RJS1977

Genuinely gutted, especially coming so soon after the news from Hattons, however one of the organisers did say in RM about five years ago that they weren't getting any younger and that this point would come, so in that sense, no surprise. Indeed, I would not have been surprised had we not had any since Covid.

So a big thanks to the Warley team for the 24 enjoyable shows I have attended since 1998 (and also for Coachman for giving me a lift to the strike-affected 2022 show). I think virtually every time I entered the Hall at 9:15 on Saturday and was there until the show closed at 18:00 (and usually missed things!), As the "National" show it really was an opportunity to see layouts and traders that don't normally make it this far south. Unlike Ally Pally, Doncaster and GETS which are all somewhat awkwardly placed for public transport, for much of the country, the NEC really was as accessible as it is possible to get.

Whilst clearly putting on a show of this size is too much for one club, I think the National show is too important to lose.`

I would like to suggest the formation of a "National Exhibition Organising Committee" comprising representatives from national societies (such as the 009 Society, GOG, etc), regional associations (CMRA, W&WE), manufacturers, traders and publishers to look at keeping the show going on a hopefully more stable footing.

Hall 5 is made up of 18 "squares" formed by the roof supports. If we allow the three nearest the door to be taken up by the manufacturers and biggest traders, that leaves 15 squares. If a different society or association could be given a "square" and effectively organised a "sub-exhibition" (much as the 009 Society did at Warley 2023), with the "National Organising Committee" being responsible for the overarching items like dealing with the NEC, insurance, publicity etc, this would spread the workload much more thinly and make it more manageable.

Finding a group of people in one club willing to put on a show big enough to take up most of Hall 5 is a very difficult task. Finding 15 groups of people spread across the country willing to organise smaller "sub shows" may be more managable.

2 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

This in itself doesn't mean the end of the hobby in itself - after all Luxury car, high end fashion and latterly specialist food / drink providers have done very well for years in spite of low sales volumes and a relatively low level of retail facilities because the prices they charge (and people will pay) make up for it.

 

But the majority of cars, clothes, and food sold nationally aren't at the luxury end, even though they may be of a higher spec than years gone by.

12 minutes ago, Gilbert said:

Exactly the same in the South West

Even in Reading, the Oracle (built 1998)  has lost its two biggest retailers (House of Fraser and Debenhams) and the multiplex cinema is struggling. It's on the cards that much of the site may be converted to flats.

Again, genuinely shocked to hear of this and condolences to the staff, particularly those who have handled my orders in the past.

It seems inconceivable that no part of the business was deemed to be viable.

However Hattons "Bargains" are no longer the "Bargains" they once were and their secondhand side seemed to be massively overpriced and contained quite a lot of "tat". And managing to fall out with their two biggest suppliers must have had an impact on sales. 

We know how much model prices have risen in the last 15-20 years, even when wider inflation was relatively low, which will have impacted the number (if not volume) of sales. I have suggested for a while that the move towards more expensive models is not sustainable in the long term, and I wonder if this is the start of that particular bubble beginning to burst.

9 hours ago, pheaton said:

 

 

i cant think of any railways that are now run by a bunch of middle aged blokes with a load of spare time on there hands...

I can! I mentioned one not long ago..... ;-)

29 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

You and many, many other railways..... however it is surprising how often you can visit a major preserved railway in the 2020s and unless in a hut or old coach used by a specific loco or rolling stock group, there are no secondhand books for sale anywhere.  The days of railways earning more than trivial amounts from this source, are long gone and as for secondhand magazines*, almost nobody wants them anymore.

 

*Many happy memories of coming away from a preserved railway in the 1980s with a couple of boxfuls!

Not just an issue with railway books at preserved railways either.

In my younger days, I collected Blue Peter annuals and amassed a pile of about 30 running from the days of Chris Trace and Val Singleton through to Konnie Huq and Zoe Salmon. As my parents are planning a clearout, I called in at the shop in Reading that specialises in TV memorabilia and asked what they might be worth these days. "Can't give 'em away" was the reply.

5 minutes ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

They'll be lucky to find any specialist railway books in the giftshop on a lot of preserved lines (but is this because nobody actually buys them?). 

We have A LOT of secondhand railway books in the shop at Wallingford (some more specialist than others), in large part because people keep donating them and nobody's buying them.... (If you're looking for anything, please feel free to call in and take a look in the shop when we reopen at Easter!).

