Cliches on layouts

[Pacific231G]

If you simply reflect what you might expect to see across an area on a typical day then it's probably not a cliche but, if the Church has a wedding on, the police are attending a car accident, a cat is stuck up a tree, the fires service are putting out a house fire, and a dog is biting the postman, all at the same time and all in the in the space of a couple of hundred yards then I think we can conclude that a certain degree of credibility has probably been lost.  

Reality comes from actual observation not from gorging on the Kibri etc catalogue. You do have to be careful of evidence though. According to my postcards, the entire staff of every station and often their families were all to be seen out on the platform at most times. I rather think though think the presence of the photographer may have been a factor.

Edited August 18, 2022 by Pacific231G
grammar

[DCB]

6 hours ago, tomparryharry said:

Clichés? Hmmm. Clichés exist, because they are, by & large, everyday items. Road vehicles do pass over or under railway lines. 

Trouble is Road vehicles seldom stop on Dual carriageway bridges over railways for the entire duration of an exhibition, I know everyone does it but it just looks so wrong to me. Massive queues of traffic  waiting for level crossing gates which never open are a different matter and continue to cause annoyance to Cheltenham residents..   It's those firemen standing on one leg wind me up.  And locos with no crews,

There was a line called the "Ortogo" Railway back in the 60s or 70s with all sorts of gimmicks, rabbits which shot down their holes when trains came but with so much more technology we seem to have lost the will to do similar stunts, we could have signalmen waving flags, policemen kicking suspects, cars with steamed up windows rocking gently, Courier vans double parked blocking the traffic, anything but an Eddie Stobart truck on a bridge as the 1935 Silver Jubilee passes beneath with  a train or private owner minerals, some filled some empty pass by on the other line.  Aggghhh.

 

[Michael Hodgson]

 

10 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

According to my postcards, the entire staff of every station and often their families were all to be seen out on the platform at most times.  I rather think though think the presence of the photographer may have been a factor.

So you need to position them all correctly - sitting on a bench or standing on a loco running plate, or posed holding a key hammer etc, PLUS the bloke with a camera on a tripod.

[Reorte]

9 hours ago, DCB said:

Trouble is Road vehicles seldom stop on Dual carriageway bridges over railways for the entire duration of an exhibition, I know everyone does it but it just looks so wrong to me.

Tricky one really, because no traffic also looks wrong.

[Pacific231G]

12 hours ago, DCB said:

 

There was a line called the "Ortogo" Railway back in the 60s or 70s with all sorts of gimmicks, rabbits which shot down their holes when trains came but with so much more technology we seem to have lost the will to do similar stunts, we could have signalmen waving flags, policemen kicking suspects, cars with steamed up windows rocking gently, Courier vans double parked blocking the traffic, anything but an Eddie Stobart truck on a bridge as the 1935 Silver Jubilee passes beneath with  a train or private owner minerals, some filled some empty pass by on the other line.  Aggghhh.

 

Ortogo was built by Jack Dugdale, a maths teacher at Wallasey Grammar School. It was a purely exhibtion layout buit in sections. I never saw it in the flesh but RM ran a series called Ortogo gimmicks between October 1967 and February 1968 some of which I have (somewhere!) . I don't think it ever featured as a Railway of the Month and my recollection is that the whole thing was run by enough PO relays and uniselectors for a small telephone exchange. 

Apart from rabbits etc. the major "gimmicks" included a cliff railway (funicular) https://reader.exacteditions.com/issues/95374/page/31

a narrowboat in a (real) water filled canal propelled by a OO loco beneath sporting a large magnet. The big one was a complete shunting yard. I don't know if that was programmable or simply repeated the same sequence of moves.

 

I've seen quite a lot of animations on layouts at French shows over the past few years- I think they appeal to the same insitincts as automata- but I think their limitation is that they are, apart from the trains, little bits of movement in an otherwise frozen world. It's a bit like sound equipped locos that chuff (or growl) their way through an otherwise silent soundscape.

