whart57

3 hours ago, eatus-maximus said:

They could have done that in a much better way, saved face more easily, so I'm not sure about that, but there may be some truth in that.

It would be hard to do it worse. But this is the Vote Leave campaign running the country, why is anyone surprised that they aren't any good at it.

I can't help but think though that the government thought this was too unpopular a decision to implement in the year before the next election/

1 hour ago, 009 micro modeller said:

That is really interesting and I wonder how many others there were where electrification was specifically authorised/empowered by the LRO (other than the ones that were really Street tramways but built with light railway legislation).

A couple of lines on the fringes of the Black Country are in that grey area between a light railway and a street tramway. One is the Kidderminster and Stourport, which connected those two towns. It ran as a street tramway within the towns but in between it ran over a reserved track beside the road. Today Kidderminster and Stourport have virtually merged but a hundred years ago it was open countryside in between. Had the K&S followed up on the proposals to build a line to Bewdley that would have been even more interesting. The Bewdley line was authorised under an LRO, unlike the main K&S which had an Act of Parliament, and was authorised to carry goods, minerals, parcels and animals as well as passengers

The other one is the Kinver Light Railway.

American football used to have rolling mauls, they called them the turtle. They made them illegal after a couple of players were killed. Tackles in American football have been a sort of barge ever since.

19 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Why, exactly did those "liberal patriarchs" impose a maximum wage on soccer? Surely not to keep most of the income for themselves?

A very old joke in football is that you can make a small fortune from owning a football club but it helps to start with a large one.

Those late Victorian administrators at the FA saw two dangers and tried to plot a course between them. One danger was that paying players would lead to some clubs using money to recruit the best players and those players then becoming amoral hedonists. Something the theatre had already had examples of and something football would experience a century later when money was no object. The other was that if payment at levels similar to what a skilled worker could earn in industry was not allowed, clubs would be owned by local businessmen who created fake jobs for skilful players in order to recruit them to the club. Something I think Welsh rugby union got to be notorious for. The point of the maximum wage was to ensure professionalism was to maintain the concept of compensating for lost wages in mill or mine.

There was also a sort of moral resistance to the idea of people getting paid to play games. The maximum wage also meant good middle class players weren't tempted to turn professional which meant the standard of the amateur competitions was kept up.

When the maximum wage was lifted in the early 1960s the result was not revolutionary. Clubs simply didn't have the money to pay high wages. In the Fourth Division Accrington Stanley folded mid-season because the directors weren't willing to take the losses incurred because of slightly higher wages, and all through the bottom divisions clubs trimmed their playing staffs. In the mid 1960s a Fourth Division club might have only 15 or 16 players on the books. Fortunately only one substitute was allowed at the time so they only needed 12 on match days. At the top level Johnny Haynes of Fulham became the first £100 a week player (the Fulham chairman had jokingly said he was worth £100 a week some time before the maximum wage was lifted and Haynes held him to it). To put it into context this was still at the level that senior managers in industry were being paid. The lifting of the maximum wage had ordinary players in the top two divisions paid at the rates professionals like bank managers and doctors were paid, rather than that of skilled mechanics, but when football's income was primarily gate money and the cost of admission to a top level game was still shillings. Not until the crazy money from global TV rights came in did player pay go up to the eye-watering levels of today.

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Cuckmere Valley, not. So, of course, it was the target of a serious LR proposal.

There is precious little there though, and no way to sneak in to Newhaven or Eastbourne that way. The late Peter Bossom was working on a model called Alfriston when he died, though I'm pretty sure with Peter it would have been either a Southern Railway or a BR(S) depiction.

1 hour ago, KeithHC said:

 

The other one I have considered was the Redhill and Oxted junction railway. As with several light railways only built from Redhill to Godstone. In my mind it would have left the mainline north of Redhill using the route of the link to the Bis sidings. The line would follow the Holmsdale to Godstone. The terminus would be close to the yard of Fairalls builders merchants. Traffic would have been general goods, building materials and coal and agricultural products inbound. For outbound there would have been sand, gravel and closer to Redhill fullers earth. Passenger traffic would have been light and eventually closed down as passengers would find it quicker to go to Catherham.

 

Keith

Why not continue to Oxted and link up with the Oxted and East Grinstead line? The line would offer another bypass route and the LBSCR would be very touchy about anyone else - yes you SECR - playing around in the Sussex and Surrey valleys.

