Building the same layout as someone else.

[5BarVT]

2 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

I refer my honourable colleagues to the last big Modelling Police incident. It is now legendary, and spoken of in hushed tones of awe and reverence.

 

 

I’ve just lost half an hour of my life.

And really enjoyed it!

Paul.

[jamieb]

18 minutes ago, BoD said:

 

Why?   
 

Im not trying to be facetious, just wondering why it would put you off.  
Unless all three of you are looking to exhibit the layouts, but that again would depend on relative location.

 

If I wanted to  build a model of a particular location it wouldn’t bother me how many other models of that location there are.  It’s my interpretation and my creation of something I obviously like and want to model.

Frankly, because they were both better than I could have achieved at the time!

[Pacific231G]

It's not a problem. At Ally Pally a few years ago there were three Minories, in 4mm/3mm and 2mm scale respectively. They all used CJF's track plan and they were all different.

 

Ashburton is an odd one as it was a lovely station (I visited it when the DVR was still planning to have it as their terminus before the Vogons decided to demolish the track to make way for a bypass) but it's a very limited one and very difficult to work - in reality and in model form. I thought Peter Denny had the right idea with Buckinham mk 2 which was based on Ashburton - Great Centralised of course- but with the mill move to the other side and the kickback mill siding turned into a goods loop. 

 

Though he never seems to have acknowledged it, Derek Naylor's 00n3 Aire Valley was effectively a close copy of the 00 Madder Valley. The original version of Saltaire was Madderport less one siding and, in the final version (RM July 1972), most of the scenic features are drectly lifted from the final version of the MVR - though without John Ahern's artistic flair. Even the sawmill in the corner with the watermill on the other side of the railway and the branch on the near side of the river.  

I seen nothing wrong with that but I do think that if you base your layout on someone else's you should acknowledge it. I can't imagine building a Minories and describing it with no reference to CJF or using the Inglenook name without acknowledging Alan Wright.

 

[Peter Kazmierczak]

It would take someone really brave (or daft) to name their layout Buckingham, Charford or Borchester. 

[John Besley]

30 minutes ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

It would take someone really brave (or daft) to name their layout Buckingham, Charford or Borchester. 

 

Charford was a classic, wasn't it originally built in a caravan?

 

I often think of that every time I am on the Axminster - Bridport road

[Dagworth]

I hope that if someone else is building a model of Ipswich they will be willing to share their research.

 

Andi

[rob D2]

On 14/03/2024 at 17:16, Phil Parker said:

A bizarre question - why wouldn't it be fine? There aren't model railway police for this sort of thing. If they were, then they would have arrested loads of people for building Ashburton.

They are too busy nicking people building TMDs with 2000 LED lights featuring 1960 Bachmann diesel depots , and stuffed full of colas engines making a racket 

[F-UnitMad]

Has anyone ever built a model of Paddington (the station, before any comedian pedants say anything!!) apart from the Ranelagh Bridge stabling point? Of which, I'm sure, there have been several over the years.

[Pacific231G]

2 hours ago, John Besley said:

 

Charford was a classic, wasn't it originally built in a caravan?

 

I often think of that every time I am on the Axminster - Bridport road

John Charman housed it  (the two boards - each 5ft 5ins- stored upright behind a curtain) and brought it out to operate, in a large (27 ft long) residential caravan, probably not the sort you'd be stuck behind on the A303 but still cramped.  Whether he actually built it in the caravan is less certain though in his first article he did mention his wife putting up with a lot of sawing and drilling over a year.  That was in 1955 and, by 1959 the caravan had been sold and he'd moved into more spacious accomodation(RAF Married quarters?) with Charford extended as an L. 

[Pacific231G]

3 hours ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

It would take someone really brave (or daft) to name their layout Buckingham, Charford or Borchester. 

There have been other Borchesters including an RM railway of the month based on plan 24L in "Plans for Larger Layouts" . I think Frank Dyer (Borchester Town and Market) always wrote for MRC and one has to remember that, in those days before the internet, if you subscribed to one magazine you could be in complete ignorance of very well known layouts offered in the others so modellers coming up with the same name  might be doing so entirely independently. I knew nothing about Frank Dyer's work until comparatively recently. 

 

I can remember being very frustrated that Mike Bryant included a lot of photos of his 4ft x 2ft layout in his "Modelling in TT-3" book but no plan to tell me how he's done it. My father and I took Railway Modeller and I had absolutely no idea that a complete step by step series of articles by him on building the "pint pot" layout had been published in MRC in January-June 1958. Had I seen those I might well have made far more progress in TT-3 than I ever did.  

[adb968008]

It would be interesting food for thought to see the same layout location modelled in a few different eras side by side… 1930’s, 1960’s and 1990’s say…

[Hal Nail]

6 hours ago, adb968008 said:

It would be interesting food for thought to see the same layout location modelled in a few different eras side by side… 1930’s, 1960’s and 1990’s say…

My stock time frame has expanded slightly from 1959 to 1937 - 1978

 

Does that count?!

Edited March 16 by Hal Nail

[KeithMacdonald]

On 14/03/2024 at 18:30, AndyB said:

Minories.

 

It's models of models of models ... all the way down ..  for 140+ pages!

 

 

[Enterprisingwestern]

If we are outlawing copies then there is going to be an a large cloud of smoke over the UK from burning inglenooks!

 

Mike.