On 25/12/2023 at 20:23, Hacksworth_Sidings said:

…Pug chassis with Railroad 0-6-0 wheels, anyone?

 

I do recall seeing an OO Ivor model built using the chassis from Bachmann’s “Edward” model from their Thomas & friends range…

On 26/12/2023 at 10:30, Hacksworth_Sidings said:

Unsure on that front, but given how 3D printing has impacted railway modelling I wouldn’t be surprised.

 

(Edit: Whoops, totally misinterpreted what you said!)

 

Also, on the topic of Ivor the Engine… Remember that time a Peckett was repainted as him? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that modelled…

 

I have modelled it (but don't have it to hand at the moment so no photo).

However it will be running on my model of the current Wallingford station at the Kenavon (East Reading) show on 17th February.

5 hours ago, pH said:

Is the service intense enough for the station to rate a full-time station pilot? If so, I think some of  the problems and complexity go away.

 

(Based on personal observation of Gourock over many years - 4 platforms, carriage sidings, goods yard and engine turning, watering and ash-raking facilities.)

Unfortunately I think station pilot moves are out owing to the adjacent "handover" section. Once a train has departed the terminus, it will wait in the "handover" section until the operator at the other end is ready to receive it, preventing any pilot moves from entering that section (and if the section was empty, an ECS move into the section could be mistaken by the other operator as a train being sent to them.

On 19/12/2023 at 23:35, Flying Pig said:

The SRS have a signal plan of Ramsgate Harbour dated 1914:

 

https://www.s-r-s.org.uk/html/sre/T1117.htm

 

Note that there's no runround on the bay and it isn't connected to the turntable, copying which would simplify a bit and save you some length.  The kickback carriage sidings would probably need to be omitted - they remind me of Bradfield Gloucester Square and the whole plan is practically a prototype piano line.  Just a simple fan of goods sidings on the Up side.

My plan is very much an "inspired by Ramsgate" rather than a slavish copy.

I added the runaround to the bay to increase capacity in the station, and connected it to the turntable because it happened to be there - although it also means goods locos can be turned easily.

13 hours ago, Harlequin said:

I would keep the turntable but use a slightly smaller one if possible.

 

It's a space saver when set against the length of the pointwork, the length needed to bring the different approach angles together and the spur beyond the pointwork that would be required to replace the turntable.

 

Yes, I only used one that big because it was the only one in Anyrail.

Actually, perhaps the simplest solution would be to flip it through 180 degrees:

This has the added advantage of bringing the goods yard closer to the operator(s) to simplify uncoupling.

My only concern  with doing it this way round is that the next board is the "handover" board to the rest of the layout, so if the operator up the far end is slow in taking over a departing train, all movements on and off shed are blocked. (Or the other operator could see a light engine arrive on the "handover" board and think it's for them to take).

Currently considering this idea, loosely inspired by Ramsgate Harbour.

As depicted in the plan, a loco coming from the top of the layout would cross on to the arrivals line then run on to the shed. 

The obvious solution would be to move the trailing crossover outside the facing one, but that would take it outside the confines of the two 4' baseboards, or would squash the station  up so small as to be unworkable.

My club are considering building a new double track terminus next year (which can be bolted on to our main layout with operators passing trains between the two).

Some shunt moves (e.g. accessing the loco shed, or possibly ECS movements, depending on the plan chosen) will need to be made outside the confines of the terminus and encroach on the "main line" connecting the two layouts.

Is there any hard and fast rule about whether such moves should be made on the "Up" (i.e. departing line) or the "Down" (arrival) line?

4 hours ago, Northmoor said:

  Squeezing a route down the side of Morden depot would be quite a challenge in itself; if you lost stabling capacity at Morden depot you've got to create it elsewhere and the tube network isn't blessed with that sort of space for expansion.

Surely all the space in a depot is only needed when the line is shut. Bakerloo Line trains run through Queens Park depot (presumably with trains stabled on the running lines overnight) so something similar could be done at Morden.

Our friends at Grundon have recently returned the Dogfish to us, having repainted it:

(Photo: Kaz Lewinski)

We have made enquiries with Heljan regarding the possibility of getting a run done in 00 - any takers?

21 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

 

So a short spur to the tram to morden south makes sense, but its the Northern line to Sutton that would be the winner.

 

I've often wondered about the possiblity of redesigning Morden depot to include a couple of terminal platforms to allow some passenger trains to terminate there, with a pedestrian link to Morden South (and possibly also to Central Road via the mosque car park.

