Cliches on layouts

[cctransuk]

On 04/09/2022 at 16:32, Metr0Land said:

Peugeot 403's appear quite a bit (like Columbo used to drive).  This week's episode had a 4-door estate in the background, quite rare I think?

 

There was an episode called The Golden Fleece which doesn't seem to be available any more.  It had a lot of location shots of French canal towing locos of CGTVN.  Some info here:

https://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/trains/france21.htm

 

 

 

The Golden Fleece was shown on Talking Pictures not long ago - VERY interesting to see the towing locos operating, plus the overhead towing gantry apparatus at locks.

 

CJI.

[Pacific231G]

On 24/09/2022 at 21:37, cctransuk said:

 

The Golden Fleece was shown on Talking Pictures not long ago - VERY interesting to see the towing locos operating, plus the overhead towing gantry apparatus at locks.

 

CJI.

 

Indeed, though I've seen plenty of photos of these towing tractors, actual film of them in operation is extremely rare.

I've been fascinated by France's canal towing railways ever since finding the metre gauge track still intact through and north of St. Omer and a couple of 600mm gauge towing tractors displayed at the Les Fontinettes boat lift at Arques near St. Omer in the 1980s. I've even written a couple of articles about them.

The exteriors for the Golden Fleece episode of Maigret were filmed in 1961 at Longueil-Annel in Oise where the système Chêneau with overhead tractors (controlled by the lock keeper) was used to move barges through the locks.  The rail towing tractors didn't appear to be on tow and I think were just being run up and down for the filming. Normally they'd have arrived with one to three barges in tow, the tow would have been transferred to the overhead tractor and the rail tractor would have picked up  other barges coming the other way. I don't know whether powered barges would also have used the overheaad system to control their movement through the locks. There is some pointwork in the film but I don't know if it was a junction or simply the location of one of the tractor sheds and substations that were spaced along the system.

There are some stills from the filming here

http://www.daniel-debeaume.com/2020/10/album-le-village-de-longueil-annel-1961-1961-un-film-de-maigret-tourne-aux-ecluses.html

 

The railway towing system itself ran until 1973 from just south of Dunkerque to the Swiss border near Mulhouse with a total length of about 1700 kms including several branches. It was mostly metre gauge operated by the CGTVN apart from in Alsace where 600mm gauge tractors operated by Traction de l'Est ran on the narrower towpaths in the regions that were part of Germany from 1871 -1918.

There is a vast amounf of information about the system here 

http://papidema.fr/halage-mecanique.php

 

I don't think it's quite a cliché but I've seen several French layouts with towing railways, some of them diesel powered which never happened,  set in parts of the country that never had them

 

 

 

Edited September 26, 2022 by Pacific231G

[rogerzilla]

A Tardis somewhere.  I suspect the Venn diagram of ageing railway modellers and Dr Who fans overlaps considerably.

 

Also, I am fed up of mid-60s layouts, just so a huge mixture of steam and 1st/2nd generation diesel can be run.  For period correctness, the steam engines should be sooty, rusty hulks but they rarely are.  I'd like to see a lot more non-GWR Big Four layouts.

[Northmoor]

It's an era that interests me, but I agree there are a lot of 60s transition layouts (more in magazines than at exhibitions) around where Rule 1 tends to be applied rather liberally.

I often find at exhibitions, it is the layouts of subjects I wouldn't normally interest me, that capture my attention.  For instance today I was at the Farnham MRC show in Aldershot; three layouts of which none exactly match my own modelling interests - Pencader (right area, wrong era), Castlederg (wrong gauge, era and region) and Redbridge Wharf (wrong region, right era) - but all of which I most enjoyed viewing and chatting to the operators.  Redbridge Wharf is a transition era layout but it focusses on the scenic features of a real location and operation, rather than an excuse for a suspiciously large loco depot.

Funnily enough there were at least three GWR BLTs, in three different gauges, but all superb in their own way.

[The Johnster]

Steam/green diesel layouts are popular to the point of cliche, as are TMD layouts and several other types.  I see why the period is popular, easy research and a huge biodiversity of locos and stock nearly everywhere in the country especially on main lines, but, as always, there are pitfalls.  Things were changing fast in the early 60s, and if your diesel has sye or there are electrification warning patches evident, it probably shouldn’t be hauling any more than one or two carmine and cream or WR choc/cream liveried coaches, and if it’s a WR layout, steam should not appear with fye diesels or 117s with gangways. 
 

