Building the same layout as someone else.

[F-UnitMad]

4 hours ago, PMP said:

If you’d been told seriously by a clown at an exhibition that ‘You can’t take pictures of my layout, it’s my copyright’, as I have, and similar in other circumstances, the suggestion isn’t that far fetched😊

 

Thinking about it the exhibition and layout was mentioned on here, it had ‘no photography’ signs displayed on it, probably 5-10 years back. Caused some discussion then!

Did it get many more invitations, I wonder. And did the thread on here die off as well.?

Asking permission to take photos is sheer politeness, and I've heard of owners qualifying 'yes' with requests not to post them on social media, but I don't think I've ever seen explicit 'No photography' signs on a layout.

Of course, I don't get to many exhibitions.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

If someone exhibits their layout, apart from the politeness to ask to take pics/vids, why would an exhibitor refuse? That would be perverse.

[PMP]

11 minutes ago, F-UnitMad said:

Did it get many more invitations, I wonder. And did the thread on here die off as well.?

Asking permission to take photos is sheer politeness, and I've heard of owners qualifying 'yes' with requests not to post them on social media, but I don't think I've ever seen explicit 'No photography' signs on a layout.

Of course, I don't get to many exhibitions.

I saw it twice in the East Midlands, and it appeared I think in RM and possibly HM/MR. It was a BR D&E blue-Blue/grey era theme. The comments as I recall were on the relevant show thread so probably one of Derby/Nottingham/Retford or Lincoln.

[franciswilliamwebb]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

These two just popped up on my feed:

And this one a couple of days back

 

Thanks for those.  There's always a bit of YouTube I've missed despite my best efforts😉

[RobAllen]

After I “finish” Holcombe (so that I have some actual experience in layout building), I would love to follow in my dad’s footsteps and model Bath (Queen Square). He did it twice: once in OO and then in O and they are very different from each other due to space considerations. I’m equally aware that my efforts wouldn’t be a patch on @queensquare’s, but it would be fun to build and operate a 1930’s version!

(Not to mention the minor problem of not having the space to even contemplate something like Bath, of course!)

[St Enodoc]

8 hours ago, Flying Pig said:

ItsMyTrainsetClaims will get you the compensation you don't deserve but feel entitled to...

...you're not entitled to but feel you deserve?

[St Enodoc]

8 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

Did it get many more invitations, I wonder. And did the thread on here die off as well.?

Asking permission to take photos is sheer politeness, and I've heard of owners qualifying 'yes' with requests not to post them on social media, but I don't think I've ever seen explicit 'No photography' signs on a layout.

Of course, I don't get to many exhibitions.

There is an exhibitor on the circuit who requests a coin donation to charity if taking photos of his layout. Fair enough, in my view.

[F-UnitMad]

9 hours ago, Flying Pig said:

 

Looks like there's a business opportunity here.

 

Slightly miffed that your model railway been copied without your permission?

ItsMyTrainsetClaims will get you the compensation you don't deserve but feel entitled to...

 

12 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

...you're not entitled to but feel you deserve?

Both!!! 🤣🤣👍👍👍

[Michael Hodgson]

On 14/03/2024 at 17:13, Peak said:

Can I build the same layout as someone else? Lets say that I was building an OO gauge layout of Paddington and someone else was doing the same, would that be fine?

 

 

Who cares?

 

 

[Flying Pig]

30 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

...you're not entitled to but feel you deserve?

 

Well, Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel (operating as...) would clearly have the reader continue to believe that they are technically entitled, even if Natural Justice would conclude that they didn't deserve.

 

[The Johnster]

If anyone were to copy Cwmdimbath I would be a) highly flattered and b) interested to see somebody else's 'take' on the place.  It exists in reality, but never had a mining village or a railway; there was at one time a tramway serving a forge.  This probably ceased operations before the main industrialisation of the surrounding valleys, and I doubt there has been much more than the top few fields of the local farm and the forestry to account for human activity for over 150 years up there.  The tramway can be walked as far as the ruins of the forge.

