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BEIJIAO - a large Chinese HO exhibition layout set in the 21st century


TEAMYAKIMA
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Had to go to work today but only a 5 hour shift, so when I got home I fiddled with various things.

 

I upgraded our industrial railway DCC board. Each of the seven trains has a loco allocation - plus the banker(s).

 

All the writing is chalked up and coated with Dullcote so it cannot be wiped off, the loco addresses are not Dullcoted and so can easily be replaced in case of loco failure. The board is on a post in easy sight of the industrial railway operators.

 

IMG_20191218_084340.jpg.637b7384c02b3169053bba77fcec65a6.jpg

 

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Remember that Walthers kit?

 

DSC_0240.JPG.39bdd1a15dd9879f2cfdf563a568036e.JPG

 

I didn't like it as it was, but it had potential and so It got cut up into bits...………...

 

IMG_20191204_131117.jpg.7859f4426e7b9c54d4d7020a7819a8df.jpg

 

 

A couple of hours later it looked like this …………………………..

 

DSC_0243.JPG

Edited by TEAMYAKIMA
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That video is very well done and is an absolute credit to you.

 

I really must get out to see this somewhere.

I know you are in London soon, any other invites yet?

 

 

Kev.

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17 minutes ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

I see you come from Manchester - the 'spotter' for Manchester said he wouldn't be inviting us as the layout was too boring and that we needed to up our game.

That's a bit of a cheek, I don't see how someone could call your layout boring, it has plenty going for it and if yours is boring then you would also need to include quite a few large diesel layouts that have been doing the rounds on the exhibition circuit for years.

 

I went to Manchester this year, Kings Park and Netherwood are both comparable to Beijiao in operational terms.

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6 hours ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

Peterborough, North Shields, Aylesbury and somewhere else in 2020

 

I see you come from Manchester - the 'spotter' for Manchester said he wouldn't be inviting us as the layout was too boring and that we needed to up our game.

Wow! That is harsh, brutal. Honestly I think it is unfair. At Warley the layout held my attention for a very long time. 

Compared to some where everything fell off or did not move....I hope he did not invite any of those.

Richard

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On 20/12/2019 at 00:02, TEAMYAKIMA said:

 

I bought it off ebay - it cost £12.69 but is now about £13.69, here is the link

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Car-Parking-Camera-Kit-Rear-View-Reversing-HD-Monitor-Night-Vision-Van-Bus-Truck/233377766086?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

 

I have tested it in the shed but not with trains running as we can only run trains at exhibitions. It seems fine. The only downside is that it has markings down each side of the images as it is designed as a car reversing monitor, but that doesn't seem to be a problem in our case.

 

Thank you very much for the information :)

 

And fantastic layout!  Spent quite a while watching it at Warley and loved watching the trains roll past; it was so nice to see a large layout with something actually moving pretty much all of the time (surprising how many layouts are beaitifully built and poorly operated...)!  Very impressive :) 

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19 hours ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

Peterborough, North Shields, Aylesbury and somewhere else in 2020

 

I see you come from Manchester - the 'spotter' for Manchester said he wouldn't be inviting us as the layout was too boring and that we needed to up our game.

 

MMRS should be looking into this and taking appropriate action. That is just plain rude and does the club's reputation no good at all. Of course, the spotter might not really be from MMRS but an impostor.

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On 19/12/2019 at 19:31, TEAMYAKIMA said:

 

I regret layout rarely (if ever) get invited back to Warley. But we are at the BIG London show in March next year.

 

Not quite true, one obvious response to the question of how layouts are invited to Warley is there is there seems to be an inner circle of layouts and modellers who can be relied upon- the owner of one layout has announced he will be making his sixth appearance next year...

 

19 hours ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

I see you come from Manchester - the 'spotter' for Manchester said he wouldn't be inviting us as the layout was too boring and that we needed to up our game.

 

I've heard of that club using a "Ten second rule" which I doubt any credible layout could keep up for the full duration of a show weekend. Perhaps the comment was masking another excuse such as the layout was too big and therefore expensive to book, Manchester being one of the major shows to have downsized.

 

Then again, people tend to shy away from the unfamiliar and being a trailblazer may mean that the average punter may not be able to relate to such a layout- my own US layouts may have not been traditional in their subject but at the end of the day they were still American and once that has been established the viewer is halfway to deciding whether to stay and watch or walk away in indignation. I've always thought that the success of a layout in terms of how inspirational it is is whether someone else is so enamored that they decide to build something similar, and one solution might be to build a smaller car sized  support layout/diorama that could be dragged out to local one day shows for free to increase awareness of China as a prototype. 

Edited by 298
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1 hour ago, 298 said:

I've heard of that club using a "Ten second rule" which I doubt any credible layout could keep up for the full duration of a show weekend. Perhaps the comment was masking another excuse such as the layout was too big and therefore expensive to book, Manchester being one of the major shows to have downsized.

