Channel 4 model railway challenge

[caradoc]

I also continue to enjoy this series, always remembering that it is not intended as a specialist programme for railway modellers, and that what we actually see is but a fraction of the total footage shot. Presumably Jenny has not featured much because her team was quietly and efficiently getting on with the job, without the reality TV-worthy catastrophes that have befallen the other teams !

[snailpace]

Aren’t we all taking this too seriously? IMHO all these reality shows have little to do with reality and all to do with the way the programme makers can seem to make any situation occur with the use of editing. We’ve all been told that the participants had a good time and that’s great, but overall it has very little to do with our hobby apart from the occasional background bits in part 1. On the plus side the modellers involved are not being portrayed as anything other than “normal”. After all, for this project they could have used anyone as the skills involved do not seem too railway orientated. I’m watching it because they have made an entertaining, slightly different, programme and not for any top tips for the layout.

[rockershovel]

Regarding the viaduct, plywood? In a situation where water flow from side to side is a probable issue? There’s a lot of blather on screen about “using engineering techniques to solve problems”, don’t garden railways (and real ones) use concrete bases and board tops quite a lot? Isn’t a lump of concrete just the job for placing in a water flow - dense, heavy, waterproof and minimum cross section?

 

Same for the radio control issue. Didn’t ANYONE think that the first step would have been to walk along the towpath and test the range, before ever putting it in the water? I’m sure the control set would have had an effective range printed on the box... and where did that silly boat come from?

 

The counterbalanced incline doesn’t need another loco, just a truck full of earth .... anyway, aren’t such inclines usually straight?

 

No, the second episode seemed to be just a lot of contrived gimmicks strung together. Very disappointing.

[Hobby]

But it wouldn't have been as entertaining to watch.  Besides you can't ask a group of Engineers to throw down a load of kerbs and some planks?  We're talking about British engineering pride here..........

 

I'm just waiting for it to be washed away, everything else they've made has gone wrong so I'll be very disappointed itf it remains standing when the floods come!

 

I can't help feeling the cost of this exercise could have been spent building a couple of miles of real track for a preserved railway or even a tender just my option?

 

Ah but it would have been quite difficult to lift and relay that two miles of track all the way to Inverness... And the tender would have to be powered... Ringfield motor anyone?

 

The use of ply is good for a two week project

 

Waste of good ply, just think how many layouts they could have made...

 

Back OT, I thought the first episode was better but am getting to like Shouty Man (sorry but the nickname has stuck), the hill was definitely getting over-engineered until he arrived....

[45156]

Regarding the viaduct, plywood? In a situation where water flow from side to side is a probable issue? There’s a lot of blather on screen about “using engineering techniques to solve problems”, don’t garden railways (and real ones) use concrete bases and board tops quite a lot? Isn’t a lump of concrete just the job for placing in a water flow - dense, heavy, waterproof and minimum cross section?

 

Same for the radio control issue. Didn’t ANYONE think that the first step would have been to walk along the towpath and test the range, before ever putting it in the water? I’m sure the control set would have had an effective range printed on the box... and where did that silly boat come from?

 

The counterbalanced incline doesn’t need another loco, just a truck full of earth .... anyway, aren’t such inclines usually straight?

 

No, the second episode seemed to be just a lot of contrived gimmicks strung together. Very disappointing.

Well each to his or her own.  I suspect that most of the issues are being done to make the programme more interesting.  I guess that we'll all need to agree to differ on this one.  But let's not all fall out over it.

[eastwestdivide]

...

I wonder which channel this Voyager documentary was on - and when it'll get repeated.

...

BBC4. Glimpsing it in the Ch4 ad breaks, I think I've seen it before, but still well worth a watch.

 

Interesting contrast in "management" styles between Shouty Man's confrontations and Dick's grin, wrap an arm round, get him to practice saying "Yes, Dick", and then ask the question "can it be done?"

[Jenny Emily]

 

Sorry to see that we didn't get a little more of the input of team D to the project, and our Jenny didn't get a lot of air time - still there's three more episodes to go.

 

 

You and me both. Whilst pretty much nothing of what we did made it to screen, and some of our work has been wrongly attributed to other teams I can assure you that team D put in hard graft and completed a lot of route mileage on what was deemed some of the worst terrain. We got on really well as a group and got the job done with the minimum of issues. 

I also continue to enjoy this series, always remembering that it is not intended as a specialist programme for railway modellers, and that what we actually see is but a fraction of the total footage shot. Presumably Jenny has not featured much because her team was quietly and efficiently getting on with the job, without the reality TV-worthy catastrophes that have befallen the other teams !

I like to think so, unless they've saved all my f**k ups to be edited together later on. 

