Wright writes.....

[PMP]

28 minutes ago, Craigw said:

Now, we see people talking about a range of generic bogie coaches too. I build kits and scratch build, so I am alright thanks. I simply do not think that dumbing down the hobby is a good thing - and this does dumb it down. 

 

The suppliers are simply relying on the fact that these coaches are "out of memory" for people.

 

Craig W

Just to clarify it’s not ‘people’ talking about a range of bogie coaches. It was my personal opinion, not based on any discussion or knowledge of any manufacturer intent. I stand by that opinion though as I think that just as we were unlikely to see a RTR range of specific companies short wheelbase passenger stock, the same applies for larger vehicles of the same era. And we were even less likely to see any prototype stock of any size in ‘other company’ liveries. 
 

I don’t buy into the ‘beyond memory’ theory either, for those interested, there’s still reasonable and accessible data for research or comparisons.

Edited October 19, 2019 by PMP
Predictive phone bs

[PMP]

1 minute ago, Headstock said:

 

A wonderful example of the power a large business can have on forming the needs and wants of a consumer group?

Or a manufacturer supplying a latent demand that can’t be satisfied by over specialisation?

[Craigw]

6 minutes ago, PMP said:

Or a manufacturer supplying a latent demand that can’t be satisfied by over specialisation?

 

Over specialisation?

 

Let us be specific here. 

 

Models of the real thing, not fiction.

 

 

I was not referring to your comment about coached (PMP), there has been comments about it too in the Hattons discussion.

 

Craig W

Edited October 19, 2019 by Craigw

[PMP]

1 minute ago, Craigw said:

 

Over specialisation?

 

Let us be specific here. 

 

Models of the real thing, not fiction.

Not sure of the point you’re making Craig. There doesn’t appear to be a viable market for a range of RTR prototype specific pre group vehicles. There’s likely to be a far smaller market for those vehicles in un prototypical liveries.

 

There appears to be a viable market for vehicles that capture the appearance of pre group rolling stock. 
Not only that but people are making suggestions to improve the appearance of these vehicles using typical features of a variety of prototypes. 

Hence supplying a latent demand that can’t be satisfied by over specialisation.

[LNWR18901910]

Dear Sir,

 

I have made a remarkable discovery of what could be Early 2mm N Scale models. I made a post about it just now:

What do you think? Would this set be a forerunner to Lone Star and their OOO Gauge models?

 

-Mike.

[Hitchin Junction]

1 hour ago, PMP said:

You’re predominantly correct. Even the kit builders and scratch builders are consumers of products unless they’re making their own motors, cutting gears, and turning their own wheels...  

 

That's known as "false equivalence". A hobby that assumes that buying Peco track is the normal and acceptable way to achieve routing of model railway vehicles between locations has a completely different end goal that one that assumes they are builders of a similarly to the prototype working model of a railway. Furthermore, like Schrodinger's cat, if you can't see some hidden or internal part of a model, you can't claim that it is or isn't part of a scale model.

 

And if two people are working to achieve quite different things, they are probably following different hobbies, even if some of the materials are common to both.

 

Tim

 

 

 

 

[St Enodoc]

43 minutes ago, Headstock said:

 

A wonderful example of the power a large business can have on forming the needs and wants of a consumer group?

'Twas ever thus.

 

Sony Walkman

Apple iPhone

 

etc.

[Headstock]

8 hours ago, PMP said:

Or a manufacturer supplying a latent demand that can’t be satisfied by over specialisation?

 

Good morning PMP,

 

The two things are not mutually exclusive. Supplying a latent demand is all about forming the needs and wants of a consumer group.