 

There is a curious version of all this in Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 version of The Lady Vanishes which starts with a wide shot of an avalanche bound alpine station that looks to be modelled in 0 or 1 scale (actually, apart from the short coaches, a pretty good model)

 

The staff on the platform are frozen but the camera then tracks over the model town to reach the hotel where the  live action begins. A car does pass - a tad jerkily- along the street to provide movement but we have to assume that in the snowbound town nothing  else is happening.

 

Edited August 18, 2022 by Pacific231G
I remembered the model scene as being dawn but I've just watched the film again

[tomparryharry]

Another cliché?

 

How about stations?  I love seeing 8-car trains, on 3-car platforms..... 

[Reorte]

9 minutes ago, tomparryharry said:

Another cliché?

 

How about stations?  I love seeing 8-car trains, on 3-car platforms..... 

I've seen a six car train on a three car platform recently (at Grindleford). Well, think it was three. It was certainly shorter than the doubled up units that the train consisted of. Along with an excited child nearby who seemed very pleased when the driver gave him a small blast of the horn (the type of thing that can put a smile even on my cynical face).

 

Mind you you could argue that the platform is actually longer because there's a fenced off disused part of it.

Edited August 18, 2022 by Reorte

[MarkSG]

2 hours ago, Reorte said:

Tricky one really, because no traffic also looks wrong.

 

Allan Downes once wrote an article in which he explained that he never put figures on his models. The main reason being that in real life, people move, but model people don't, and a static human detracts from, rather than enhances, the realism. I can understand where he was coming from in that. But do also understand why an empty layout looks wrong to many people, too. 

 

I do think we have to accept that we are, for the most part, running moving trains past a static backdrop. That is unrealistic, but it's part of the willing suspension of disbelief. 

[john new]

56 minutes ago, tomparryharry said:

Another cliché?

 

How about stations?  I love seeing 8-car trains, on 3-car platforms..... 

They exist, Goathland for example is one.

[Pacific231G]

32 minutes ago, MarkSG said:

 

Allan Downes once wrote an article in which he explained that he never put figures on his models. The main reason being that in real life, people move, but model people don't, and a static human detracts from, rather than enhances, the realism. I can understand where he was coming from in that. But do also understand why an empty layout looks wrong to many people, too. 

 

I do think we have to accept that we are, for the most part, running moving trains past a static backdrop. That is unrealistic, but it's part of the willing suspension of disbelief. 

I think a partial answer is to avoid having any figures in action poses and instead place them in positions of rest from which they might not move for say thirty seconds or more.  On my layout I've got an old priest sitting on his suicase (Preiser I think) a couple of gendarmes talking to one another, the Chef de Gare standing on the platform and one of his staff leaning on some boxes on the goods dock.  When shunting is going on goods yards are not of course full of traders.

One might imagine the figures that would appear in an old photograph with say a ten or fifteen second exposure but if you look at some of the early plate photographs of railway installations they do look a bit "After People".

The advice from Peter Denny was to arrange things so that the train comes between the viewer and the platform so they don't see the doors not opening and closing nor that nobody actually gets on or off the train. That particular suspension of disbelief is of course rather trickier with separate up and down platforms but at a terminus we can make the far platform the principal and with say a Minories type terminus have a train occupying platform three before a train arrives on platform two.  

Edited August 18, 2022 by Pacific231G

[Steamport Southport]

1 hour ago, tomparryharry said:

Another cliché?

 

How about stations?  I love seeing 8-car trains, on 3-car platforms..... 

 

Still happens in real life.

 

A few stations on the WCML only fit four cars yet many of the trains are 2 x four car EMUs with eight cars in total. Hartford and Winsford are two examples off the top of my head.

 

Regulars know to always sit in the first four cars.

 

 

 

Jason

Edited August 18, 2022 by Steamport Southport

[Donw]

Stonehouse on the Gloucester to Swindon line was such a station the Cheltenham to Paddington HSTs used to announce  front coach for passengers alighting at Stonehouse.