[Phil Parker]

Same for the radio control issue. Didn’t ANYONE think that the first step would have been to walk along the towpath and test the range, before ever putting it in the water? I’m sure the control set would have had an effective range printed on the box... and where did that silly boat come from?

 

 

As an experieneced RC boat modeller, I'm sure that no matter how many times you bang on about range, that wasn't the issue. More likely, flat batteries either in the boat or transmitter. Even old style 26mhz sets like the one used (OK, it could have been 40mhz) are more than capable of transmitting many times that distance - at least mine always have been.

 

Being telly, there will have been a lot of hanging around where someone will have had to keep the boat moving to stop it hitting the side of the lock. Battery life in the boat could easily be in the region of an hour (assuming lead acid cells, less for Ni-cad) and I bet it took a lot longer than that to film those scenes. 

[Sir Hadyn]

^{My Mum loved it. Job done!}

[Torper]

There was nothing wrong with Paul, just that you're not seeing the hours of things going really well in between the bits they have chosen to use. Paul was okay and very skilled at what he does. He was thrown in to being team leader with little advance warning and did exceptionally well under the circumstances.

 

Yes, I very much liked the way that Paul stood up to Shouty Man's aggressive behaviour, putting his team's welfare before Shouty Man's demands.  I almost raised a cheer when Paul turned and stalked off, leaving Shouty Man (I was about to abbreviate him to SM, but though I'd better not) scratching his head and saying he'd never heard anything like that before.  Other than the bit about the boat and the lock, which I found OTT farcical, I thought the episode was was pretty good.

 

DT

[Reorte]

I can't help feeling the cost of this exercise could have been spent building a couple of miles of real track for a preserved railway or even a tender just my option?

Would it have got the cost back in terms of enough people watching it to justify it? Sadly probably not. Even if it did and we had programmes like that it's still good to have some less serious ones too.

[Enterprisingwestern]

231G

 

What did the ‘DS’ in CFDS signify? Is ‘S’ the Department?

 

It’s fascinating whatever. The nearest I’ve seen a German military training railways, also 60cm, but unpretentiously narrow gauge. Your one looks as if Heywood’s french cousin designed it!

 

K

 

Can we have a seperate thread for these please?, I've bailed out of the TV series twaddle so I'll not be following this thread, but wouldn't mind learning more about the concept of big train sets.

 

Mike.

[chriswright03]

I found it gobsmacking that they had to ring the designer/builder of the crane for lowering the boat and loco into the canal ti find out how it worked.  Surely it would have made more sense for them to be there at that stage or even to speak to someone in person and show them how to do it when the time came?

 

Someone (Rockershovel?) mentioned how did the Quad bike end up in the drink.  They said it had a stuck throttle in reverse.  Even then I am sure the brakes would work so more pilot error than mechanical maybe.  In any event it is apparent there has been little training on how to operate these if they are all kaput and the last one was only saved by a very young Engineer with common sense way above what seems to be standard issue these day.

 

Whilst I am talking about Cameron it was obviously a very touching moment for him with the bag pipes.  OK it may have made better television him explaining why it meant so much to him but I thought they kept the camera on him for far too long and should have let the lad have the moment to think about his mother on his own.  Very poor decision in my opinion.

[Mike Storey]

 

 

All in all, though, the true star of this show is the loco, and this does make a very good advert for the products of Roundhouse, as it appears to be standing up well to its treatment.  It seemed to survive its ducking in the lock pretty well.  I see that there is a six month waiting period for this particular model if purchased from that well known retail outled on the Isle Of Man.

 

Indeed, their products are very robust (I have three of them). I don't yet have a "Silver Lady", which is the de-luxe version of one of their best selling locos, the "Lady Anne". I am very pleased to see them use it, but I am surprised, as it has a number of extras that don't seem necessary for this exercise, such as working simulated cylinder draincocks, glazed spectacles etc., but on the other hand, it does have a fully sprung chassis which is probably very handy on the track they are using.

 

Each model in their range is hand-built in batches at the plant in Doncaster, which why there appears to be a waiting list. Most of the range from each batch sells out fairly quickly, with some exceptions, which is why so few are usually available off the shelf. What you are seeing on the website is the next release date of the batch for that model. http://www.roundhouse-eng.com/index.htm

[PhilJ W]

As an experieneced RC boat modeller, I'm sure that no matter how many times you bang on about range, that wasn't the issue. More likely, flat batteries either in the boat or transmitter. Even old style 26mhz sets like the one used (OK, it could have been 40mhz) are more than capable of transmitting many times that distance - at least mine always have been.

 

Being telly, there will have been a lot of hanging around where someone will have had to keep the boat moving to stop it hitting the side of the lock. Battery life in the boat could easily be in the region of an hour (assuming lead acid cells, less for Ni-cad) and I bet it took a lot longer than that to film those scenes. 

