Miniature-Railway-233896588414.html#&gid=1&pid=1

I found another photo of it here from when Bonhams were auctioning it in 2004. 

https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/11095/lot/109/

It seems to have been a three unit articulated vehicle with the driving cab and petrol engine and hydraulic transmission in the first unit and eight seats in each of the other two. It's not clear whether the rear cab was dummy or whether it was effectively a driving trailer.

 

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