Modelling Pet Hates

[Bino]

I appreciate that some of the following will be unjustified but they are my pet hates.

 

• Manufacturers bias towards all things GWR
• The obligatory Morris Minor police car
• Too many road vehicles on small roads
• My own indecision
• The obsession amongst modellers of American layouts with the 'Rocky Railroad' theme.
• After 4 years of planning (and re-planning), my wifes' assertion that I'm not making much progress.
• Operators of DCC Sound locos who feel they have to sound the horn prior to every movement.

Dave

[JCL]

I grew up next to the Bristol Channel and remember it as being brown .

Same with the sea around Skegness - bracingly hot chocolate in colour because of the mud flats.

[jrg1]

Here's a few:-

The tendency for scale coach drawings to be incomplete-sides, ends, part underframe and no roof detail

Buildings with incomplete elevations missing, so producing a model is partial guesswork

Stretching or squashing drawings with no dimensions enclosed, meaning it is tedious at best to try to make it

Manufacturers who advertise products, and never deliver-or take down payment for when the next batch arrives, and that's that

Paying money for kits that would be subject to the Trades Description Act.  My scrap whitemetal box has objects that look as though they were microwaved.

I also surprisingly resent having to fret out etched components from dud sheets.

And finally Limited Editions that sell out, followed by another 7000

[Richard Lee]

[snip]

• Too many road vehicles on small roads

[snip]

Know what you mean.  Cars seem to have become a lot more popular from the 1960s onwards, but it took a long time for most ordinary people to have them.

 

On my 'L' shaped early 1930s branch-line layout there are only going to be two road vehicles, both horse-drawn.

[Happy Hippo]

Same with the sea around Skegness - bracingly hot chocolate in colour because of the mud flats.

I was under the impression Bristol Channel was brown for another reason.................not nice to swim in back then.  I recall something rather noxious and sausage shaped floating in the water as we bathed at Barry Island!

 

Regards

 

Richard

[PatB]

I was under the impression Bristol Channel was brown for another reason.................not nice to swim in back then.  I recall something rather noxious and sausage shaped floating in the water as we bathed at Barry Island!

 

Regards

 

Richard

 

There was always plenty of 'interesting' debris on the mud flats at Steart, suggesting plenty of raw sewage being discharged into the channel up until quite a late date.  However I always assumed the colour was due to all the silt from the Severn, Wye, Avon, Parret etc.

[bluebottle]

I was under the impression Bristol Channel was brown for another reason.................not nice to swim in back then.  I recall something rather noxious and sausage shaped floating in the water as we bathed at Barry Island!

 

Swimming in the Firth of Forth used to be referred to as "going through the motions". Back in the late 1960s, I was on the quayside at Granton admiring the pleasure craft by then thronging the dock, when I noticed that the murky water was dense with prophylactic devices. "My God," I thought, "those yachtsmen must be incredible performers!" Of course, the "somethings for the weekend" were from a nearby large pipe which was disgorging the effluence of a large part of Midlothian ...

[Kenton]

 

Don't Bachmann use a sort of era coding already?

You identified one of mine. "Sort of" just about describes it, a better description would be "based on the models we think you should buy from us".

[Catkins]

Same with the sea around Skegness - bracingly hot chocolate in colour because of the mud flats.

I walked along a "pier" at Mablethorpe, it was made of a large diameter concrete pipe, and had inspection covers at regular intervals. As for the water trickling out at the end, the less thought about the better! :0

[tomparryharry]

"Straight" coal wagon sides,especially wooden wagons. In real life, they had the cr*p knocked out of them. If you saw one straight, then it was brand new.

 

One train BLT, with about 9 locomotives, and around 7 wagons, or 6 coaches. "It gets kinda busy round here..." And, here's the cracker-it's got a one road loco shed, with an allocation of at least 4 of the 9 locomotives....

 

People who don't understand how a locomotive moves, and will try to fly shunt coaches (at least, that's how it seems to me). Same goes for excessive shunting. Put yourself in the (model) blokes position. Would you go round the houses with a solitary wagon?

 

Inappropriate speed. As far as I know, Bugatti & Ferrari didn't build steam locomotives, but you can bet that the black 5 with 6 on will take off quicker than any vehicle that's been to Silverstone...

 

Windmills next to a forest. Yes, you've all seen it done....

 

Ian

[sammyboy]

I don't know if this has been said before on here but when you are stood in front of a layout at a exhibition, I don't like to see trains pulling away from stations at high speeds like a bullet from a gun!

And it also applies for trains arriving at platforms when the "emergency brakes" are applied at the last seconds as the layout operators have been distracted by questions by visitors, etc...

 

Sam

[newbryford]

And it also applies for trains arriving at platforms when the "emergency brakes" are applied at the last seconds as the layout operators have been distracted by questions by visitors, etc...

 

 

 

Layouts where the operators ignore the public and won't answer questions..................

 

 

Cheers,

Mick

[bike2steam]

Layouts where the operators ignore the public and won't answer questions..................

 

 

Cheers,

Mick

 

And then when you do answer a question, the operation sequence goes wrong, and some nerd loudly states 'that's not the way it's done', spoils yer day, and you feel like killing someone - yep been there.