The boat was clearly taking on water even by the time that he tried to reconnect. Water and electrics don't mix and there lies the problem. I did wonder though why didn't they have a couple of people in a rowing boat just in case?

[Torper]

Indeed, their products are very robust (I have three of them).

 

I see that they also do live steam loco kits which they suggest are not too difficult.  Have you tried any of them?

 

DT

[rockershovel]

Regarding quad bikes, they usually have a spring-loaded thumb lever throttle. Some have reverse gear, most don’t and that’s controlled from the gearbox, not the throttle.

[Reorte]

The boat was clearly taking on water even by the time that he tried to reconnect. Water and electrics don't mix and there lies the problem. I did wonder though why didn't they have a couple of people in a rowing boat just in case?

Might not be allowed in the locks. The water can really churn around in those IIRC, I think from looking at it they might not've been filling them at maximum speed as it was.

[Pacific231G]

Can we have a seperate thread for these please?, I've bailed out of the TV series twaddle so I'll not be following this thread, but wouldn't mind learning more about the concept of big train sets.

 

Mike.

Unfortunately Mike I think I may have reached the end of what is now knowable about the  Chemins de Fer du Domaine de Sologne. I suspect that it was a project that tripped over its own ambition and even if it ever did get to run at all  it was probably as a far more limited private railway using ordinary NG equipment.

If anything interesting does turn up. I'll start a new thread to accomodate it.

Edited January 15, 2018 by Pacific231G

[rockershovel]

As an experieneced RC boat modeller, I'm sure that no matter how many times you bang on about range, that wasn't the issue. More likely, flat batteries either in the boat or transmitter. Even old style 26mhz sets like the one used (OK, it could have been 40mhz) are more than capable of transmitting many times that distance - at least mine always have been.

 

Being telly, there will have been a lot of hanging around where someone will have had to keep the boat moving to stop it hitting the side of the lock. Battery life in the boat could easily be in the region of an hour (assuming lead acid cells, less for Ni-cad) and I bet it took a lot longer than that to film those scenes.

 

I don’t think we’re very far apart here. I don’t know about rc model boats, but there was an obvious failure to appreciate something that should have been well known. The signal was lost under the overbridges, so I did wonder if loss of line-of-sight was the problem; but since you mention it, being unable to reconnect because the batteries are flat, is a likely option.

[rockershovel]

The boat was clearly taking on water even by the time that he tried to reconnect. Water and electrics don't mix and there lies the problem. I did wonder though why didn't they have a couple of people in a rowing boat just in case?

The boat was obviously inadequate: far to small, and top-heavy. I’m sure some experienced modeller could have solved the problem at the design stage, probably using a larger pontoon with the train lifted on as a single pallet?

[Mike Storey]

I see that they also do live steam loco kits which they suggest are not too difficult.  Have you tried any of them?

 

DT

 

Not the Roundhouse ones, no, as they require a fair amount of accurate and neat soldering, and I would be afraid to mess this up on something still relatively expensive. I built a meths fired kit of a loco called "Jane" (NLA) from a different company, IP Engineering, which could be fully assembled with nuts, bolts and some self-threading screws, but it only has two speeds - Stop and Go Very, Very Fast. I never did get it to run reasonably, so I tend to stick with my Roundhouse and one Accucraft locos.

[bimble]

I found it gobsmacking that they had to ring the designer/builder of the crane for lowering the boat and loco into the canal ti find out how it worked.  Surely it would have made more sense for them to be there at that stage or even to speak to someone in person and show them how to do it when the time came?

 

 

 

Well, it was a design that they had requested, and the team who'd built it were several miles away by then, busy laying track.

 

The boat was clearly taking on water even by the time that he tried to reconnect. Water and electrics don't mix and there lies the problem. I did wonder though why didn't they have a couple of people in a rowing boat just in case?

 

Yeah, I also though a man in a canoe would have been a useful addition, or even an open canoe so Dick could have travelled by water as well... staying in contact with the boat and making use of his life jacket.

 

Something that Jenny (or any of the other volunteers might be able to answer), I did wonder how much practice/preparation the crews got in laying the track before hand, or what detailed planning of the route was done before hand. 

[Hobby]

The boat was obviously inadequate: far to small, and top-heavy. I’m sure some experienced modeller could have solved the problem at the design stage, probably using a larger pontoon with the train lifted on as a single pallet?

 

I may be wrong but I thought I heard Dick say he had one which they would use in the first episode?

[chriswright03]

Well, it was a design that they had requested, and the team who'd built it were several miles away by then, busy laying track.

 

 

I imagine they were but it isn't beyond the wit of man to have one person travel back to do it and had they done it when it was first finished as opposed to when they actually needed it I am sure they would not have been as far away.  Even explaining it at the time to someone who was free to roam as it appears a number of them were would have been better.