 

As for over specialisation and this is the point, there is no over specialisation. This is not a problem for myself as a modeller, this is a good thing. Indeed, it is the whole point of modelling Britain's railways. It is somewhat of a problem if your are a large business who's major concern is the bottom line. I do not care at all about the bottom line of large businesses involved in the Hobby. Many people do, I can't understand why, are they on the pay roll? By its nature, the modelling of Britain's railways is immensely complicated and involves many specialisations. This is not what large businesses wants, be less complicated, more populist and downsizeing that blinking church makes it much easier to sell products. It is in the interest of Railway modellers to have models of real railway equipment and a great deal of specialisation. This is not necessarily in the interest of large businesses.

Edited October 20, 2019 by Headstock
lose capital letter

[Coach bogie]

12 hours ago, Craigw said:

 I build kits and scratch build, so I am alright thanks. I simply do not think that dumbing down the hobby is a good thing - and this does dumb it down. 

 

The suppliers are simply relying on the fact that these coaches are "out of memory" for people.

 

Craig W

 In my opinion there is a market for these coaches. My Dad was a loco builder. See below. I was only talking to 'Sir' at Hartlepool yesterday about him. Now he could build any kit you threw at him and scratch built others that no kit exist for. For example, he built a full set of the 'odd' black 5's for sandpiper on this site, Stephenson link, both Caprotti's, using Jamieson kits as a starting point.

 

BUT.

 

He had no interest in building coaches. Below is a pair of Kitmaster Stirling singles acquired as wrecks. He made them run but they needed coaches to pull. I did build him a set of six wheelers out of a Rod Neep set of etches, but until they were finished he was happy to run them with what you see, mainly from cut and shut Ratio bodies. His favourite train was the clerestories at the back. On one of her regular trips to Houston, My wife brought him back a dozen Bachmann Thomas 'Emily' coaches. These are early examples of 'generic' coaches. I have lost count of how many of these, my wife brought back, for his friends. Bachmann could not sell them in the UK due to licensing issues.

 

There is a market for them, it is just not us who want better and have the skills to produce better.

 

Mike Wiltshire

 

Edited October 20, 2019 by Coach bogie
SPAG

[micklner]

10 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

I would think that railway modellers are getting on for 90-100% in control of their hobby.  This thread centres very much on railway modelling,  There are plenty of other threads on RMweb about offerings - be they good, bad or indifferent - from what we might call the 'commercial' part of the hobby - which was originally why I was a little dismayed to see ever increasing discussion in this thread about Hattons generic coaches when they were already being done to death the nth degree in a more relevant thread.  But if we are going to talk about a very commercial part of our hobby then it inevitably will be about business cases and marketing because if those things aren't present or taken into account the commercial part, which still can introduce new blood to the hobby, won't exist.

 

The hobby is a broad church, in fact judging by a small show I visited today in Didcot it is a very broad church with a considerable variety of small layouts in various scales and gauges and, as is common at shows, of varying degrees of modelling competence, realism, and operational reliability.  One layout used home printed sides on proprietary mechanisms to model an Italian narrow gauge rack railway, another showed an imaginary GWR branchline using a mixture of r-t-r and kitbuilt/adapted/scractchbuilt stock, another looked like  2mmFS but was actually N gauge with superbly weathered stock.   And so on but even including an imaginary Australian narrow gauge line using r-t-r locos but with scratchbuilt buildings that matched exactly the sort of thing you can still see in the Australian state in which it was supposedly set.  Broad church - definitely.

 

Yesterday some of us from RMweb visited Pendon and of course saw John Ahern's 'Madder Valley' - very much 'handbuilt' he even wound his own motor armatures, but he made some use of commercially produced brick paper in which somebody had invested time and money in order to bring it to the market.    Do you build you own locos, or stock or whatever?   Well if you do you will probably be using wheels which are made by somebody who has invested their money to make them and they'll only keep on making them if their business is profitable - the same with kits, motors, track, rail or any of the myriad things we use to build our railways.  

 

I bet that there are very few modellers, if any in most of the usual scales and gauges, who don't buy in something to help create their models and their railways.  The only difference really is the scale of the concern producing what we buy and the size of the financial base on which they have to work but undeniably it is still 'our' hobby because we are 100% in control of what we buy, 'borrow', or adapt from other use.   And if we don't want it we are not forced to buy it, simple as that.  Time to get back to railway modelling perhaps?

