Why is this so rarely modelled?

[JZ]

And at 1:25 a blue DMU with full yellow ends.

[Michael Delamar]

also 6mins 13 sec with mk2 coaches.

[Guest jim s-w]

Already modelled it.

 

 

Eh? No fb rail, no steam loco on blue and grey stock, I think you gave missed the point Dave.

 

As you (and others) rightly point out colour lights (and fb rail for that matter) wouldn't be new at the end of the steam era and yet it's so rarely modelled.

 

I find it surprising number of people that have sited dereliction and the run down state of the railways as a reason for not modelling it as to me that's what appeals most.

 

Cheers

 

Jim

Edited February 25, 2012 by jim s-w

[coachmann]

I find it surprising number of people that have sited dereliction and the run down state of the railways as a reason for not modelling it as to me that's what appeals most.

 

 

That is downright kinky Jim....

[newbryford]

I find it surprising number of people that have sited dereliction and the run down state of the railways as a reason for not modelling it as to me that's what appeals most.

 

"One man's meat is another man's poison" - what appeals to you, doesn't appeal to others.

 

Similar conclusions have already been reached on the BR blue/steam/contemporary discussions and I'm sure the same conclusion would also be reached on why people do/don't model 1900 GWR/1930 LNER/1950 US/1980 European/any other era/period etc.

 

Cheers,

Mick

[The Stationmaster]

Eh? No fb rail, no steam loco on blue and grey stock, I think you gave missed the point Dave.

 

As you (and others) rightly point out colour lights (and fb rail for that matter) wouldn't be new at the end of the steam era and yet it's so rarely modelled.

I find it surprising number of people that have sited dereliction and the run down state of the railways as a reason for not modelling it as to me that's what appeals most.

Cheers

Jim

I think one reason why things like this (I've highlighted in bold) are not modelled goes right back to you starting this thread - folk either don't know about them or don't know how widespread they were. Equally tho' the type of railway scene often modelled might no necessarily be one which acquired c.l. signals in the 1930s or '50s or flat bottom track before the 1980s. It is, I suspect, something which comes out of gaps in knowledge of the prototype (perhaps arising from disinterest as steam went and the railway itself was ignored?) or maybe because it just doesn't fit the 'romanticism' (if that's the right word?) on which so many railway models are based?

 

I'm not sure why but as you've indicated it is a period so many seem to ignore - but don't overlook the geographical factor that I mentioned before, it was important in that period.

['CHARD]

Just returning to the OP again, having returned to and reviewed contributions made over the past 24 hours, and there's much food for thought here.

 

One of the principal reasons that I can see, to which at least one other person has alluded, is the relative transience of this period. I have a massive fascination for the death throes of steam, much as I have an obsessive interest in the final months, weeks, days and hours of the Waverley Route. And this is why I'm quite specifically aiming to model not even an era, but a period of maybe 18 months at most. This, for many I'm sure, would be stifling. I'm equally sure that people who experienced the end of steam as a cognitive person (I wasn't quite three!) could not revel in its poignancy.

 

This is why I always use the disclaimer about 'holidays in other people's misery,' for all the excitement I get as a time-tourist poking into the minutiae of the 1967-8 period, I do recognize that it is still very raw for those affected by it. In the Waverley's case, and the line shut slap bang across the transition era with barely one year run entirely under diesel traction from 31st December '67, I have to temper my zeal for number crunching with the real human story of relative hardship and economic deprivation that followed closure, about which several members here could tell very personal accounts.

 

I also readily admit that as an adult I have a fascination with the emotional imapct of endings. Something so ludicrous as the passing of the WM Metrobus fleet took on mythical status in the twelve months up to July 2010. Crazy huh!

 

EDIT: just noticed at 19:10 in the film, a maroon MkI with B4 bogies!

Edited February 25, 2012 by 'CHARD

[Michael Delamar]

im interested in the last few years of steam,

 

im glad that steam lasted in the north west and Liverpool area because I dont think id have as much photo or cinefilm of the area ,

if it had gone earlier people wouldnt have flocked up here if there was still steam in other areas.

 

Mike

Edited February 25, 2012 by michael delamar

[Guest jim s-w]

 

 

"One man's meat is another man's poison" - what appeals to you, doesn't appeal to others.

 

Similar conclusions have already been reached on the BR blue/steam/contemporary discussions and I'm sure the same conclusion would also be reached on why people do/don't model 1900 GWR/1930 LNER/1950 US/1980 European/any other era/period etc.