 

The smallest platform I have used was at Hendy on the Tal y llyn. Hendy was a farm halt. The platform was about 4ft wide not much room for two adults and two dogs wanting the train to Abergynolwyn.

 

Don

[tomparryharry]

I'll add Bentley to the list. Oil trains run-round at Farnham, and propel the train to Bentley Dispersal. 

[Northmoor]

3 hours ago, tomparryharry said:

I'll add Bentley to the list. Oil trains run-round at Farnham, and propel the train to Bentley Dispersal. 

Er, I don't think they did, it would have required propelling wagons for about 6 miles!  Fairly sure the oil trains ran round at Alton then returned to Holybourne and shunted back into the sidings.

[newbryford]

9 hours ago, tomparryharry said:

Another cliché?

 

How about stations?  I love seeing 8-car trains, on 3-car platforms..... 

 

It happens in real life - selective door operation.

It even has a Wikipedia page...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_door_operation

[tomparryharry]

1 hour ago, Northmoor said:

Er, I don't think they did, it would have required propelling wagons for about 6 miles!  Fairly sure the oil trains ran round at Alton then returned to Holybourne and shunted back into the sidings.

You could be quite right. 

[kevinlms]

On 14/08/2022 at 22:29, john new said:

And so it should be.  Long gone now but I think it was K's that started using blister packs that left you searching for a box  to put it in during construction and for storage thereafter. 

 In reply to

 

On 03/04/2012 at 17:13, Pennine MC said:

 

I am reminded of that phrase so beloved of kit reviewers: the box is large enough to store the completed model .

 

 

I got into trouble in a GoG thread, where I suggested that a prominent ad that has appeared in quite a few magazines, showed that a manufacturer hadn't been following that rule.

The ad shows an O gauge LNER Garratt sitting on top of it's original DJH box, sadly though the buffers and couplings are sticking out beyond the extremities! So no way known, can the completed model fit the original box. I made the comment that a slightly larger box, would have solved the problem.

A comment was made that I had no idea about running a business, where cost is important. I think that rather missed the point, that you now need two boxes, one original (if that's important to you) and one to actually store the completed model!

[TEAMYAKIMA]

On 18/08/2022 at 01:47, DCB said:

There was a line called the "Ortogo" Railway back in the 60s or 70s with all sorts of gimmicks, rabbits which shot down their holes when trains came but with so much more technology we seem to have lost the will to do similar stunts

 

I have a Chinese HO exhibition-only layout and I realised early on that my layout needed to have unique 'gimmicks' if it was to be popular on the exhibition circuit - although I prefer to call them 'features'.

 

I was aware of the Ortogo Railway and the moving rabbits and so I adapted the concept. The theme of my layout is railway photography and the fact that I visited China 15 times to photograph steam in action and so I came up with this idea - it's all automatic.

 

We couldn't hire cars in China and so we went everywhere by taxi - and 'yes' that is a 3D version of me curtesy of MODELU.

 

 

Edited August 19, 2022 by TEAMYAKIMA

[45655]

10 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Er, I don't think they did, it would have required propelling wagons for about 6 miles!  Fairly sure the oil trains ran round at Alton then returned to Holybourne and shunted back into the sidings.

The Holybourne sidings are facing towards Alton and there is a crossover between platforms 1 and 2 at Alton station.  An incoming oil train would run into Alton station, run round, pull out past the sidings and reverse in.  The outgoing train could then run straight back to Farnham.

 

Latterly, with a half hourly service over the single line and both platforms at Alton in use, they had to knock out a passenger train to provide a path.

 

Keith

Alton.

 

[Pacific231G]

1 hour ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

 

I have a Chinese HO exhibition-only layout and I realised early on that my layout needed to have unique 'gimmicks' if it was to be popular on the exhibition circuit - although I prefer to call them 'features'.

 

I was aware of the Ortogo Railway and the moving rabbits and so I adapted the concept. The theme of my layout is railway photography and the fact that I visited China 15 times to photograph steam in action and so I came up with this idea - it's all automatic, controlled by reed switches and magnets under the loco.