[BoD]

17 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

At Ally Pally a few years ago there were three Minories, in 4mm/3mm and 2mm scale respectively. They all used CJF's track plan and they were all different.

My brain fog may well be kicking in but, at one time,  wasn’t there a competition organised for ‘Minories layouts’.

[Dagworth]

24 minutes ago, BoD said:

My brain fog may well be kicking in but, at one time,  wasn’t there a competition organised for ‘Minories layouts’.

DEMU ran a Minories competition a few years back.

 

Andi

[AY Mod]

16 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

Has anyone ever built a model of Paddington (the station, before any comedian pedants say anything!!) apart from the Ranelagh Bridge stabling point? Of which, I'm sure, there have been several over the years.

 

Many years ago, there was an interesting small scale model, possibly 1mm:foot ( @Tony Wright may recall better), by a Wolverhampton MRC member with very recognisable card models of full trains that moved on belts. I think it included the underground lines. That's as close as I have encountered, unfortunately.

[Legend]

At one time weren’t there a lot of GWR branch terminals on the go at the same time ? Ashburton springs to mind . I think as long as you enjoy it build whatever you want . I’ve certainly taken inspiration from other layouts in the past . 

Edited March 16 by Legend

[Gwiwer]

I would never seek to copy the work of another directly but were I to build a model of somewhere I already knew to have been modelled then I see that as absolutely ok. 
 

I did respectfully back away from using a fictitious name I had chosen upon learning that it was already in use for another layout. I could still have gone ahead because the name itself was not subject to any form of legal protection. 
 

All it cost me to effect the change was a still-unused sheet of stick-on signs. 

Not a problem at all. 

[PMP]

2 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

 

Many years ago, there was an interesting small scale model, possibly 1mm:foot ( @Tony Wright may recall better), by a Wolverhampton MRC member with very recognisable card models of full trains that moved on belts. I think it included the underground lines. That's as close as I have encountered, unfortunately.

I remember that, probably early 80’s and it was surprisingly effective. 
Making or copying the same thing has occurred a couple of time I can think of. One was the Mill on the East Suffolk Light railway, both Bob and Iain commented that the direct copy was a bit odd, but I don’t think it bothered them. I’m certain I’ve seen a OO version of Iain Futers Lochside a while back too, and there was a copy of Nigel Bowyer’s Carron Road too.

 

Using a similar name could cause confusion especially if a fictitious location like Charford or Borchester, Buckingham’s not so bad as it’s not unreasonable for someone to find a real place to add a railway to. There was a interesting point made a while ago about using the same name for a fictitious model. Someone was planning an new exhibition layout with the name Albion Yard, the same as my extant layout at the time. It didn’t bother me so much, but the potential for show managers or visitors to a show to expect to see my layout, and see something else was there. No one of course has copyright on a name or layout design unless they protect it.

[PMP]

11 minutes ago, Legend said:

At one time weren’t there a lot of GWR branch terminals on the go at the same time ? Ashburton springs to mind . I think as long as you enjoy it build whatever you want . I’ve certainly taken inspiration from other layouts in the past . 

It was certainly a hackneyed phrase regarding GWR BLT’s at one time, with people saying Railway Modeller in particular was a guilty party. I did a check of several years of the 60/70/80’s and there was no evidence of such a bias at all.

[F-UnitMad]

3 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

If we are outlawing copies then there is going to be an a large cloud of smoke over the UK from burning inglenooks!

 

Mike.

But "Inglenook" is just a trackplan, and strictly speaking, a trackplan with specific lengths of sidings. My own layout has a 2 point/3 sidings section, but no way is it an "Inglenook",  & it's not operated with a 'switching puzzle' either.

So unless people are building Inglenooks that are identical in scale, size, scenery & Era, that  bonfire might not be so big after all.

Edited March 16 by F-UnitMad

[t-b-g]

Seeing the mentions of Buckingham reminds me that I have wondered about producing an exhibition layout based on one of the earlier versions of the layout. Probably either the double or single track version of the Mk 2 layout. The real Buckingham is not ever going to be taken to an exhibition as it is too fragile to move. It would need a couple of days setting up time to repair all the soldered joints that would break when the boards were lifted, as they twisted and flexed. Yet it would be good to share the locos and stock with a wider audience, so building a replica, perhaps using "old school" methods, Merco printed brickpaper and such, would be an interesting exercise.

 

I hadn't even considered what I might call such a layout. It would have to have "Buckingham" in the name, so perhaps "Buckingham Mk 2", or even "Two tracks to Buckingham" as per the title of the Denny article in Railway Modeller all those years ago.

 

I do think that there is a bit of a difference in philosophy between a modeller building a layout of a real place that has already been done by somebody else and a modeller building a duplicate of a fictional place. One is re-using a location. The other is re-using somebody else's creation. 

[Philou]

On 14/03/2024 at 21:09, mike morley said:

A friend of mine has always wanted to model Pontrilas.

 

I'm not that friend, but I'm doing Pontrilas. I didn't know about Bucks Hill when I started off, and I wouldn't have thought to look at a name under anything else but Pontrilas. Too late now as the layout is well under construction ................................

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

 

PS: If anyone is interested look under 'Dymented'. Progress is slooooow at the moment but a bit is being done daily ..............

[Philou]

17 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

Ranelagh Bridge

 

One of the Ranelagh's is on display at Lord and Butler's in Cardiff, if you're going thataway ...................... Very nice layout in a very small space.