As said above , if you want to talk about Hattons product do it on its actual repetive thread (which I pressed the ignore button on long ago). The pointless backwards and forwards on here, is achieving nothing other than giving Hattons evem more free advertising. PLEASE !!

 

As Stationmaster has already said  above we are other than a minute percentage all buy commercial products . If you dont want, it dont buy it.

[Jol Wilkinson]

10 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

I would think that railway modellers are getting on for 90-100% in control of their hobby.  This thread centres very much on railway modelling,  There are plenty of other threads on RMweb about offerings - be they good, bad or indifferent - from what we might call the 'commercial' part of the hobby - which was originally why I was a little dismayed to see ever increasing discussion in this thread about Hattons generic coaches when they were already being done to death the nth degree in a more relevant thread.  But if we are going to talk about a very commercial part of our hobby then it inevitably will be about business cases and marketing because if those things aren't present or taken into account the commercial part, which still can introduce new blood to the hobby, won't exist.

 

The hobby is a broad church, in fact judging by a small show I visited today in Didcot it is a very broad church with a considerable variety of small layouts in various scales and gauges and, as is common at shows, of varying degrees of modelling competence, realism, and operational reliability.  One layout used home printed sides on proprietary mechanisms to model an Italian narrow gauge rack railway, another showed an imaginary GWR branchline using a mixture of r-t-r and kitbuilt/adapted/scractchbuilt stock, another looked like  2mmFS but was actually N gauge with superbly weathered stock.   And so on but even including an imaginary Australian narrow gauge line using r-t-r locos but with scratchbuilt buildings that matched exactly the sort of thing you can still see in the Australian state in which it was supposedly set.  Broad church - definitely.

 

Yesterday some of us from RMweb visited Pendon and of course saw John Ahern's 'Madder Valley' - very much 'handbuilt' he even wound his own motor armatures, but he made some use of commercially produced brick paper in which somebody had invested time and money in order to bring it to the market.    Do you build you own locos, or stock or whatever?   Well if you do you will probably be using wheels which are made by somebody who has invested their money to make them and they'll only keep on making them if their business is profitable - the same with kits, motors, track, rail or any of the myriad things we use to build our railways.  

 

I bet that there are very few modellers, if any in most of the usual scales and gauges, who don't buy in something to help create their models and their railways.  The only difference really is the scale of the concern producing what we buy and the size of the financial base on which they have to work but undeniably it is still 'our' hobby because we are 100% in control of what we buy, 'borrow', or adapt from other use.   And if we don't want it we are not forced to buy it, simple as that.  Time to get back to railway modelling perhaps?

Mike,

 

surely the very fact that you can only buy what the RTR manufacturers choose to produce, together with the seemingly interminable wishlist's on RMweb, the Annual Wishlist Poll, etc. indicate that most railway "modellers" aren't in control of their hobby. Unless that is they are willing to adopt all aspects of modelling and buy and/or build what they need, how can someone be in control of their hobby. If you choose only to buy that which is ready assembled, be it locos, carriages, buildings, track, or w.h.y. then you are very much in the control of the suppliers. Of course, you can claim that building baseboards and scenery (even the former are increasing available off the shelf) means that you aren't entirely dependant on ready made items, but the prime focus of a model railway (for most) is the railway stock and immediate infrastructure.

 

The Broad Church belief is also misleading. If a religious parallel is appropriate, then this hobby is about a differing set of beliefs, different interests, different views, etc. with little commonality other possibly then a sometime religious fervour. The only really common thread is an interest in miniature representations of wheeled vehicles that run on parallel sets of rails.

 

Is it not also ironic that this discussion on "generic" models has arisen in a thread which has generally focused on creating models such as Little Bytham, where the builder has used whatever items have been available to create his model and has not restricted himself to only that which is available only completely finished.