[Chris M]

6 hours ago, The Johnster said:

If anyone were to copy Cwmdimbath I would be a) highly flattered and b) interested to see somebody else's 'take' on the place.  It exists in reality, but never had a mining village or a railway; there was at one time a tramway serving a forge.  This probably ceased operations before the main industrialisation of the surrounding valleys, and I doubt there has been much more than the top few fields of the local farm and the forestry to account for human activity for over 150 years up there.  The tramway can be walked as far as the ruins of the forge.

Agreed. Being serious for a moment, I would be only too happy to see other folks interpretation of the location I have modelled. When someone expressed an interest in making their interpretation of an earlier layout I was only too happy to provide him with my track plan as a start point. Why not, railway modelling isn't a competition.

[Colin_McLeod]

A small scene on the prototype can be the inspiration to model that scene somewhere on my layout.  I could be equally inspired by a scene on someone else's layout.

[Hibelroad]

On 17/03/2024 at 09:21, PMP said:

No sense of humour failure at all. If you do photography regularly in ‘public  spaces’ as I have done you get some most peculiar imaginary laws and rights being explained to you by assorted members of the public, and in previous threads here.

 

Having recently started flying a drone, the experience is quite similar, to the extent one flyer I’ve heard of takes business cards with him with the pertinent laws printed that he hands out to ‘experts’!

Sadly all hobbies and pastimes are plagued by self appointed police, I spent some years dabbling in ham radio and it was awash with legal experts, to the extent that it finally put me off. Being older and wiser I ignore them now and if they become too insistent I would simply say sue me then. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so copying should be seen as a compliment, after all most kit or scratch building consists of copying methods developed by some of the hobby’s greatest characters in the past. 

[37Oban]

1 hour ago, Hibelroad said:

Sadly all hobbies and pastimes are plagued by self appointed police, I spent some years dabbling in ham radio and it was awash with legal experts, to the extent that it finally put me off. Being older and wiser I ignore them now and if they become too insistent I would simply say sue me then. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so copying should be seen as a compliment, after all most kit or scratch building consists of copying methods developed by some of the hobby’s greatest characters in the past. 

Experts!  Best definition I know of an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing at all!

 

Roja

['CHARD]

On 14/03/2024 at 17:13, Peak said:

Can I build the same layout as someone else? 

 

Can you, or may you?

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

Haven't BR and it's inheritants got the patents and copyrights on what we model, shouldn't we all be applying to them?!!

Especially when you consider the licencing hoops the manufacturers have to jump through to copy a livery.

 

Mike.

[iands]

14 minutes ago, 37Oban said:

Experts!  Best definition I know of an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing at all!

 

Roja

Or, 'ex' is something that 'has been', and 'spurt' is a 'drip under pressure'. 

[Wheatley]

8 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Haven't BR and it's inheritants got the patents and copyrights on what we model, shouldn't we all be applying to them?!!

Especially when you consider the licencing hoops the manufacturers have to jump through to copy a livery.

 

Mike.

Good luck working out where BRB Residuary disposed of them all to, the trademarks for the Network SouthEast livery are now owned by a bunch of gricers !  https://www.nsers.org/ 👍

 

The franchised TOCs did not, in general, inherit design rights, patents etc, but they did have the right to use them and in some cases were required to use them as a condition of either their Operating Licence or a Group Standard. The ROSCOs might have acquired the IP rights for the rolling stock and I think EWS did for the FOCs, but in very general terms anything used by all the TOCs (BR symbol, design of an APTIS ticket, TOPS etc) was either imposed or used under a global licence from somewhere else.  

 

Post privatisation liveries are another matter - in those cases they are generally either owned by the franchisee (resulting in lots of hurriedly applied white sticky-backed plastic on Mk 4s at the end of GNER for example) or in the case of Scotrail (and possibly Merseyrail), by the franchising authority. 