Now we can all have our own episodes of "The Architecture the Railways Built"

7 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

That's a point stressed by many railway people commenting on "another forum".

The lack of toilets is a complete red herring in this episode.

Power operated toilets are disabled in the load shedding.

 

 

.

To quote a very wise Scottish engineer:

"The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drains!"

45 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Four ways....

 

(1) Something in the OLE structure / Catenary / Headspan breaks and the contact wire becomes displaced from its usual position. That might mean its hanging down where it shouldn't, be pushed / pulled off to one side, hanging a bit lower than normal or a combination of both. The offending bit of OLE then catches on a trains photograph as it passes and the train then pulls at the damaged part yanking it down (much like a person might catch a broken finger nail on something and rip it clean off )

 

(2) The OLE is fine but something else is caught up in it - a plastic bag, a helium balloon bits of wind blown litter etc and said object gets scouped up by the photograph of a train as it passes pulling the OLE down as above

 

(3) The photograph of a train becomes defective in some way or has something caught up in it (e.g. vegetation, wind blown debris) - and exerts unusual forces on the contact wire causing the wire or components in the OLE to break and get wrapped round said photograph

 

(4) A train damages the OLE because (2) BUT the damage is not enough for THAT particular train to suffer an issue. However because of the damage caused when the NEXT train comes through its photograph gets tangled up in the OLE and brings it down

 

Headspans usually perform badly in dewirements because the OLE over each track is only held up by a set of interlinked cables and the yanking of one of them is very likely to distort the whole headspan structure pulling all OLE equipment over all lines out of position / breaking it .

 

Where portal structures are fitted however de-wirements are usually much less severe as contact wire for each line is seperatly supported of a robust steel structure which doesn't deform when one tracks OLE gets yanked about and thus adjacent lines tend to be unaffected

 

Portal structures are however more expensive to install so in order for British Rail to get funds for electrification from the anti-rail HM Treasuary it was forced to adopt the 'lightweight' OLE designs and in particular headspans wherever possible....

 

Network Rail by contrast would much rather put up portal structures as the delays and general chaos de-wiremnts cause is much less than headspans despite the grater upfront cost.

 

Inwards of Airport Junction BR used their headspans and lightweight OLE. From Heathrow junction westwards Network Rail used their much more robust portal based system.

 

Thanks for this. ASLEF seem to be making quite a thing of this, claiming that it happened because GWR used a driver manager to run the train, when to their way of thinking GWR "should" have cancelled all trains and not attempted to run a service at all. You have confirmed my thoughts - that the dewirement was in no way the responsibility of the driver.

One small point though - as I understand it, it was BAA, not the Treasury, who paid for the electrification from Paddington to Heathrow.

Just out of interest, when the wires come down like that, what tends to cause it?

It's been said that a train "brought down the wires" - but how does that happen?

It's interesting that most of the truly "vintage" layouts of that sort of period are fictional/might have beens - Borchester, Buckingham, Craig & Mertonford, Madder Valley, even Pendon itself. Indeed, I'm struggling to think of many "great" layouts from that period that were based on prototype locations. By the 70s, we had Garsdale Road and a little later on Chiltern Green/Luton Hoo and then Copenhagen Fields and Gresley Beat, but not much before about 1970 other than perhaps Gainsborough.

If you are capable of assembling electronic circuits, then Roger Amos's "Complete book of model railway electronics" contains several circuits for generating sound effects on analogue.

Given that the technology exists to send text messages to all phones within a given area (as per the emergency message tests earlier in the year), perhaps a text message could be sent to everyone in Hall 5 at the time of the announcement!

However I suspect the cost of sending 20,000 text messages at once would be prohibitive....

1 hour ago, WIMorrison said:

 

I suspect that would mean no layouts being shown at all on the model railway circuit if that approach was adopted 😂

 

There are a couple of shows that I exhibit at which are for genuine worthwhile causes (in my view) and I do not charge them any expenses at all when asked to exhibit, and to date they haven't asked for a donation.

Indeed it happens quite often with my own show that I will agree an expenses figure with an exhibitor beforehand but when I go round at the end of the show they say "We've had a great day - don't bother with the expenses!" - which of course is gratefully received!

On the other hand, I've had some local exhibitors ask for "Just petrol" at the time of booking which has turned out to be £40 for a 20 minute journey!