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View of a US Freemo modular meet in Germany


shortliner

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Travelers and modelers aren't the same thing though. The bits that are the most popular modelling fodder from the pre-Beeching era are the bits that didn't in all honesty have that many travelers!

In the words of Mr M. Loaf, you took the words right out of my mouth. 

 

Offering comments about accurately modelled and operated trains replicating one's memories is one thing, but would you want to spend all the time and trouble of building a modular set-up to see that exact type of operation happen in OO? 

 

Tomorrow is the first outing of my own 16' module at the club (still naked of all scenery but an SP Type 23 depot).  It's going to be a fictitious-but-reasonably-accurate representation of a minor location on the Coast Line circa 1980, and it has the ability to offer some reasonably accurate operation too, with a fruit packing facility and a few other industries. But the caveat of taking it to work with a few others and their modules is that... gasp ... we may see some more modern power operating at it, even, for shame, a UP Genset or a couple of BN SD9s.  Advance warning is also given that SP's only Budd railcar, SP10, may also pay a visit, in its 1950s guise.

 

Steady at the back, there.

 

Brian

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In the words of Mr M. Loaf, you took the words right out of my mouth. 

 

Offering comments about accurately modelled and operated trains replicating one's memories is one thing, but would you want to spend all the time and trouble of building a modular set-up to see that exact type of operation happen in OO? 

 

Tomorrow is the first outing of my own 16' module at the club (still naked of all scenery but an SP Type 23 depot).  It's going to be a fictitious-but-reasonably-accurate representation of a minor location on the Coast Line circa 1980, and it has the ability to offer some reasonably accurate operation too, with a fruit packing facility and a few other industries. But the caveat of taking it to work with a few others and their modules is that... gasp ... we may see some more modern power operating at it, even, for shame, a UP Genset or a couple of BN SD9s.  Advance warning is also given that SP's only Budd railcar, SP10, may also pay a visit, in its 1950s guise.

 

Steady at the back, there.

 

Brian

 

No. I'm doing it as a 16.5 mm gauge permanent layout instead. If there was a modular version to visit , I would do that too, and probably bring stock.

 

Andy

 

 

 

Andy

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Travelers and modelers aren't the same thing though. The bits that are the most popular modelling fodder from the pre-Beeching era are the bits that didn't in all honesty have that many travelers!

 

If travellers and modellers are not related, then the huge UK market for 00 gauge trains (heavily biased to passenger) versus the far smaller per capita US market, (99% biased to freight) must have some other reason. :O

 

I would also cast my personal doubt the "popularity" concept as necessarily valid. It could equally likely to be due to easy availability, good marketing and cost.

 

For decades, home train sets consisted of "one of each" of the newest items in the mainstream train set catalogues, regardless of their relevance and quantity in real life. Even now, many exhibition layouts frequently display the amazing set of multiple coincidences where a large number of actually unique vehicles scattered around the country, appear together in the same scene. And similarly real lines typically operated by and with one class of locos, coaches and wagons, are depicted as using just one each of very many different classes instead.

 

It's a lot easier and affordable to model the 6 ft single track GWR branch terminus, than it is to model Clapham Junction or Waterloo.

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I suspect very few modular meets run totally prototypical arrangements ;)

We had North, South, East, West and Canadian locos and layouts from the same spread at the US meeting. Some variation from such a diverse group of modellers is inevitable but it doesn't mean the operation can't reflect the real thing with the same leeway as a fictional station.

I'm looking up various working timetables trying to come up some typical workings for a British sequence to be based around for a meet. Taking a day in the life of four or five stations would give a good idea to base it around. Fast clocks are probably a bit ambitious at first.

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Andy, I think it is only a matter of time before British modellers realise what a modular approach can bring them.  The British scene seems to offer so many possibilities as we have self-contained routes of great popularity like the Somerset & Doreset, the Waverley route, the Settle & Carlisle, West Highland line, Great Central, all not yet exploited in this format.

 

At the other extreme there is a guy building Birmingham New Street complete with scale overhead wires and masts!  Let us sit back and be amazed over the next ten years or so to see what comes out.

 

 

No. I'm doing it as a 16.5 mm gauge permanent layout instead. If there was a modular version to visit , I would do that too, and probably bring stock.

 

Andy

 

 

 

Andy

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