 

 

[St Enodoc]

27 minutes ago, iands said:

Or, 'ex' is something that 'has been', and 'spurt' is a 'drip under pressure'. 

I used to think that an expert was someone who came from somewhere else and showed slides but now, having retired after nearly 49 years service, I realise that it just means you've been around longer than anyone else.

[Geep7]

Briefly going back to the Paddington question, there is one model I know of, but the owner only seems to post on Facebook..... It's a great model too, set in the 1970's so plenty of Westerns! I actually think it is used as the frontage to the fiddle yard of the layout.

 

Back to the Op's question, i've never gone out of my way to completely copy another person's layout, but perhaps be inspired by it. I once had the late Colin Park's comment that a photo I had taken of my layout, looked rather similar to a photo taken of his Newhaven Harbour. Whilst I was definitely inspired to build my West Sands / Blackhurst layout after seeing Newhaven Harbour in the Railway Modeller and on here, I had no intention of them looking the same, but I guess if you're going to model the late 60's/early 70's Southern Region, there will be similarities anyway. However, i've been inspired by a few Southern Region layouts over the years, Chessington Chalk Lane, Priors Lane, etc., but also by the real thing, my current layout being inspired in a small way by Waddon Marsh on the Wimbledon to West Croydon line.

[Talltim]

On 16/03/2024 at 20:07, t-b-g said:

 

I agree entirely. I always thought " Half term at Ditchling Green" was a wonderfully evocative title for a layout. As was "The little long drag".

 

I have never been creative enough to come up with anything that good!

I'm toying with the idea of calling my putative model layout of Lawrence Mass 'Immigrant City'

Edited March 18 by Talltim

[F-UnitMad]

8 hours ago, Hibelroad said:

Sadly all hobbies and pastimes are plagued by self appointed police

They wouldn't call themselves police, but on here there's definitely an "Anti frog juicer" brigade, ever ready with the zeal of Puritans mixed with the tolerance of the Spanish Inquisition, to interupt any thread on here concerning frog juicers and tell us all they're an expensive waste of money & cheaper/alternative methods should be used.

On a recent thread I was told it's in response to (quote) "the point made (ad nauseum) that frog juicers are the best, and only, solution".

I googled "rmweb frog juicer best only solution" & guess what??!! No one has said that on RMweb!! It's always the naysayers banging on about it. I think they confuse the word "only" with "easiest". Certainly on my main layout I've used frog juicers as the easiest option. So what if that doesn't equate to "cheapest" either? It's my choice!!

[DCB]

5 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

They wouldn't call themselves police, but on here there's definitely an "Anti frog juicer" brigade, ever ready with the zeal of Puritans mixed with the tolerance of the Spanish Inquisition, to interupt any thread on here concerning frog juicers and tell us all they're an expensive waste of money & cheaper/alternative methods should be used.

On a recent thread I was told it's in response to (quote) "the point made (ad nauseum) that frog juicers are the best, and only, solution".

I googled "rmweb frog juicer best only solution" & guess what??!! No one has said that on RMweb!! It's always the naysayers banging on about it. I think they confuse the word "only" with "easiest". Certainly on my main layout I've used frog juicers as the easiest option. So what if that doesn't equate to "cheapest" either? It's my choice!!

 

"Frog Juicer" sounds like one of those people who run migratory toads over in their Rage Rovers. Turning Live Frogs into Dead Frogs.

[F-UnitMad]

6 minutes ago, DCB said:

"Frog Juicer" sounds like one of those people who run migratory toads over in their Rage Rovers. Turning Live Frogs into Dead Frogs.

I think it stems from a very old schoolboy joke; "what's green & turns red at the flick of a switch?"

Answer: Kermit in a food blender......

 

I didn't say it was a tasteful joke!! Kermit, of course, being the frog from the TV Muppet Show. A model railway frog juicer has an LED that swaps between red & green as the polarity is changed - the power, or "juice", to the frog.