 

Jol

[mullie]

This discussion has now gone on for some time. To me it can be summarised quite simply if you want them buy them, if not do something else. I have cut and shut Ratio 4 wheelers and Hornby clerestory coaches as place holders until I can build something else. I built them and they will do for now 

 

Business management matters because it provides jobs. 

 

Martyn

[PMP]

1 hour ago, Headstock said:

 

Good morning PMP,

 

The two things are not mutually exclusive. Supplying a latent demand is all about forming the needs and wants of a consumer group.

 

As for over specialisation and this is the point, there is no over specialisation.

 

With respect, there is over specialisation. Model Rail decided not to proceed with the Wisbech and Upwell coaches for the J70 tram locomotive because all indications were the market wouldn't stand the end price for a high quality model of such a restricted prototype. The market will stand high prices for some vehicles however depending on what they are, Rail's dynamometer car for example.

I care about the greater industry of our hobby, many close friends work within it, and I'm a small shareholder with Hornby, (because I like their products, like the people, want to support the company, and, and one day make money from those shares. No pressure Mr K). Some of those friends within the trade have family, kids, reliant on their employment, and in my history I was made redundant at a similar age to them now. I care that they never have to go through that experience. I know small suppliers (fewer) in a similar position, I wouldn't wish the same on them either.

[PMP]

9 hours ago, Hitchin Junction said:

 

That's known as "false equivalence". A hobby that assumes that buying Peco track is the normal and acceptable way to achieve routing of model railway vehicles between locations has a completely different end goal that one that assumes they are builders of a similarly to the prototype working model of a railway.

Tim

 

Tony's Little Bytham must fall in to the first category then, due to the Peco track used in the fiddle yards, RTL track in fiddle yards being a very common and acceptable way to achieve routing of model railway vehicles between locations.

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

Mike,

 

surely the very fact that you can only buy what the RTR manufacturers choose to produce, together with the seemingly interminable wishlist's on RMweb, the Annual Wishlist Poll, etc. indicate that most railway "modellers" aren't in control of their hobby. Unless that is they are willing to adopt all aspects of modelling and buy and/or build what they need, how can someone be in control of their hobby. If you choose only to buy that which is ready assembled, be it locos, carriages, buildings, track, or w.h.y. then you are very much in the control of the suppliers. Of course, you can claim that building baseboards and scenery (even the former are increasing available off the shelf) means that you aren't entirely dependant on ready made items, but the prime focus of a model railway (for most) is the railway stock and immediate infrastructure.

 

The Broad Church belief is also misleading. If a religious parallel is appropriate, then this hobby is about a differing set of beliefs, different interests, different views, etc. with little commonality other possibly then a sometime religious fervour. The only really common thread is an interest in miniature representations of wheeled vehicles that run on parallel sets of rails.

 

Is it not also ironic that this discussion on "generic" models has arisen in a thread which has generally focused on creating models such as Little Bytham, where the builder has used whatever items have been available to create his model and has not restricted himself to only that which is available only completely finished.

 

Jol

Jol,

 

Some interesting observations and in fact (except no doubt in modelling skills) there is little difference between our views.  I lack some of the skills needed to scratch build such as locos and coaches (I've tried and that was long before the effects of age took a hand) but I can manage reasonably well with kits.  Others have similar or worse skill sets than me.  But when it comes to buying off the model shop shelf or picking up long forgotten kits at auctions I am still exercising choice - I don't have to buy any of them and I definitely don't want to buy all of them.  So it could be said quite truthfully that should I want to model a particular Railway at a particular point in time I either lack the skills to do so, lack the money to buy it from a professional modelmaker, or have to go to something I can model within the circumstances set by my skill set and the depth of my pockets.  But I'm still exercising choice.

 

Now we all model different things in different ways with different aims - hence my broad church view although within that I fully agree with your comment that beliefs differ, hence the differing aims.  But in most cases they can I think still be defined as 'a church' and as you said we all believe in that miniature representation ... etc.  So in the end we share a common cause who we deal with in different ways.