Another common mistake is tail lights on diesel locomotives and dmus.  The lights should be extinguished on locomotives hauling trains and only one lit when it is running light engine, never two.  DMUs and EMUs, except on the Southern Region, never had lit tail lights; they carried oil tail lamps like any other stock.  They were provided with red shades to fit over the white marker lights, which fitted into grooves in the lamp housings and were kept in a varnished wooden container on the wall of the control desk in the cabs, but never used.  
 

Pre-BR rolling stock, except Stanier/Ivatt and Bullied, was being culled fast; non-gangwayed of any sort was rare by 1962, as was gangwayed Collett and Maunsell, and, by ‘64, Hawksworth and Gresley, Thompsons lasting perhaps a year beyond that.  We are talking in generalisations here; individual examples may have lasted longer and I rode in a Thompson from Doncaster to Selby behind DP2 in ‘66. 

[Steamport Southport]

3 hours ago, rogerzilla said:

A Tardis somewhere.  I suspect the Venn diagram of ageing railway modellers and Dr Who fans overlaps considerably.

 

Also, I am fed up of mid-60s layouts, just so a huge mixture of steam and 1st/2nd generation diesel can be run.  For period correctness, the steam engines should be sooty, rusty hulks but they rarely are.  I'd like to see a lot more non-GWR Big Four layouts.

 

But I remember when Police Boxes were everywhere and that was well into the 1970s and possibly early 1980s.

 

Still quite a few in situ. Went past one not long ago in Wales.

 

 

Jason

[whart57]

20 hours ago, rogerzilla said:

A Tardis somewhere.  I suspect the Venn diagram of ageing railway modellers and Dr Who fans overlaps considerably.

 

Also, I am fed up of mid-60s layouts, just so a huge mixture of steam and 1st/2nd generation diesel can be run.  For period correctness, the steam engines should be sooty, rusty hulks but they rarely are.  I'd like to see a lot more non-GWR Big Four layouts.

 

A club layout may well mix post BR-blue diesels with pre-Grouping steam. Which is OK if the intention is to provide a large-ish layout for members to run their stock on. However if the intention is to model something from a set period then a bit more discipline and research is required. A bit more than calling one bit a "heritage railway" or deeming that anything that might have turned a wheel in some form or other between 1955 and 1965 fits the so-called steam-diesel transition.

 

 

[whart57]

Is it just me, or do you never see TV aerials or satellite dishes on the houses of post 1955 layouts?

 

For those who like to be accurate that is another thing that requires research. The first TV aerials were an X shape, but they were just on the earliest roll-out. The H shape YAGI familiar to those of us who grew up in the 1960s was the common aerial for the BBC 405 line transmissions. They could be mounted upright or horizontal however depending on the polarisation of the local transmitter. BBC from Crystal Palace was upright but the major midlands transmitter at Sutton Coldfield might have been different, I don't know.

 

The larger multipole YAGI (larger than modern ones that is) came in with ITV in 1955. The first ITV broadcasts were in a different VHF band to BBC so needed a different sized aerial. The BBC and ITV aerials usually pointed in different directions. Where I lived, for example, we got BBC from Crystal Palace but ITV from Dover.

 

Smaller YAGIs were needed for the UHF band transmissions that started with BBC2 in 1968. VHF doesn't have the bandwidth to carry colour TV so during the 1970s BBC1 and ITV migrated to the UHF band. The H and big YAGIs started to disappear from houses though in many places people still had two aerials pointing in different directions to get the best signal strengths. When Channel 4 started it was often allocated a low power slot at the edge of the band meaning that the primary transmitter for an area wasn't the best. Channel 5 was even worse, it was allocated a band that had already been allocated to French TV which meant it was barred from transmitting south of the Thames

 

Satellite dishes started to appear in the late 1980s, becoming ubiquitous by the century's end. The weird and wonderful shaped small aerials in use today also came in as Freeview started broadcasting digital TV on higher frequency UHF bands from the 1990s.

 

So sticking little aerials on houses can date a post 1955 layout just as much as the colour scheme on coaches or station nameboards.

