dibber25

That smokebox door mugshot looks remarkably like its on Simply Narrow Gauge. I'm not sure Keith would want my mugshot going round his layout too often! There are a few stories coming up in specially enlarged 'Backscene' in the next issue and some different stories and different angles in an issue of Steam World in a month or two. CHRIS LEIGH

What a difficult question! Massive changes in both. I guess most people who have been in work over the past 50 years will have seen massive change in their own job. Certainly magazine production has been revolutionised and railways, real and model, have seen similar changes. I suppose that the biggest changes that I've seen are the rise and fall of, first white metal and then etched kits. In parallel with that the huge leaps forward in ready-to-run. With hindsight you could see things starting to move that way in the 1980s. The revolutionary changes which electronic developments have brought - LEDs and the micro-chip, of course, (but even that goes back a way, to Zero-1 which was before I returned to the Constructor in 1983 and could even have been the late 1970s). I've managed to keep pace with most of what goes on in model railways but I'm afraid the real railway changes too fast for my liking. I can't keep pace with all the different franchises and who's running what until when. I dread returning to Reading (which is where I did my trainspotting as a teenager) because I know there's nothing left there that I will recognise. I think the most worrying thing about the hobby is that, when I go to shows, the audience that I see is largely made up of guys in the 'upper age groups'. Throughout my career, whenever there was a reader survey and the age question was asked, the majority of readers were in whatever age group I was in. Sadly, that still seems to be the case, across the hobby generally. My five-year-old grandson shows little interest in my house full of railways and plays cars on one of the baseboards. Even bigger changes will come, as my age group goes to the great trainshed in the sky, and the market then isn't big enough to sustain Bachmann and Hornby and a dozen new locomotives a year. CHRIS LEIGH

Yes, I think that was the one with the loco shed, referred to earlier, in it. The coloured ticket board was a disaster but in those days DESIGN was the all-important thing. The Design Centre in London had just opened and there were things like amazingly shaped chairs that were hideously uncomfortable to sit on. At the time, the purpose of design was to take all the old conventions and dump them, in favour of the NEW, however ridiculous and impractical. We all took it on board, too. Just remember we're talking about the 1960s here. Like all fads, it didn't last long and by the time I began my City & Guilds course (in Design for Printing) in 1970, 'Fitness for Purpose' was the watchword for design. I wonder how many of RM's readers actually use the drawings....the other problem with drawings is that most magazine budgets simply can't afford to pay realistic fees for scale drawings. CHRIS LEIGH

In its last years the colour in MRC was on one side of an eight-page section IIRC. That meant you got the front and back covers and the fourth pages from the front and back, which put your editorial colour in among the adverts! (Those were the days when model mags had adverts equally split front and back - an old-fashioned idea that had been dumped by the rest of magazine publishing years before). You also got charged for colour separations - the breaking up of the picture into the four ink colours for printing - so the more individual pictures you had, the more it cost. Now, the reverse is true. You pay a price based on the whole job being in colour and if you use black and white pictures, you don't get a reduction, you're just wasting a colour opportunity. What isn't generally realised, though, is how many jobs have disappeared in those 50 years, mainly due to computerisation - typesetters, proof readers, compositors, repro houses, and on the print shop floor. Magazines now go from Editor to designer, to printing press - even the couriers who used to take material between the editorial office, repro house and printer are no longer needed. CHRIS LEIGH

As far as I can remember it used a Continental 'HO' engine shed. Alan Williams did quite a lot of work on it and we used mainly his SR locos. It was just a diorama and I think it got broken up soon afterwards. One of the problems with all the mags I've ever worked on is lack of office space and storage. As the provision of space has become more and more expensive, so publishers provide less and less. Nowadays, pretty much everything has to be done at home, which as Swisspeat recalls my house being full of layouts. It is. CHRIS LEIGH

I try to include the odd item here and there in Steam World that I believe will be of interest or use to modellers.