The problem with suggesting believable light railways in that part of the country is that if a line could be built for the sort of money a light railway company has then one of the mainline companies would already have done so. The LBSCR built a line through every river valley through the South Downs, most of which made little money, and if the SER went no further than Caterham it was because the costs would have been enormous. The Oxted line was first proposed in the 1840s but it was late in the century before it finally got built.

On 23/10/2023 at 10:57, Nick C said:

My thoughts so far are:

 

• A small independant line built under a light railway order, just about hanging on on the verge of bankruptcy, having never achieved it's aim as the money to build it ran out, leaving it terminating somewher in the middle of nowhere several miles short of it's intended destination. Likely to either close completely, or be swallowed up by it's neighbour before too long...
• Track layout to be a basic loop-and-two-sidings on an SMS layout-in-a-box board (same footprint as Auckland Wharf to go in the same place above my desk when in use)
• Stock to be an assortment of second-hand cast-offs - a Terrier, a Rapido Manning Wardle when that comes out, a couple of Hattons 4 or 6 wheelers and an ex-LSWR bogie brake third (the now-defunct GRA models kit, bought several years ago on a whim), with a couple of ancient wagons of their own and a few big company wagons bringing stuff in.

 

What I'm not sure of is location - It'll be somewhere in the south as that's where I'm familiar with, but there's not really any sensible locations here in Hampshire that didn't actually have a line, and would be suitable - so I'm wondering whether a fictional location might be better? 

 

Any suggestions?

Here at Horsham club we have started a layout based on a Colonel Stephens line. You can follow progress on our blog - https://www.rmweb.co.uk/blogs/blog/2640-chesworth-horsham-mrcs-00-finescale-project/

Our backstory is completely fictitious but to give it some foundation we have re-imagined the history of Horsham, the name Chesworth comes from a farm and manor house just south of the town. That approach sets the location, and our line is imagined to make a junction with the LBSCR mainline at Gatwick (the Racecourse station, not the Airport). Buildings are local examples and the general landscaping is the Sussex Weald. We are going for K&ESR style locos and stock but as others have pointed out, other prototypes are available.

The Colonel Stephens empire contains two examples you might like to consider as hooks to hang your story on. The Shropshire and Montgomeryshire was a failed mainline that was supposed to connect Stoke on Trent with North Wales. Only the bit between Shrewsbury and Llanymynech was built and it closed in the 1880s. Stephens revived it as a Light Railway thirty years later. Light railway trains had their own terminus at Shrewsbury Abbey so your mini layout could be an urban location. Imagine a Railway Mania era line connecting Southampton to, say, Bristol. It builds a temporary terminus in Southampton before it goes belly up. When the light railway revival happens decades later this temporary terminus becomes the Southampton end. Being a cramped location the engine sheds and other space chomping paraphernalia are elsewhere leaving you to provide a small platform and a couple of sidings in a backstreet location of a city.

The best example of a "where the money ran out" terminus has to be Wingham Canterbury Road on the East Kent Railway. The EKR was intended to serve the Kent coalfield, and indeed one short part of it did do so successfully up until the last collieries in Kent closed in the 1980s. The Kent coalfield turned out to be much smaller than the speculators imagined and the bulk of the line headed out to serve collieries that turned out to have little coal in them. One of those was at Wingham, and having got that far Stephens decided to strike out for Canterbury, and the traffic he hoped to get from there. The money ran out in a field the far side of Wingham.

Canterbury Road is a challenge for a model as there is no run round and the short trains - one coach and a couple of wagons - were gravity shunted. However for a backstory perhaps you could imagine some late Victorian speculation that there was coal under the New Forest and speculators started to sink test shafts. Other speculators used the Light Railways Act to plan lines connecting these collieries, aiming to monopolise the shipping out of the black stuff. When the whole speculation collapse the light railway was left with an unfinished line and little traffic. Your terminus then could be a real middle of nowhere location.

On 25/10/2023 at 13:13, rockershovel said:

Which completely bypasses the historic and cultural dimensions of the 6N and SANZAAR. 

 

A lot of people predicted Italy's stagnation, but "wider access and development" has become a religion, and like all religions it brooks no dissent, and no amount of failure can disprove it. Between the people who think that ANYONE can be the All Blacks, and the ones who think that the same talent can be spread ever thinner to produce ever expanding revenues, there is no telling 'em. 

 

It is not fortuitous that the ABs are so consistently successful. Nor that the Boks are so strong. Argentina are where they are because of their links to Europe. Japan are where they are because they have, for some inscrutable reason decided they want to be good at rugby, they have plenty of funds, a good pool of players and a culture in which failure is not an option. 