 

Cheers,

Mick

 

Indeed so Mick but I think it's wider than that. It's not so much a "I like class 50s so I'll model somewhere with lots of them" thing it seems to be more about 'I want to model something attractive". I wonder what proportion of layouts, regardless of prototype, scale, quality could be considered pretty and how many are grim?

 

Cheers

 

Jim

[Pennine MC]

I wonder what proportion of layouts, regardless of prototype, scale, quality could be considered pretty and how many are grim?

 

I can think of some that are grim, though their owners think them pretty

Edited February 25, 2012 by Pennine MC

[Ravenser]

Attractiveness as a subject for modelling and attractiveness as a real full size experience are two very different things . Considered as a passenger experience or a means of getting from A to B , the Selsey Tramway, the original WHR, (and most other Col Stephens lines), the Ashover Light, the original Ravenglass and Eskdale and quite a few others must have been quite awful . As a modelling subject they are very attractive...

 

 

Would you really want to find yourself at Halifax King Cross as a traveller ? I suspect not

 

As an aside , if I were ever to model the E Lincs line (and there are major practical difficulties with doing so - flat as a pancake, straight as an arrow) I would quite probably do it in the year of my birth . It would have to be diesel (I'd want 31s and 114s , because I remember them) but the thought of being able to run my NRM O4 next to a blue 114 with a golden ochre Brush 2 and a weathered Hornby B1 (and Gresley buffet) is rather attractive. In that case , adding the last gasp of steam significantly increases the variety available when modelling an essentially pure GN secondary line with diesel traction

Edited February 25, 2012 by Ravenser

[coachmann]

Good point there Jim. The L&Y specialised in grim! Must have been the architecture or something. Although three railways entered Oldham, the L&Y line off to Rochdale was hardly the place for a Sunday stroll whereas the LNWR line off to Greenfield and the GCR/LNWR line through Park Bridge were completely the opposite. Apologies to anyone living near Royton Junction or Shaw........

[Old Gringo]

Ee, by gum, Larry - I thinks that's right cruel. I'd rather go by the "Lanky" to Blackpool Central by the Tower for my day trip, than by the "other outfit" to that grim North station!

 

And as you can see from my avatar, I was there at the finish too and did model the mucky stuff in the 1980s. Nowadays, it's my colleague, Chris, who likes his "Spams" down and dirty, whilst I like to enjoy the memories of my "ex-works" cops.

 

All the best,

 

John.

Edited February 25, 2012 by Old Gringo

[Brit70053]

 

 

I find it surprising number of people that have sited dereliction and the run down state of the railways as a reason for not modelling it as to me that's what appeals most.

 

Cheers

 

Jim

 

I think it may have been the indecent haste with which stations were demolished and lines were torn up, the services hardly having been withdrawn, that dis inclined people from modelling the contemporary scene as it then was. Watching your local station, the starting point of all good experiences, being reduced to rubble was a desolate experience, and not something you'd have thought anyone could gain pleasure from re creating in model form. (I'm talking from the viewpoint of a 12 year old who witnessed these things and thought he'd never see a train again, let alone travel on one. Thankfully a wider world was revealed in the fulness of time)

 

John

[TheSignalEngineer]

EDIT: just noticed at 19:10 in the film, a maroon MkI with B4 bogies!

 

And it's coupled to a Porthole Composite.

 

Later around 54:02 there's a Porthole BSK in blue and grey.

[Michael Delamar]

The same tour with the mk2 and blue and grey porthole appears quite a lot in that video, at eccles, gathurst, fazakerley south jnc can't check times as I'm on my phone at the mo

Edited February 25, 2012 by michael delamar

[Pennine MC]

Coming back to a couple of posts that hinge around the 'pigeonholing' mentality we have as modellers, that sometimes blurs our ideas of what ran with what, either one way or the other

 

The subject matter in the OP was over a relatively short period of time - 3 years or so, and also relatively a small geographical area of north west England.

 

I think I'm right in saying that the North West, Leeds/Bradford and the Bournemouth line are the only significant areas where steam regularly worked blue/grey stock to any extent (please note that I'm specifically excluding things like the Waverley specials). The North East also had steam into '67, but very much on freight workings.

 

Go back to 1966, and you have many more pockets of steam working (I have an article from either Steam World or Steam Days that reviews that year, and it's fascinating) - but you lose on the incidence of blue/grey stock because it was only in that year that it started to become generally applied

 

The previous photo in the set shows it propelling a brake van, complete with "boxed" lettering. Again something normally associated with the diesel era.