I didn't take many shots that day, either. What a shame we didn't have digital in those days and were so restricted by how much film we could afford to shoot. The Savernake trip was great and I have (somewhere) a number of 'trespass' shots! However, the thing I remember most was that I had bought a new 50ft tape measure specially for the trip. I recall being somewhat worried when, as I held one end, the other end was thrown across the canal to measure the width of the missing MSWJR bridge. A shame that the layout never got built, although years later I did build the Low Level station building for Model Rail. Sadly, the building is lost, having been left somewhere off site after a photo session and never returned. The drawings we used in MRC were, I think, some of the best ever published in terms of accuracy and quality of draughtsmanship. No point publishing drawings these days - to few scratch-builders to make it worthwhile. There are better uses of the space for today's magazine audience. CHRIS LEIGH

It would be good to think so. When I started, IAL was the training ground for such careers. Since then it has become EMAP/Bauer that trains the young railway journalists of the future. I recall when I was at IA during the 1980s, a phone call from a very anxious Christopher Wain, who had just been appointed transport correspondent by the BBC. He wanted to know what I could tell him about railways. I hope I helped. I also, during a Railfest at York some years ago, was approached by a 15-year-old who asked what he should do to become a railway journalist. I suggested he came for work experience to find out if he liked it. He did - two years running. He's now Deputy Editor of Steam Railway. I think, too, I was the first Editor to give Pat Hammond a regular 'slot' and the first to feature Steve Flint's Kyle of Tongue layout and subsequently to commission him to photograph layouts. Mike Wild also learned his trade in what was then EMAP's transport division. A very delightful gentleman, who died tragically young, David Lloyd, who was (I think - I'm getting very bad with remembering names) Editor of Continental Modeller and Assistant Editor of Railway Modeller, once worked out that we who were railway/model railway editorial folk were an elite bunch of no more than 150 worldwide. I guess even though there are more magazines now, the economics of running them mean fewer staff, so I bet that number hasn't gone up that much. As to the question above about interesting people - oh, yes, and it has been a real privilege. My piece for Model Rail mentions a few from the early days. Perhaps there are four from within the 'business' who stand out as having influenced me as great people within our hobby as well as really great people to work with/for. Alan Williams - Editor of MRC and my boss when I joined in 1963. Went through my work with a blue pencil and taught me HOW to write magazine articles. He also laid down rules for product reviews which have been my guiding principles ever since. Alistair B. MacLeod - 'Uncle Mac' ex-BR Isle of Wight CME and LMR Stores Controller was IA librarian. He knew the Lynton & Barnstaple first hand and would scold me because I couldn't recognise a McIntosh chimney. Colin Gifford - as magazine designer at IAL he rocked the boat. His photography was loved or hated (I loved it) but it was his ideas for pushing the boundaries of model photography that really influenced me. Much of what we did was faked, but without Photoshop. It was innovative modelling and a degree of darkroom chicanery but I think it resulted (1964-66) in some of the best B&W model images ever. Steve Stratten - Editor of MRC for over 20 years and a tireless worker for the model railway hobby particularly through clubs and exhibitions. He brought new thought to the magazine and introduced me to the delights of overseas railways, and road vehicles and scenic modelling. Steve became my boss in 1966 and we have been friends ever since. Thank you, everyone for your kind comments. I didn't post on here in order to solicit such nice thoughts, but really just to 'advertise' the next issue of MR, knowing that there are one or two on here who enjoy Backscene. Thank you one and all, CHRIS LEIGH

Noooooooooo!