 

As it happens one of my particular interests in the modelling of railways is achieving realistic operation - not just looking like the real thing but actually working like it (to the extent which scale, in particular, allows) and there I find a major dichotomy.  If I look at Little Bytham - which I have had the immense pleasure of doing so up close - one very important point about it is that it doesn't just look like a particular part of the real railway but it can be worked like it.  Ok so wagons aren't emptied or loaded in the yard and passengers don't get on and off trains (the restrictions of scale and technology) but you can make exactly the same shunting moves and deal with trains in exactly the same way that they were dealt with at the real Little Bytham.  I do a bit of occasional 'relief operator' duty on another ECML layout - Grantham - and, again, many of the moves, including mainline loco changes, which took place at the real Grantham can be, and are, carried out on the model exactly as they were in real life.  And that is a layout which uses Peco Streamline track (with a corrected six foot interval - an excellent example of modelling using and adapting that which the manufacturing trade offers).  

 

But I have seen some beautiful layouts populated by brilliant examples of the scratch builder's art on which it would be near impossible to do anything even approximating to a reasonably accurate example of railway working.  Some of them can't even get the signalling right let alone work it correctly in a way which regulates the passage of trains.  Marvellous modelling but with operational shortcomings.  Many years ago I knew a very large home layout which looked somewhat amateurish and used mainly r-t-r locos (with new mechanisms in most cases) and stock but it stood at the other extreme where it could be worked exactly like a real railway.  I sometimes watch superb examples of modelling at exhibitions being worked in a way which makes me cringe.   Again we come back to choice, again we come back to what I still talk of as a broad church.  

 

I think we all too often overlook the fact that if we are going to model a railway then there is a lot more to it than how we source or create the various things which go into it.  And that brings me back to Little Bytham because there Tony has very successfully married just about everything - creating the trains he needs for the place he is representing, creating a model of that place, and re-creating the way in which that place worked as part of the railway.  And the latter very definitely didn't come p out of a box but from careful study of the real thing.

[t-b-g]

Properly laid, ballasted and painted ready to lay track can look quite effective on a model railway.

 

It will never be as accurate as properly modelled permanent way but it is good enough to please many.

 

What the trains run on has been a poor relation in the hobby for many years. In many ways, I wish I was happy with ready to lay track and points. If I was, my layout project would progress much faster than it is with me making points to GNR specifications, even hand cutting sleepers as commercial ones of the right size are not available. However, I model to please myself rather than others and if I know I can make a more accurate point than the one I can purchase, then I prefer to make it.

[Steamport Southport]

I must apologise. I only mentioned them in passing and didn't actually specify which carriages I meant.

 

The original quote was along the lines of "Why bother building a Ratio kit when you can buy a generic version in whatever livery you want?" and was meant to be a bit sarcastic.

 

 

 

Jason

[Denbridge]

15 hours ago, t-b-g said:

 

Way back, when EM first appeared in the 1940s, a group of very good modellers based in the Manchester club, invented their own standards. These included Alex Jackson and Sid Stubbs amongst others. They exhibited a layout called Presson, which appeared in the Railway Modeller.

 

They initially tried an exact scale wheel profile on an 18mm (not 18.2mm) gauge but experiment and experience led them to use a slightly modified wheel profile based on a prototype worn wheel, with a slightly deeper flange. The wheel details were published and on record but the track standards have been more elusive. I have built a crossing nose using 18mm gauge and a 0.8mm flange gap, based on a standard in Templot and I was delighted to see that not only do the Manchester profile wheels run superbly through it but so do modern EM wheels at a 16.5mm back to back. Proper old school wheels with thick flanges are not good, so old fashioned Romfords and opened up RTR wheels are out but as I said above, I don't really do RTR.

 

The thing that really did amaze me was when I tried a 6 wheeled carriage, with a scratchbuilt Cleminson arrangement, through some less than perfect track on Buckingham, it sailed through points, better than some of the Buckingham stock with various wheel profiles and dimensions. I fully expected it to fall off every where but it didn't.