 

Then again, people tend to shy away from the unfamiliar and being a trailblazer may mean that the average punter may not be able to relate to such a layout

 

I don't want to blame the Manchester layout 'spotter' - all of us are entitled to our views - in a sense his comments have focused my mind and influenced my thinking. I think there are interesting cameos with 'reach out' to a wider audience but obviously they are so subtle that an experienced layout watcher failed to notice them. There is a problem that so much of the 'interesting stuff' is approximately 4ft away from the viewer once there is an 18 inch barrier at the front of the layout.

 

I will try harder to persuade Manchester and others that the layout is worth booking.

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1 hour ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

 

I don't want to blame the Manchester layout 'spotter' - all of us are entitled to our views - in a sense his comments have focused my mind and influenced my thinking. I think there are interesting cameos with 'reach out' to a wider audience but obviously they are so subtle that an experienced layout watcher failed to notice them. There is a problem that so much of the 'interesting stuff' is approximately 4ft away from the viewer once there is an 18 inch barrier at the front of the layout.

 

I will try harder to persuade Manchester and others that the layout is worth booking.

Have you fallen into the mental trap that because one person says your layout is boring then all must find your layout boring.  It's ridiculous to think that the only way to get a layout booked is to fill it with gimmicks, Clarendon is slow with frequent long gaps in movement, that surely would fail a ten second rule but it still gets booked.

 

Manchester is no longer the 'big' show it once was, I think that has more bearing on what they invite.

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May I request no negative comments about MMRS - after all I do want to persuade them to invite me to their show! :D

 

It was a PM on RMweb not a face to face conversation - and having re-read it the PM was not from the current MMRS 'spotter' but by an ex-MMRS spotter who had viewed the layout in conjunction with the current one. Both had decided that the layout was 'not for them' and I am guilty of assuming that the former 'spotter' was speaking for both of them in his PM.

 

I have no grudge against either of them, they are entitled to their view and after all had asked on RMweb for comments on its suitability for exhibition invites. So having invited comments 'good and bad' I cannot complain if some were somewhat negative.

 

I must emphasise that I was not offended by any of the comments - I was disappointed that my efforts to 'reach out' to a wider audience had not received the positive response I had hoped for, but the PM merely taught me that I must try harder

 

I am genuinely taking the comments on board and they will influence my future plans.

Edited by TEAMYAKIMA
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My limited experience in exhibiting Ni-Hao (which is 12x2'6) has been at small shows with a more general audience. Being smaller has allowed me to interact with the viewers and I've found people are very interested in something different. The only problem was that answering questions distracted from the operation! More operators could solve this. I also have cameos and highlight these on the posters. A smaller layout makes these easier to spot.

 

Saying that, I'm now making a small, single-board/operator, yard layout with the intention of making it easier to exhibit without the transport and operation issues.

 

Cheers

 

Mark

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First of all a quick 'Merry Xmas' to one and all, but then back to the layout and how it will be displayed in future.

 

We now seem to have the route selection nailed which should help the operators relax and be able to attempt more complex moves. So I am thinking that Aly Paly will be better in several ways as we will be concentrating on our USP's.....

 

1. More uphill banked trains on the industrial line. The banked trains are our #1 USP and in the past they have amounted to two out of eight timetabled movements ie 25%. Re-arranging trains will now mean that three out of seven scheduled moves will be banked trains ie 43%.

2. There have been some comments about the straight line (boring) nature of the China Rail tracks. The route selection will allow us to send out anti-clockwise freights from the imagined large freight yard (off-scene to the left) along the bi-directional line and then across the clockwise China Rail line and onto the anticlockwise China Rail line - hopefully that makes sense. So as the freights are longer than the viewable scenic section there will be a (short) period when a freight is snaking over both crossovers and has disappeared from view to the right and is still coming into the scene from the left. This is something that without route selection takes so long to set up that we have only attempted it once in four exhibitions (our first in 2018) but I think should become a regular as it will be spectacular - especially with the 35 wagon tanker train because the wagons are shorter and the 'snaking effect' will be more pronounced.

 

680103359_Scenicsection.jpg.8fa8b5a4fa49b378ee95df24bea44ef0.jpg

 

3. One of our passenger trains had 12 coaches full of passengers/cameos but without coach lighting no-one saw them. I have now  conceded that if we are going to get best benefit from this USP then we have to lighting in that rake. In this early photo the coach on the left is a standard Bachmann lit coach (without passengers) and the right hand one is a detailed one with a standard UK lighting unit added. This has now been replaced with a 'bright' unit that better matches the factory fitted unit and by Aly Paly all 15 coaches in the rake will have interiors and lighting.

 

1872154995_DSC_0222(3).JPG.37e7d997def848a90ebf1fdb6903fb21.JPG

 

4. The Faller roadway will be working. One suggestion I received as a PM after Warley was to install a Faller Roadway system at the front of the layout to create interest. Well, we've had a Faller Roadway since day#1 but it's never been reliable enough to run it at a show - I have been working to make it 100% reliable ( well 99.9% any way!) so that we can at least have one vehicle circulating all the time on a 'fire and forget' basis.