Around about now I chalk up 50 years since I started as a Junior Editorial Assistant on Model Railway Constructor in the Autumn of 1963. Backscene in Model Rail issue 189 is likely to be a bit special as I've been unearthing one or two of my oldest bits and pieces to feature. I shall be at the Warley show as usual, and will be pleased to see as many old friends from the hobby as possible. CHRIS LEIGH

Just read the Toronto Globe & Mail's interview with Hunter Harrison (of CP Rail). My corporate BS detector was overworked! So Canadian railways are 'forced by law' to carry hazardous materials. So, had they NOT been 'forced', they would have actually turned away the 28,000% increase in crude oil traffic? Pull the other one! Regulators should enforce the introduction of tank cars with double skins and side and end protection to replace the DOT-111 cars. Will he pay for them? Even if he does it'll take years to phase out the DOT-111 cars. There should be stiffer penalties for individuals and companies which mis-label hazardous goods. Yes, there probably should, but would it have made any difference at Lac Megantic if the (allegedly mis-labelled) crude had been correctly labelled? Would MMA have handled it differently? As I understand it, it would only have affected the emergency response, but by that time it was already too late. CHRIS LEIGH

Yes, the circular arguments really come down to a difference in the national approach to things. In North America they make rules and expect people to obey them (and in most cases they do). In the UK we make rules, expecting that someone will break them, and we have back-ups in place to mitigate that. CHRIS LEIGH

Separate issues, yes, but both are safety issues and one has already had serious consequences and the other one will, sooner or later. Taking the harsh point of view, if MMA had spent the money and put in trap points at Nantes or decided not to spend the money and close the line, either way there would be people alive today who aren't. Frankly, if a railway can't or won't provide such basic safety measures, I would prefer it to close before there's an accident, rather than after, as seems likely to happen with MMA. The oil companies need to have the oil moved and, if they are pushed hard enough, they'll pay to have it moved safely. CHRIS LEIGH

All of which still leads me to think that if this train had been parked on a well-designed siding with trap points, none of the other failings or defects would have mattered. A couple of cars would have trundled off the road into a sand-drag. However, none of these developments come about unless they are prompted by something - usually a catastrophe - which prompts people to look at ways of averting such a thing in the future. The next thing that needs looking at is the continued use of locally, hand-operated turnouts with minimal indication of the way they are set, on lines used by passenger trains (see the recent TSB report into a VIA train turned onto a siding by a switch left reversed). CHRIS LEIGH

This branch, perhaps? Exaggerated by a telephoto lens but very poor nevertheless. http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=358106&nseq=125 CHRIS LEIGH

I don't recall this question being raised before and I apologise for repeating it, if it has already been dealt with. From this report we learn that the 5017 was already in a bad way during the journey and before it stopped at Nantes. I had picked this up, too, from a reported conversation between the engineer and the taxi driver, the engineer allegedly having told the taxi driver that he didn't like leaving the locomotive smoking and sparking as it was. There were three - or was it four? - other locomotives at the head of this train. My question is this - would it have been possible to leave one of the other locomotives running to charge the brakes, or does it HAVE to be the lead locomotive? CHRIS LEIGH

Not sure what a fail-safe brake would be, on a train or anything else for that matter. Cars don't have fail-safe brakes. The brakes at Lac Megantic didn't fail - they weren't put on in the first place. Brakes have to be applied. The natural 'fail' state of anything with wheels, is that it moves. I can't think of anything where a parking brake is the default position. Brakes perform two functions - they slow a train down, untimately to a stop, and as a separate issue they hold the train once it has stopped. A car has two distinct systems, the foot brake for slowing and the hand (parking) brake for holding. If the handbrake fails, the brakes will be off, not on. Most trains employ a similar system. The debate here, and the question mark over Lac Megantic is regarding the application of those hand/parking brakes and whether there are ways of mitigating the consequences of a failure to apply any or adequate parking brakes. CHRIS LEIGH