 

We couldn't hire cars in China and so we went everywhere by taxi - and 'yes' that is a 3D version of me curtesy of MODELU.

 

 

That's an amazingly good animatronic Paul. Is it based on a commercial product or home brewed?

[TEAMYAKIMA]

38 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

That's an amazingly good animatronic Paul. Is it based on a commercial product or home brewed?

 

Ha! Ha!    You can't trick me like that, if I tell you how it's done, within weeks every exhibition layout will have something similar - the very definition of a cliche!😉

 

It's home brewed.

Edited August 19, 2022 by TEAMYAKIMA

[DCB]

2 hours ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

 

I have a Chinese HO exhibition-only layout and I realised early on that my layout needed to have unique 'gimmicks' if it was to be popular on the exhibition circuit - although I prefer to call them 'features'.

 

I was aware of the Ortogo Railway and the moving rabbits and so I adapted the concept. The theme of my layout is railway photography and the fact that I visited China 15 times to photograph steam in action and so I came up with this idea - it's all automatic.

 

We couldn't hire cars in China and so we went everywhere by taxi - and 'yes' that is a 3D version of me curtesy of MODELU.

 

 

 

Man that is amazing,  Wow!    Respect..    

[Pacific231G]

20 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Still happens in real life.

 

A few stations on the WCML only fit four cars yet many of the trains are 2 x four car EMUs with eight cars in total. Hartford and Winsford are two examples off the top of my head.

 

Regulars know to always sit in the first four cars.

 

 

 

Jason

Isn't having a platform length appropriate to the trains you have the space to run an important aspect of selective compression.

For example, my current H0 layout is only sixty two inches long (plus FY) with a totally unrealistically short run round loop that will take five wagons or three six wheel coaches. The platform is deliberately longer than the loop so always rather longer than the train. 

With the normal twice daily Omnibus (all stations stopping train) that shortness isn't too obvious. 

However. I thought of running a couple of through coaches each day (not unusual for French branch lines in the 1950s and a bit of extra operation) but even two full length mainline coaches show up just how short the station is.

So, my little terminus is officially that of a d'Intêret Local (light) railway on which only short coaches operate (one might think of the Culm Valley). Not bound by national standards some of those were much shorter. I can, with some "interesting" shunting  just about manage a mixed train or a tail load of a couple of wine tankers on a short local train but, if the locals want to get to Paris, they'll just have to change trains at a remote junction at some ungodly hour of the morning and hope the local train doesn't miss the non-guaranteed correspondance. (I really must build them a Hôtel de la Gare to stay in)

 

Edited August 19, 2022 by Pacific231G

[Samedan]

20 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

A few stations on the WCML only fit four cars yet many of the trains are 2 x four car EMUs with eight cars in total. Hartford and Winsford are two examples off the top of my head.

 

Just for the record, Winsford has shortened platforms but Hartford’s are still, theoretically, their original / long-standing length. The only trains that stop regularly at both of those stations these days are the Class 350 EMUs operated by London Northwestern on the Liverpool - Birmingham services. They normally run in 4 car sets, which appear to be about 80m long. It’s rare these days to get an 8 car train. Hartford’s platforms are potentially 200m long. However, during the most recent refurbishment, only a portion of the platforms received the full resurfacing. Whilst I’m very familiar with it, without actually visiting the station, I can’t be certain whether the length of platform in normal use could accommodate a 160m train.

[whart57]

On 16/08/2022 at 20:03, Pacific231G said:

I had my French H0m layout out  in the lounge for my local 009 Society  group on Saturday and there was a suggestion that I used the open space behind the canal wharf for a game of boules. Now that is what I call a cliché (though not actually an uncommon sight further south than where my layout is set somewhere in Michelin 64 , and often to be seen next to an old station that closed in the 1950s) or before) 

 

I'm planning on having game of boules on my Thai layout. The idea came from this pic I took of workers in the carriage works at Hualamphong some ten years ago