DSC_0008.JPG.ab7937d50963f0b67b74477c3f8c1c92.JPG

 

5. I am working on ways to highlight the cameos because it is clear by the comments like 'you need cameos to attract viewers' that the cameos we do already have are not being picked up. We know they're there and so we see them but most first-time viewers miss at least some of them and we must find away of dealing with that problem.

 

So we enter 2020 with renewed confidence and optimism and with plans in place to make the layout more visitor friendly without selling out our core values.

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I'm replying in respect of the "up your game comment". I think that, aside from maybe a hidden motive in the layout being too big, one possibility is that a fair chunk of modellers like to look at layouts mostly corresponding to what they model. I am guilty of this as well - when I modelled BR/LU in the 1970s in 00, that's what I made a beeline for at shows. I then modelled Portuguese railways in H0, and would make a trip deliberately to see Campo De Leste or similar. 

 

In reality most modellers I suspect fall into modelling the more conventional - British, and mainly somewhere around the 1950s or in the more modern period. That means that modellers like you, no matter how good your work is, are always going to have a chunk of people that do not catch-on to their prototype. As someone who has a London Tube/Silverlink/DLR layout on the go in N, a Portuguese Narrow Gauge micro in H0e, a Bermuda Railway working diorama in N, and some HO scale Taipei Metro stock in storage, (75% of my stock is 3D printed) my inclination at shows is to appreciate the unusual, the clever and the quirky. I adore that layout of the Thai market with the collapsing stalls that was around for a while; give me 10 minutes in front of any Indian narrow gauge, or anything in an unconventional scale or protoype  - I admire the workmanship, creativity and the drive needed to produce the prototype you want.  I like being surprised by the clever and the left-field.

 

 

I personally am looking forward to seeing Beijao at the Palace - I am actually extending my March stay in the UK (which means a day of unpaid leave so as not to use up all my AL), specifically to see your layout and one or two others at the show.

 

 

Edited by ianmianmianm
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11 minutes ago, ianmianmianm said:

In reality most modellers I suspect fall into modelling the more conventional - British, and mainly somewhere around the 1950s or in the more modern period. That means that modellers like you, no matter how good your work is, are always going to have a chunk of people that do not catch-on to their prototype. 

 

 

Absolutely I agree totally and I have always said that it is the non-enthusiast 'general/family' markets which will probably be most open to the concept as they have less pre-conceptions as to what the like and don't like. Ironically that market is generally to be found more at 'local shows' that maybe don't have the budget for big/expensive layouts like mine.

 

17 minutes ago, ianmianmianm said:

I personally am looking forward to seeing Beijiao at the Palace - I am actually extending my March stay in the UK (which means a day of unpaid leave so as not to use up all my AL), specifically to see your layout and one or two others at the show.

 

Thank you for that comment - it makes all the work worthwhile.

 

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18 hours ago, ianmianmianm said:

I'm replying in respect of the "up your game comment". I think that, aside from maybe a hidden motive in the layout being too big, one possibility is that a fair chunk of modellers like to look at layouts mostly corresponding to what they model. I am guilty of this as well - when I modelled BR/LU in the 1970s in 00, that's what I made a beeline for at shows. I then modelled Portuguese railways in H0, and would make a trip deliberately to see Campo De Leste or similar. 

 

In reality most modellers I suspect fall into modelling the more conventional - British, and mainly somewhere around the 1950s or in the more modern period. That means that modellers like you, no matter how good your work is, are always going to have a chunk of people that do not catch-on to their prototype. As someone who has a London Tube/Silverlink/DLR layout on the go in N, a Portuguese Narrow Gauge micro in H0e, a Bermuda Railway working diorama in N, and some HO scale Taipei Metro stock in storage, (75% of my stock is 3D printed) my inclination at shows is to appreciate the unusual, the clever and the quirky. I adore that layout of the Thai market with the collapsing stalls that was around for a while; give me 10 minutes in front of any Indian narrow gauge, or anything in an unconventional scale or protoype  - I admire the workmanship, creativity and the drive needed to produce the prototype you want.  I like being surprised by the clever and the left-field.

 

 

I personally am looking forward to seeing Beijao at the Palace - I am actually extending my March stay in the UK (which means a day of unpaid leave so as not to use up all my AL), specifically to see your layout and one or two others at the show.

 

 

Exactly where I come from (I'd never have gone to Warley if it wasn't for Beijao). Having visited more exhibitions than usual this year, I have to say that repetition seems to be the order of the day … yet another BR-era diesel depot or GW branch line terminal. Even the large BR steam-era layouts begin to pall. Saying that, there are some excellent layouts covering more unusual subjects starting to appear and these are a lot more fascinating to me. Beijao does score on having continuous action - that's got to count. I've walked away from countless layouts where nothing happens for long periods. Paul's proposal for increasing operational variety will be icing on the cake.

 

Cheers

 

Mark

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Watched the Pilentium video last night, rather good.  In fact I think it is probably the best I have seen in 2019.  Normally, I dislike DCC sound and at first I thought you must have used some of the better US techniques I have seen, but then realised it was edited in.  An excellent job of editing.

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