During my recent rail travels in Canada (Vancouver-Toronto and Toronto-London Ont) I took particular interest in freight and hazardous materials in order to better understand some of the debate in this thread. Some random observations: Virtually all mixed freights included some tank cars conveying oil/petroleum products - particularly LPG - either empty or loaded. Many also conveyed tank cars and hoppers apparently containing other chemicals. In some instances the name of the product being carried gives an apparently false impression - to the non-expert like myself - of the hazard it presents. 'Molten Sulphur' for instance sounds pretty terrifying to me, yet when the other safety notices on the cars were read it appeared much less hazardous than might be expected and not 'molten' in the way I would understand it. We need to beware of assuming a risk is greater than it is. By far the great majority of tank cars (carrying other products as well as oil products) are of the DOT-111 variety criticised at Lac Megantic. I would hazard a guess that they outnumbered the other types that I saw by about 10 to 1. Any move to replace them with a superior design will take years to implement. (They appear to be the 16-ton mineral wagon equivalent in Canada and are probably only outnumbered by the 'Trudeau' grain hoppers). In one instance, I noted that at Clarkson near Toronto, a large number of DOT-111 cars (apparently in petrol or diesel traffic - not sure if loaded or empty) were being parked and switched on a narrow strip of sidings sandwiched between the GO passenger station and some substantial apartment blocks. Risk assessment? No loops (sidings) that I saw anywhere had trap points (except in one GO layover depot!). CHRIS LEIGH

Canadian train crews seem to be taken here there and everywhere by taxi at - presumably - considerable cost, on completely ad hoc arrangements. Crews seem to be changed anywhere that a taxi can get near to the line, even at remote grade crossings. Making regular arrangements for such operations at specific places, with proper facilities provided and accommodation nearby could actually be cheaper than making last minute ad hoc arrangements as you go along. At least a fixed arrangement would offer an opportunity to predict and control costs, and maybe having a guy present at certain times to assist with the tying up of trains wouldn't be such an outrageous idea. I've heard of one VIA station where the train crew has to get a cleaner to unlock the building so they can retrieve their paperwork from the printer, because the station is now unstaffed and locked. That cleaner must have to attend every day just to unlock for few minutes. Presumably that's cheaper than employing a full-time agent.

As I've said previously, Model Rail's aim is to deliver the 'USA' and any other projects in the most timely fashion possible. The longer any project takes, the longer we must wait for a return on our investment. Nevertheless, good products take time to develop and patience is a virtue. CHRIS LEIGH

A while back, I'm pretty certain I read a report into an accident (at Prince George, BC, I think) where a switching operation under belt-pack control got out of hand and onto a main line, causing a collision and tipping a couple of cars into the river. Can't now track it down, and don't recall if it was because the unit got out of range of the belt pack. There is a broad issue here, however, about how much you can reasonably expect one person to do, working on his own. It's about multi-tasking and physical and mental agility, too. Moving on, I was recently talking to a friend about the regs that have come in since Lac Megantic. VIA engineers are now required to lock their loco cabs. I was told, it's easy for freight guys with an end platform and front door. It requires much more effort and agility when you're hanging off the side of a VIA loco. And VIA is now allowing its guys to work till they are 70. CHRIS LEIGH

I watched a guy screwing down handbrakes on tank cars last week. I was surprised at the amount of physical effort he was having to put in, and I've no idea how long he'd been on duty or how far he'd walked. In a place where crews are regularly changed and trains park up for several hours there needs to be provision for assistance by extra manpower present for the safe parking and security of the train(s).

Matters such as the reasons are, of course, commercial matters and subject to confidentiality. Model Rail's aim is always to bring its projects to fruition in as timely a fashion as possible. CHRIS LEIGH

That does, indeed, make very interesting reading, particularly the part about detailed plans for locations where such trains may be left unattended on a regular basis. Presumably such plans will have to be individual and location-specific and could therefore include a wide range of possibilities including track layout alterations and staffing facilities as well as procedural changes. Let's hope that there's also some 'teeth' given to the question of compliance. Maybe, some good is beginning to come out of this tragedy. I hope so. CHRIS LEIGH

I notice that here in Peterborough we have posters which (presumably) are anti-trespass warnings in (I guess) Polish.