[rogerzilla]

And BSB Squarials for a short period around 1990 (although a few people used them later, as it was a way to watch "free" Premiership football, since TV2 Norge used the same D2MAC system as BSB had).

[Steamport Southport]

Available though.

 

https://chestermodelcentre.com/products/satellite-dishes-x10

 

https://www.hattons.co.uk/38706/bachmann_branchline_44_535_tv_aerials_pack_of_10_/stockdetail

 

I'm pretty sure you could knock up a Squarial pretty easily.

 

 

Jason

[Phil Bullock]

On 18/08/2022 at 13:23, tomparryharry said:

Another cliché?

 

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

 

Happened all the time between Worcester and Oxford on the Cotswolds line…. Before central locking too! Prototype for everything….

[The Johnster]

On 10/10/2022 at 11:56, whart57 said:

So sticking little aerials on houses can date a post 1955 layout just as much as the colour scheme on coaches or station nameboards.

In the affluent Southeast, certainly, but as a general rule most working class households didn’t get tv until the early 60s, the situation being complicated in hilly industrial areas like Eastern Lancashire, West Yorks, or the South Wales mining valleys by poor reception until transmission relay masts were supplied, in some places not until the early 70s.  Rediffusion’s cable rental service was popular in such places, so few aerials. 
 

In Cardiff, Newport, and the Vale of Glamorgan, the transmitters were at Wenvoe (BBC) and St.Hilary (ITV) to the west of the city, but the majority of aerials were set up for transmitters on the Mendips on the other side of the Bristol Channel; reception was line-of-sight and not a problem.  This was because, until the Welsh language service S4C was set up, there was Welsh language content and daily news from Wenvoe and St.Hilary, and the largely English speaking monoglot population of the area not only didn’t want this content, especially early evening news which intruded on to peak viewing time, but objected to it as ‘ramming Welsh down our throats’.  I counted along Cardiff residential streets once for a school project and found that an average 1 in 12 antennae were set up solely for the Welsh transmitters, though about a quarter of homes had two aerials, one for the Welsh transmitters and one for the Mendips. 
 

Visited Minehead for a week’s holly in the 80s, and they had the opposite problem, being in a blind spot from English transmitters but having line of sight to Wenvoe & St.Hilary; I imagine Ilfracombe was much the same. 
 

This is a pretty good indication of how culturally unbalanced Wales is between the anglicised densely-populated industrial areas and the rural sparsely-populated Welsh-speaking ones.  Only a quarter of the population lives in the latter, which covers 3 quarters of the area.  There are as many Welsh speakers in Cardiff as the rest of the country, but they are a very low percentage of the city’s population, about 5% as against more like 90% for the western Lleyn peninsula. 

Edited October 12, 2022 by The Johnster

[john new]

4 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

In the affluent Southeast, certainly, but as a general rule most working class households didn’t get tv until the early 60s, the situation being complicated in hilly industrial areas like Eastern Lancashire, West Yorks, or the South Wales mining valleys by poor reception until transmission relay masts were supplied, in some places not until the early 70s.  Rediffusion’s cable rental service was popular in such places, so few aerials. 
 

In Cardiff, Newport, and the Vale of Glamorgan, the transmitters were at Wenvoe (BBC) and St.Hilary (ITV) to the west of the city, but the majority of aerials were set up for transmitters on the Mendips on the other side of the Bristol Channel; reception was line-of-sight and not a problem.  This was because, until the Welsh language service S4C was set up, there was Welsh language content and daily news from Wenvoe and St.Hilary, and the largely English speaking monoglot population of the area not only didn’t want this content, especially early evening news which intruded on to peak viewing time, but objected to it as ‘ramming Welsh down our throats’.  I counted along Cardiff residential streets once for a school project and found that an average 1 in 12 antennae were set up solely for the Welsh transmitters, though about a quarter of homes had two aerials, one for the Welsh transmitters and one for the Mendips. 
 

Visited Minehead for a week’s holly in the 80s, and they had the opposite problem, being in a blind spot from English transmitters but having line of sight to Wenvoe & St.Hilary; I imagine Ilfracombe was much the same. 
 

This is a pretty good indication of how culturally unbalanced Wales is between the anglicised densely-populated industrial areas and the rural sparsely-populated Welsh-speaking ones.  Only a quarter of the population lives in the latter, which covers 3 quarters of the area.  There are as many Welsh speakers in Cardiff as the rest of the country, but they are a very low percentage of the city’s population, about 5% as against more like 90% for the western Lleyn peninsula. 