 

Nor is it fortuitous that England chronically under-perform when it matters, that Scotlsnd and Wales consistently produce sparks but cannot sustain it. It is not fortuitous that Fiji and to a lesser extent Tonga and Samoa have blossomed; it is the changes in eligibility which makes it worthwhile for a top class coach to spend time there.

 

Rugby isn't football. 

No rugby isn't football. Football managed to resolve the tensions between those who thought you should play the game for the love of it and those who saw you could make a living from it, without spinning off a closely related form of the game that was sufficiently different to make reunification well nigh impossible. There are some historic and cultural dimensions right there. Football accepted professionalism in the 1890s, largely because the FA was in the hands of more liberal patriarchal types who accepted that working class men didn't have the same opportunities to take time off to train and play and needed financial compensation to do so. Their solution was to allow clubs to pay players but set a maximum wage which remained in place till the 1960s. Rugby Union's administrators however dug their heels in on the question of compensation payments for lost shifts at the mills. Partly this was because they had seen how professional clubs quickly came to dominate football - no amateurs won the FA Cup after professionalism was allowed - but also a simple class prejudice, the English disease. The result was Northern clubs made up of working class players breaking away and over time making rule changes that created the separate game of rugby league. If you look at rugby clubs in Leeds you can see that class divide. The industrial south of the city had clubs like Hunslet as well as all the small town clubs of the heavy woollen district (which was also the name of the bus company serving it), your Batleys, Dewsburys and Castlefords which were rugby league clubs and the leafy suburbs of the north had union clubs like Moortown and Roundhay. (Roundhay was not, and is not, the grim north Liz Truss claimed it was). Leeds two biggest clubs, Leeds RL and Headingley (now Leeds Tykes), sat where industrial Kirkstall merged into Headingley, Leeds' first middle class suburb.

The All Blacks are consistently good because rugby is embedded into New Zealand identity , and the Boks were similarly embedded into Afrikaner identity. The modern Boks owe a lot to Nelson Mandela making rugby acceptable to South Africa's black majority, because they weren't going to manage that themselves. (An interesting letter in the Guardian this week posits that the "white c*nt" accusation from the semi finals is actually the England player mis-hearing the South Africans giving each other instructions in Afrikaans, a language on other RWC team would understand). Until a few years ago you would have said that rugby was similarly embedded into Welsh culture but Wales is changing and rugby is losing ground to football.

The historical and cultural backgrounds of France, where the union authorities collaborated with the Nazi occupiers to try and stamp out rugby league, Ireland and Scotland are also interesting sociological topics. As is that of Australia. However it all comes back to the same problem, rugby has a very narrow base. You have three countries, New Zealand, South Africa and Wales, who are consistently good because rugby is the national sport (if only just in the case of Wales), and two - England and France - who are consistently good because they are so much bigger in terms of population than the rest. Australia competes because Australians are obsessed with winning at tiddlywinks never mind anything bigger than that. But you can't sustain a modern sport like that, not as an international sport anyway. And rugby union's achilles heel is that it is utterly reliant on the money and coverage that international games give it. Now more than ever. So it needs a World Cup and it needs its other international tournaments. And they can't just be the same seven or eight sides playing each other.

The big problem with international football tournaments (and I include rugby in this category here) is that while the top sides are consistently the same, the second tier are very variable. In round ball football for example you have the Netherlands. With four World Cup finals and a European Championship under their belts they can clearly mix it with the best, but they can also be very mediocre. The difference lies with players and the coach. In the good years the Dutch could put four or five players of the very highest calibre out on the pitch filled out with a dozen players who would still walk into a team in one of the major leagues. In fallow years barely one top class player and out there with him half a dozen who can't get out of the middling quality Dutch league. And on the bench some years they'd have a world beater, Rinus Michels or Louis van Gaal, other years someone who couldn't even get a job in the Dutch league.

So it is in rugby. This time everyone is enthusing about Portugal and Fiji. As far as the Portuguese are concerned everything seemed to click with a coach who got a team to play to, indeed above, their individual strengths. There is no guarantee that they can repeat that in four years time or that they can sustain that level and grow further. After all we've had similar enthusiasm in the past for Georgia, for Romania and indeed for Italy before they joined the six nations. Fiji of course have a long history of oscillating between being a bright sparkler and a disappointing dud. And where were the Americans this time?