 

When I first saw the wheels I thought they must be P4 until I checked the gauge and back to back. The construction of the wagons and carraiges, especially in the underframes/axles, is stunning. No variation, all wheels identical, true running and absolutely spot on to gauge. Everything flat and square. They used their own axles too, with a long slim extension to the outside, running in parallel bearings and the solebars attached by screws to allow for assembly and dismantling. Proper engineers those guys were!

 

I have done the maths and I believe that I could make the check gaps slightly smaller still and the Manchester wheels would go through but Ultrascales and Gibsons, which have wider flanges than the Manchester wheels, might struggle. With the 0.8mm gap and 18mm gauge, they all run perfectly and the track looks better than conventional EM.

 

I am not advocating that anybody else should follow these standards but I would like to have a go as it is always nice to try something different. When I created the Templot plan I was told by Martin Wynne that I was the first person to use them.  

This was also developed and refined by Guy Williams for Pendon. Wheels are (or were) available for special order from Ultrascale as EMF. 

[Craigw]

3 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

I must apologise. I only mentioned them in passing and didn't actually specify which carriages I meant.

 

The original quote was along the lines of "Why bother building a Ratio kit when you can buy a generic version in whatever livery you want?" and was meant to be a bit sarcastic.

 

 

 

Jason

 

Jason,

 

I have contributed to the discussion as well and feel no particular need to stop and there is certainly no need to apologise. If someone does not like comments about something they can scroll right on past it.

 

Craig W

[CF MRC]

12 hours ago, LNWR18901910 said:

Dear Sir,

 

I have made a remarkable discovery of what could be Early 2mm N Scale models. I made a post about it just now:

What do you think? Would this set be a forerunner to Lone Star and their OOO Gauge models?

 

-Mike.

These are quite well known and The Model Railway Club has this set of engine, tender & coaches, although not in a box. I believe that Richard (?) Bryant (Mike Bryant’s brother) used a full brake body on the ‘Inversnecky & Drambuie Railway’, one of the original 2mm scale layouts.  Part of that layout is at the NRM, another bit is kept by the Macclesfield MRS. 
 

Incidentally, the 2mm Scale Association celebrates its 60th birthday next year and it is quite possible that a part of the original Grove’s ‘Rydes Vale’ layout will be in attendance at the Diamond Jubilee exhibition in Derby on June 13-14th. 
 

Tim

Edited October 20, 2019 by CF MRC

[Tony Wright]

On 18/10/2019 at 19:19, Chamby said:

 

Good points made, Apollo, but...  Errr... Dare I say... Tony had a ‘generic’ Airfix bridge carrying the M&GN line over LB for most of its life so far!  A reasonable representation of the real thing... a placeholder until he could source something more accurate.  Is that so different to what is being mooted here?  The market for coaches of each individual pre-grouping company is commercially unviable for RTR.  But these generic ones, with shared production costs, Hatton’s can make that work financially.  So:

 

Generic stuff certainly has its place, I expect the Hatton’s coaches will stimulate interest in, and therefore the availability of, more pre-grouping locomotives simply because there will now be something already out there for them to pull.  And in time, some of those buying the Hatton’s coaches will develop a deeper interest in their chosen pre-grouping company and want to move on to something more accurate.  In much the same way as Tony finally got his more accurate girder bridge.  So this may well end up in turn stimulating the pre-grouping kit market for more accurate pre-grouping rolling stock!  

I'm glad you said 'had', Phil.

 

With regard to the MR/M&GNR girder bridge, my dear friend Dave Wager is finishing the right one off right now.

 

But the one I built was only ever going to be temporary (for too long, I admit). With regard to the Hatton'e 'generic' carriages, I think they are so different from what's mooted with regard to LB. I believe the majority of folk who buy them will not see them as 'temporary' at all.