Still not fully resolved, here on the Island we can’t get the local Wyke Regis transmissions (3 miles away) due to the landforms and for Freeview they come over Lyme Bay from near Torquay. Signal often rubbish so we had to go satellite in order to get decent service most of the time. Heavy rain and snow clouds though still an issue even with Sky.

[whart57]

Those lucky enough to reside in the shadow of a major transmitter could get away with a set top aerial too. Much of Leeds could get sufficient strength off Elmley Moor not to need roof aerials and when I lived in Telford the signal strength from the Wrekin meant you got a decent picture with no aerial at all. 

 

Down here in Horsham though we need a long pole to get a signal from Midhurst or the Isle of Wight 

[Danemouth]

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

I counted along Cardiff residential streets once for a school project and found that an average 1 in 12 antennae were set up solely for the Welsh transmitters, though about a quarter of homes had two aerials, one for the Welsh transmitters and one for the Mendips.

 

I still have both installed but haven't used either in an age as we have Sky 😀 and that's getting expensive. Also have Amazon Prime.

 

Dave

[The Johnster]

My dad could manage in colour without an aerial in a bungalow on Port Road, the ‘top road’ in Barry, in fact using one caused ghosting and reception was better without.  He also used a stereo FM I gave him that I’d built from a kit that I’d always had signal problems and taxi interference with whatever I stuck in the aerial socket in Cardiff; it worked fine without any antenna up on Port Road for the Radio 2 and 4 stuff he listened to.  
 

There were drawbacks to living on Port Road, though.  In the ‘Great Storm’ of 1987, knowing that it could get a little breezy up there at times, I rang him to check he was ok.  He said he was fine, everything was battened down securely as it should be for an old Merchant Navy officer, what did I think he was, an amateur yachtsman (a class of person for which his contempt was limitless), but could I keep a look out for his garage, a quite heavy cast  asbestos concrete job, which he’d last seen disappearing northeastwards and gaining height.  
 

I suggested he inform Cardiff Airport Air Traffic Control, but he reckoned it should have been approaching northern Denmark by that time; whatever had happened we never saw or heard of it again…

 

 

 

[Steamport Southport]

5 hours ago, The Johnster said:

In the affluent Southeast, certainly, but as a general rule most working class households didn’t get tv until the early 60s, the situation being complicated in hilly industrial areas like Eastern Lancashire, West Yorks, or the South Wales mining valleys by poor reception until transmission relay masts were supplied, in some places not until the early 70s.  Rediffusion’s cable rental service was popular in such places, so few aerials. 
 

In Cardiff, Newport, and the Vale of Glamorgan, the transmitters were at Wenvoe (BBC) and St.Hilary (ITV) to the west of the city, but the majority of aerials were set up for transmitters on the Mendips on the other side of the Bristol Channel; reception was line-of-sight and not a problem.  This was because, until the Welsh language service S4C was set up, there was Welsh language content and daily news from Wenvoe and St.Hilary, and the largely English speaking monoglot population of the area not only didn’t want this content, especially early evening news which intruded on to peak viewing time, but objected to it as ‘ramming Welsh down our throats’.  I counted along Cardiff residential streets once for a school project and found that an average 1 in 12 antennae were set up solely for the Welsh transmitters, though about a quarter of homes had two aerials, one for the Welsh transmitters and one for the Mendips. 
 

Visited Minehead for a week’s holly in the 80s, and they had the opposite problem, being in a blind spot from English transmitters but having line of sight to Wenvoe & St.Hilary; I imagine Ilfracombe was much the same. 
 

This is a pretty good indication of how culturally unbalanced Wales is between the anglicised densely-populated industrial areas and the rural sparsely-populated Welsh-speaking ones.  Only a quarter of the population lives in the latter, which covers 3 quarters of the area.  There are as many Welsh speakers in Cardiff as the rest of the country, but they are a very low percentage of the city’s population, about 5% as against more like 90% for the western Lleyn peninsula. 

 

The North West was pretty affluent in the 1950s. Most people bought their first TV for the Coronation in 1953. 

 

 

We were also one of the first areas to get commercial TV with Granada in 1956. Don`t forget many people rented back then and the TV companies wanted you to have theirs.