These proposals smack of a cartel - the Six Nations and Rugby Championship - thinking about their own privileges first before considering the wider good of the game. Rugby doesn't need another tournament, it needs wider access to its existing ones. However because the second tier nations are so variable there has to be annual or biennial qualification so that when a golden generation appear they can get to the top table while they are at their peak.

Suggestion? Well take the Six Nations. Keep it as it is as a six week long bash in February-March. However only the top four automatically qualify for the next 6N. The bottom two don't get the All Blacks or Boks in the Autumn internationals  but have to play in one of two four team qualifying groups for the privilege of being there next time around. The other six teams will have earned their places in a previous round of qualifiers the previous spring.

I read this morning that Wasps are sizing up a move into Kent, not a county noted for any great rugby prowess or indeed much love for the game. So for a club that started out in London's western suburbs, played at QPR's and Wycombe Wanderers football grounds, moved to Coventry, now starting out again in Worcester another 200 mile move would appear to make absolute sense. And given that they would have to shift from the pyramid under National League 2 West to National League 2 South's pyramid that would be fun as well.

Whatever they are on at Wasps I do think they ought to bottle it and sell it to cheer up a distinctly miserable world.

20 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

What happens if Italy get relegated? Do they stay in 6N?

Who knows, but that issue would get resolved reasonably sensibly. The one that would cause real fur to fly would be if Scotland or Wales fell through the trapdoor, not impossible scenarios.

Unlikely but it might make the present Princess of Wales a bit more interesting

20 hours ago, tigerburnie said:

The summer SH tours and the Autumn internationals are what finance NZ and Aus, remove any of those series and the ANZAC's will no longer play pro rugby, they cannot sustain themselves domestically, same applies with the Boks with the Lions.

Australian rugby union would certainly suffer, but they would still play rugby league professionally, that is well established. As for New Zealand, rugby union and the All Blacks are part of the culture. They would find a way to stay competitive.

Possibly, but my point about the innards of the model still stands.

The fact Bamburgh has small splashers means that the footplate is the same height irrespective of whether 3' or 3'6" wheels are fitted. The problem for us modellers is that it won't be a case of just fitting larger wheels, the undergubbins will need some modifying to get the body to sit at the right height. The internals might cause problems, and I recall an earlier comment from the Rapido guy that they did an L rather than an I or K because there was enough trouble getting all the works inside already. There may therefore not be that extra millimeter available.

Apologies if I have missed this mentioned before, but what class was Bamburgh of the North Sunderland Railway? My books say it was a Manning Wardle loco but not which class and the photos show a larger loco than an I or K

20 hours ago, rockershovel said:

The problem with Italy is that people got greedy, and sold a share in 6N to an investment house. 

 

The investment house decided that fir commercial reasons, they wanted 6 teams in the tournament - so that every team played every weekend. The 6th team must be European. 

 

 

It shouldn't be forgotten that Italy was getting good results against 5N sides in friendlies, expanding to an even number of teams was a sensible step and bringing in a non-European team was not sensible then. Argentina was no better than Italy, South Africa still had the stench of apartheid over them and Australasia simply too far away.

What happened was that professionalism moved faster in the existing five nations than in Italy and that caused the gap to widen.

One way out of the dilemma is to have a proper second tier international competition in Europe. The old guard won't wear relegation though because they are all at risk. Over the years Italy have been in the 6N they have finished above Scotland a few times and think Wales too when Wales are having a bad year.

2 hours ago, rockershovel said:

No, the purpose must be to exclude the inherent conflict of interest caused by the clubs being under independent commercial ownership. Football operates by promoting a club game on the international stage, accruing huge television revenue by doing so. 

 

People like Sir John Hall did not invest in the nascent professional rugby union in the expectation of becoming wealthy from gate receipts; they did it in the aim of seizing control of the, even then, huge international revenues. 

 

But club rugby doesn't work like that. The RFU have a huge subscription base from playing members who take little or no interest in the top flight club game, but do follow the international game to varying extents. 

 

So... the club owners attempt to one the one hand, maximise their revenues by maximising fixtures; on the other, demanding ever-greater shares of international revenues for a highly questionable task of player development. 

 

It is now clear that the RFU could centrally contract about 40 players, thereby controlling the cost base, and shut the door in the faces of the senior clubs who would be left with a highly uncertain future. All international revenues would accrue to Twickenham; players would compete furiously for the highly-paid central contracts. 

 

The RFU could go further. Subsidise potential central contracted players playing in England BUT NOT in France, or non-eligible players in England. 

 

The clubs have been allowed a great deal of scope, and the result is a natio al team in complete disarray.