[C&WR]

My Father, a railway Civil Engineer for his entire career, gets really narked when a railway modeller or general enthusiast who's closest link to real railways is taking the train to the model railway club or to go spotting then starts holding forth about "the prototype" & throwing in lots of technical terms to try and establish credibility while simultaneously talking a load of old bobbins.  He doesn't go out of his way to meet these people, but I've had to restrain him almost physically when it starts...

[Natalie]

Being looked down upon by someone (thankfully in the minority) based on my gender.  If doing an exhibition it is assumed I am there to keep boyfriend/husband/partner company and to make up the numbers and not there in my own right. But as I said thankfully this is the minority.

 

The assumption that you are not allowed an opinion on something unless you have practical experience of constructing/building something your self.

[bluebottle]

I hesitate to criticise layouts or operators at exhibitions; if something doesn't have a personal appeal, I move on; there's usually more than enough to look at anyway. However, there's one matter of taste that I must mention – too much of the less attractive aspects of the prototypical scene. The odd bit of graffiti is ok, particularly if it's actually witty, but not mindless “tags” everywhere. I don't like road traffic accidents or burnt-out houses, abandoned or torn-up track, boarded-up old signal boxes, derelict wagons etc. Every steam loco plastered with grime - I know that towards the end of steam on BR rolling stock in general and locomotives in particular were generally filthy, but why not go a decade or so further back to when the odd spruce engine wasn't unheard of? As I said, I wouldn't challenge the chap or chapess in charge, but overlook the bits I don't like, offer a compliment or two on the bits I do, then move on.

 

[jon_1066]

Poison green 'trees' and shubbery. They just ain't that colour.

 

Sea water on UK layouts that is Mediterranean blue. If you actually look at the colour of the sea around our coasts, especially in Scotland, it is usually either (very) dark green or grey.

 

steve

 

http://onestopcornwall.com/placecategory/cornwall-beaches/

 

Or not as the case may be.

 

The colour of the sea is usually due to the colour of the sky, the depth of the sea, the sediment load and the colour of the underlying sand.  Those med type conditions do exist in the UK and even in Scotland.

 

eg

 

http://www.islay.org.uk/tag/lossit-bay/

[PGC]

I can't stand people who play politics in clubs when I've joined the club to enjoy my hobby.

 

When operating a layout at an exhibition I was told it was good to see 3 link couplings in use. Apparently too many layouts were un-prototypical with their Spratt & Winkles, Kaydees etc. When I asked how prototypical he found an electric motor in the firebox, I was given a "down the nose" look, told not to be sarcastic and he stalked off. I was physically restrained from chasing after him and beating the living daylights out of him!

 

Not only unrealistic starting, stopping and shunting, but unrealistic running speeds. Since when did an unfitted freight run at 90 mph?

 

Phil

[C&WR]

I hears a similar one on another site, PGC, where a member needed written permission from the committee to run his stock on the Club layout.  Their reason was that the layout was one region, the stock from another.

 

I think they would have had an aneurysm if they saw my lad driving my King Class with a rake of HST Mk3s behind it while his Christmas train (that 0-4-0 No 104 that Hornby sell in GWR livery, the Hornby 2012 Christmas wagon, a bauxite vent van and Charringtons open wagon loaded with plastic fir trees) ran past with a little Father Christmas from the cake waving from a BR standard brake van...

[Iain Popplewell]

[quote name="PGC" post="1163071" timestamp="13794452

 

When operating a layout at an exhibition I was told it was good to see 3 link couplings in use. Apparently too many layouts were un-prototypical with their Spratt & Winkles, Kaydees etc.

 

Phil

 

3-link couplings are realistic. OK.I admit they might be over-scale with links that often have gaps where the prototype has welds,but the realism possible when a real human shunter fumbles about with a bit of bent wire and derails waggons in all directions can not be equalled by any automatic couplings.

 

I'm sorry but the widely held theory that 3-links are the ultimate in realism is a bit lost on me.One of my pet hates really.

[BG John]

The Bristol Channel two weeks ago (from North Hill near Minehead).

 

Edited to add (as someone seems confused by my picture!): To help with the discussion on the colour of water, and especially to prove that the Bristol Channel isn't all a revolting colour! My pet loved it incidentally, so this isn't one of her hates!

[Rabs]

My pet hate: 4mm modellers who forget that there are *shock* other scales/gauges.  The number of threads I've seen with a 'how would I build X ' without mentioning what scale they want to model it in!  

[bike2steam]

 

I'm sorry but the widely held theory that 3-links are the ultimate in realism is a bit lost on me.

3-link couplings are the only good reason for having sprung buffers, how many 'modellers' must have sprung buffers with tension-lock couplings - pointless or what ??

[buffalo]

The Bristol Channel two weeks ago (from North Hill near Minehead).

Does your dog dislike the Bristol Channel, John? Or did you post in the wrong topic?

 

Nick

[petethemole]

We have it on good authority that the Bristol Channel is brown; there it is modelled as blue and therefore a poor, unrealistic, scenic background.

 

Pete