 

We also had Colour when it seems that South Wales was getting TV!

 

I know both my parents and my nan had colour TV by 1970.

 

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

 

One thing people forget is that aerials disappeared in many areas during the 1990s as everyone got cable, then reappeared when Freeview came in.

 

 

[whart57]

15 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

The North West was pretty affluent in the 1950s. Most people bought their first TV for the Coronation in 1953. 

 

 

We were also one of the first areas to get commercial TV with Granada in 1956. 

 

Good point. Granada and ATV covering the Midlands were the dominant ITV companies of the 50s and 60s.

15 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

 

[Julia]

On 17/09/2022 at 17:49, Steamport Southport said:

Speaking of kebab places there is a local one called Kebabish.

 

Which suggests he doesn't know what's in it either!

 

 

Don't forget the absolutely brilliant search engine optimisation in real life:

 

 

"Thai food near me" 

 

J

[SM42]

With TV aerials, they should all generally point the same way, or in some cases two directions. 

 

Round hetecwe have a choice of the localish transmitter or Sutton Coldfield. 

 

Therefore aerials point one of two directions. 

 

They should not be all over the place as is sometimes seen where someone has bothered to go ghat far with thd detail 

 

Andy

[fulton]

15 minutes ago, SM42 said:

With TV aerials, they should all generally point the same way, or in some cases two directions. 

A whole subject to get correct for your chosen period and location! as a child in the 60s we had a large H shape aerial on a wooden pole in the garden, I can remember the first "BBC2 type" aerials appearing, it was quite a status symbol. 

[john new]

On 12/10/2022 at 21:41, Steamport Southport said:

 

The North West was pretty affluent in the 1950s. Most people bought their first TV for the Coronation in 1953. 

 

 

We were also one of the first areas to get commercial TV with Granada in 1956. Don`t forget many people rented back then and the TV companies wanted you to have theirs.

 

We also had Colour when it seems that South Wales was getting TV!

 

I know both my parents and my nan had colour TV by 1970.

 

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

 

One thing people forget is that aerials disappeared in many areas during the 1990s as everyone got cable, then reappeared when Freeview came in.

 

 

Interesting observations. 
 

My parents weren’t much bothered by TV so we didn’t get one until just after BBC 2 came in. (More for me and my sister I think) My grandparents bought their first one for the Coronation as mentioned by others and I am told I was in the room with it for the 1953 coronation in my pram! (Not sure which house they had then but was W Yorkshire). So next Saturday I can claim it as watching my 2nd coronation. My Mum will be a 100 this year, so it is her 5th monarch, Charles is her 4th new one but it will only be a 3rd Coronation as Edward VIII abdicated before being crowned.

 

Back on topic, satellite dish sales were encouraged when sport moved over and by people who needed the non-English language channels. Not a universal spread for a long time, and then 2nd time around at least here at the coast followed by gardens with the old rusty one dumped after the brackets had rusted through!

 

Edited May 1, 2023 by john new
Missed a bit out.

[whart57]

22 hours ago, fulton said:

A whole subject to get correct for your chosen period and location! as a child in the 60s we had a large H shape aerial on a wooden pole in the garden, I can remember the first "BBC2 type" aerials appearing, it was quite a status symbol. 

 

The H shaped aerial was BBC only (405 line VHF). For ITV you needed a YAGI, albeit a much bigger one than the later BBC2 one. All to do with the different frequency bands.

 

Of course, if you lived in Telford new town, in the shadow of the Wrekin transmitter, a bit of wire poked into the aerial socket of the TV worked brilliantly ......

[Invicta Informant]

Previous comments refer to the different ITV regions, before the whole network became homologised under Granada and Carlton in the 1990s onwards. Here is something I found on YouTube that gives you an idea of what coverage certain franchises had over a particular region.

 

[Chris M]

At my mom's house you got excellent reception from Sutton Coldfield with just a wire in the back of the TV. My house is less than 2 miles away and reception from Sutton Coldfield was always a problem. We used to get our TV from the Wrekin transmitter some 30 miles away. Others in the road had their aerials pointing at various local relay stations. The aerials round us pointed all ways and as you wnet further down the hill the poles grew longer. Probably the most important thing for realism is to not have your model aerials pointing towards a model hill. Unless there is a model TV most at the top of the hill.