 

http://www.flickr.co...in/photostream/

 

This one works the other way; introduced in 1964 and taking hold in '65, and with many wagons having the lettering on fresh patches as well as full repaints, there are lots of incidences of it in steam hauled freights.

[Guest Max Stafford]

I think it's the 'big bang' nature of the transition, coupled with the ongoing slaughter of the 1964-69 period that make people uncomfortable in the UK. Go to the US or mainland Europe and the perception is different because their transitions were not essentially concurrent with the kind of catastrophic decline witnessed here. I cite as examples, the US, where operations (with the exception of the passenger cuts of 1970) carried on with the new traction much as they had in the steam era, probably until the 1980s when Class 1 operations seemed to move into a different league.

In Germany, the transition took almost a generation from the appearance of the V80s and 200s in 1952-3 to the retirement of the last 042s and 043s in 1977, with their eastern counterparts never quite vanishing at all with the regular Plandampfs that have persisted ever since re-unification. Remember that both these countries still have the infrastructure of industrial age railways and indeed wagonload traffic survives at numerous locations.

Both US and German systems and traffic have changed over time but not in the almost apocalyptic way that our own has, particularly in the period under consideration.

 

Dave.

[newbryford]

Coming back to a couple of posts that hinge around the 'pigeonholing' mentality we have as modellers,

 

At the risk of going OT - unless we 'pigeonhole' stuff as modellers into reasonably specific era/area, we are quickly accused of running unprototypical trains, unless you adopt the IMTS approach

 

Although my modelling tastes would accomodate something a bit larger than a pigeon......

 

 

Cheers,

Mick

[BlackRat]

I don't think I really want to model grim, I get enough of that in work! Thats reality alright!

 

I can see the reason why to go for it tho, an interesting transition period.

 

The late 60's and 70's weren't all bad.

 

I'll stick to chocolate box tho for the moment, until retirement looms.

 

Anyone want a dose of reality, please get in touch

[Pennine MC]

At the risk of going OT - unless we 'pigeonhole' stuff as modellers into reasonably specific era/area, we are quickly accused of running unprototypical trains,

 

Yeah, it's perhaps not pigeonholing as such that's the issue Mick (dependent on what you understand the word to mean), it's the incorrect placing-together of things within the time slot (or as in Pete's example, the incorrect exclusion of them). I think we can all be guilty of it when we consider an era that might be new to us; I remember myself a good while back realising that I couldnt run a 25/0 with a large logo 37...

[jjnewitt]

I've noticed that they've been mentioned a few times so I thought I'd shed some light on the B4 bogies. The prototype bogies appeared as early as 1956 but the first short production batch went under 'The Bristolian' and 'Red Dragon' trainsets. Parkin's tome on the MK1 coach doesn't state exactly when this was but there are photos in the book of them in service in 1962 (under a chocolate and cream liveried BCK behind a very clean Collett 4000 gallon tender and under an FO again in chocolate and cream) so it would obviously be by then. The only newbuild MK1 coaches to have B4 bogies were those in the XP64 set but others were rebogied with priority given to sleeping and catering cars. Steam and B4 bogies were no strangers.

 

Personally I find the end of steam on BR fasinating and to me there is a certain morbid attraction to all the 'grot' of the period which exudes 'atmosphere'. My modelling exploits are centred on South Wales circa 1964/5 so very much end of steam on the Western Region but a bit too early for the corperate image.

[APOLLO]

It wasn't all grotty. My brother and I were on the 10.17 Leeds to Glasgow on 5 August 1967. A gleaming Jubilee, 45562 "Alberta" on the front. If you have the Marsden Ral "Leeds" DVD this train, and me leaning out of the 4th coach, are on it ! Alberta came off at Carlisle, and an unrecorded Brittania took the train on to Glasgow.

 

My last trip behind a BR steam loco was on 25/11/67, Preston - Manchester, Black 5 44816, filthy loco & a cold wet and misty day I wrote in my notebook.

 

Brit15

[coachmann]

Latterday folk say the end of steam looked fascinating. Once proud ex.GWR engines with nameplates missing and white scrawled numbers on patches where the cabside number plate used to be? Hardly fascinating.

[Guest Max Stafford]

Fascinating in the respect that it's the complete antithesis of all that the GWR is associated with, Larry.

It's best to think of it as an artist's perspective you know; like David Shepherd painting at Nine Elms or somebody photographing an ancient dead oak tree.

Not everybody gets it Larry. Some of us do but it's not a fault if you don't.

 

Dave.