 

My, I go away for a couple of days and the thread just flies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Regards,

 

Tony.  

[t-b-g]

4 hours ago, Denbridge said:

This was also developed and refined by Guy Williams for Pendon. Wheels are (or were) available for special order from Ultrascale as EMF. 

 

I have often wondered what the timescales and involvement of the various people was. Did the Manchester gang devise the standards and Guy Williams adopt them later or were they developed separately with both coming up with similar answers. As far as I know, Ultrascale still supply Pendon with the wheels, I just don't think they advertise them to the wider world. Somebody I know is building a replacement mechanism for a worn out Guy Williams loco and is arranging to obtain new wheels.

[Tony Wright]

7 hours ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

Mike,

 

surely the very fact that you can only buy what the RTR manufacturers choose to produce, together with the seemingly interminable wishlist's on RMweb, the Annual Wishlist Poll, etc. indicate that most railway "modellers" aren't in control of their hobby. Unless that is they are willing to adopt all aspects of modelling and buy and/or build what they need, how can someone be in control of their hobby. If you choose only to buy that which is ready assembled, be it locos, carriages, buildings, track, or w.h.y. then you are very much in the control of the suppliers. Of course, you can claim that building baseboards and scenery (even the former are increasing available off the shelf) means that you aren't entirely dependant on ready made items, but the prime focus of a model railway (for most) is the railway stock and immediate infrastructure.

 

The Broad Church belief is also misleading. If a religious parallel is appropriate, then this hobby is about a differing set of beliefs, different interests, different views, etc. with little commonality other possibly then a sometime religious fervour. The only really common thread is an interest in miniature representations of wheeled vehicles that run on parallel sets of rails.

 

Is it not also ironic that this discussion on "generic" models has arisen in a thread which has generally focused on creating models such as Little Bytham, where the builder has used whatever items have been available to create his model and has not restricted himself to only that which is available only completely finished.

 

Jol

Thanks Jol,

 

Wright Writes has certainly fizzed off about 'generic' RTR carriages since I've been away (for only one and a half days!). I have no right to moderate what's on here, but all that has to be said about them has probably been said. As I say, they're of no interest to me, so I really rather don't care. 

 

Might I just put you right on one thing, please? 

 

'Is it not also ironic that this discussion on "generic" models has arisen in a thread which has generally focused on creating models such as Little Bytham, where the builder has used whatever items have been available to create his model and has not restricted himself to only that which is available only completely finished.'

 

You've referred to Little Bytham in the singular with regard to creating the model. I'm only just part of the team which built it and everything which is on it. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

 

[APOLLO]

36 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

I'm glad you said 'had', Phil.

 

With regard to the MR/M&GNR girder bridge, my dear friend Dave Wager is finishing the right one off right now.

 

But the one I built was only ever going to be temporary (for too long, I admit). With regard to the Hatton'e 'generic' carriages, I think they are so different from what's mooted with regard to LB. I believe the majority of folk who buy them will not see them as 'temporary' at all.

 

My, I go away for a couple of days and the thread just flies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Regards,

 

Tony.  

 

But at least your temporary Airfix adaptation of the real thing was properly supported at both ends on and within substantial brickwork - as per prototype !!

 

 

Brit15

[Tony Wright]

May we return to making things, please?

 

Mo and I came back from Hartlepool this morning (what a charming town - I've never met such friendly folk; though I'm not a monkey!). 

 

I managed to get some more pictures of Shap, which was at the show.

 

I couldn't help but be a complete smart@rse when the 'Semi' I'd built from a DJH kit just walked away with its train................

 

 

Granted, it was only on 'The Caledonian', but it was rather wasted. 

 

 

This Hornby one had to be helped out the fiddle yard, such was its propensity to slip. Admittedly, it had a longer train, but 11 cars should be a doddle for a Semi. 

 

 

My A4 also just romped up the bank.

 

The show was excellent, and Shap performed very well. It really is coming along nicely.

 

More images on the layout thread...........