 

 

 

Does France have the same problems between club and country?

The policy of centrally contracting players creates enough problems in professional cricket. The county game - long game version especially - has been made absolutely subservient to international cricket. Until the IPL came along that is. County cricket is messed around with something awful. In rugby the Premiership's own competition gets undermined as clubs are expected to fulfil league fixtures while losing their best players to the Autumn internationals and the Six Nations. In cricket though there are only eighteen counties that would produce players fit to be considered for a central contract.

Ireland, and Wales and Scotland effectively, have created a level between internationals and ordinary clubs. Works very well for Ireland. Clubs identify and nurture young talent, the regions polish them up - Leinster and Munster in particular are top level outfits - and Ireland as a whole benefits. Your suggestion of sidelining England's biggest clubs, and penalising the international careers of those players who seek to improve themselves in France will leave a huge gap between English international and club rugby. Will that improve things?

11 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Rugby isn't football. The professional clubs are financial disasters - half of them are in receivership. It's time to sweep away the broken ownership model. Put the top 8 clubs in a closed league. Cut their fixture list by 50% and centrally contract the 40 or so top players. Impose maximum numbers of imported players. 

 

Perhaps controversially the merger of the Premiership and United Rugby Championship should be considered, only those clubs with a sustainable base invited to join. Leicester, obviously, then probably Bath and Gloucester, Harlequins, Saracens if they can fumigate their affairs, Northampton and possibly Sale and Newcastle.

10 hours ago, rockershovel said:

If the latest display by Italy doesn't bring on their departure from the 6N, I don't know what will. They were completely outclassed.

 

Fiji, by their own efforts have put Australia out. Tonga aren't looking so dusty, either. I await their confrontation with the ever-misfiring Farrell/Ford combination with interest. 

 

The South Seas players are playing for a few hundred pounds a game. Time for the governing bodies to put aside the disgraceful hypocrisy about "development" and put up a decent purse for these players. 

 

 

 

 

The problem with Italy is that they sit in that huge gap between the 6N and the rest of Europe. They were outclassed by France and the AB - no surprise there - but dealt with Namibia and Uruguay comfortably. 

We had a good show in Dorking this weekend. A constant stream of people asking questions and appreciating what we have done so far. I will be updating the blog over then next week or so.

On 23/09/2023 at 20:00, rockershovel said:

Italy have never qualified from the group stages,

 

The tournament could be reduced to 16 sides and would be materially improved by doing so. 

 

Let's talk about development. Tonga put up a solid show the other night, and their outing in the Amazon 8N wasn't so dusty. It's no secret that there are a LOT of South Seas players kicking their heels in Aus/NZ for reasons of money. Let the IRB take that bull by the horns, and we'll see some fun.

 

Let's define development. Let's have any team claiming to be "developing" produce a credible development plan, with costs.

 

Not qualifying from the group stage is not a problem, after all few get further than the quarter finals anyway. The problem is when the only relevance of some mismatch is the bonus points scored.

Most tournaments, including FIFA's World Cup, would be materially improved by reducing them to 16 sides. Bloated tournaments are cash cows rather than sporting events. In the case of the FIFA tournament the bloating is entirely due to the corrupt leadership chasing the votes of African, Asian and Central American associations to keep their place on the gravy train. However the result is that only dodgy regimes can afford to host these things. Unless, like England and France, the sports stadiums are already there.

I don't think there is a one size fits all development strategy. South America, the Pacific islands and Europe beyond the 6N are all different. The Pacific islands would benefit from administrative changes regarding players, and the sons of players, attracted to New Zealand and their ability to play for their ancestral home. Portugal, Georgia and the other smaller (in rugby terms) European countries might benefit by English and French professional clubs adopting local clubs as feeder clubs, lending out coaches and giving opportunities in the development sides to promising young players, and should they make the grade, professional contracts. How that would be funded is a mystery of course.

It's probably possible to carefully stick a small Plastikard overlay on the arm of the N gauge one to make it more 3mm scale sized. I'd suggest making it look more Victorian - your light railway having acquired a second hand signal - by making the arm wider at the end than by the post. The shorter post can be explained away with "it's a light railway, innit".

There will always be sides in a tournament who have no chance of winning the thing. The questions is, are they competitive? The relative ease with which Italy, not the strongest of the Six Nations, disposed of Uruguay is probably more indicative of the RWC having expanded too fast than France's demolition of Namibia. The problem with the present format is that a lot of rugby gets played to get the answer everyone expected to see in terms of the eight quarter finalists.