fezza

You might be right mate but every time I go on social media I find people building all sorts of layouts, modifying RTR stock and teaching viewers all sorts of skills. In which case there must still be a market for kits and small specialist supplies, even if those who supply them are less likely to go to exhibitions. Are people lazier? I think the world of work has changed a lot, with many white collar jobs more pressurised than even twenty years ago. Not many afternoons at the golf course these days! I also think men tend to be more occupied by domestic and family duties than before. It's only really retirement that offers respite for modelling... I'm still almost a decade away so I hope I live that long!

It is interesting though that some shows have lots of smaller suppliers (Gauge O Guild and Stafford to name but two) so presumably small suppliers think these are cost-effective and worthwhile despite the fuel and accommodation costs? It's not only about immediate sales, of course. Shows are an opportunity to remind people you exist (or still exist) and promote future sales. That's certainly how my old family firm (admittedly in a very different niche business) viewed shows and exhibitions.

I was thinking more in terms of the West Midlands region generally - Coventry, Rugby, Birmingham, Black country, Stafford etc. I agree that some clubs may prefer to run profitable local exhibitions, but there is some prestige and satisfaction in organising a truly national or international show. There are also potentially direct benefits to the clubs involved. Warley raised it's profile enormously through the shift to a national show at the NEC. In terms of sales. my ideal exhibition would have a mixture of large and small suppliers, catering for Finescale and mainstream, new and secondhand. Stafford seems to get quite close to that, as do a few others. Of course, the ideal is very hard to achieve, but there's no harm in a club having a general vision of what it would like to achieve.

Personally I felt Warley lost something when the small suppliers and cheaper second hand dealers began to be priced out. Last November it seemed full of the larger shops selling the same premium products. From the point of view of buying it was less useful to me than, say, today's small Mickleover swapmeet where I was able to acquire several quite specialist things I'd been looking for. What I don't understand is why the several big clubs in the West Midlands don't work together to share the burdens of organising a major exhibition and the financial risk. That might be a more sustainable solution to organise a genuinely "national" event. Most clubs cater for a local audience so shouldn't see themselves as being in competition - although some clearly do!

All credit to Farish to producing an excellent upgrade. It really is very good indeed! However to replace my old 158 fleet would cost almost £2000 so the old ones will do me for now! For me they are "good enough". One advantage of new models is that I suspect more old ones will now come onto the market as spares.

Trying to find a silver lining... could this boost the Manchester show and allow it to expand and become THE end-of-year model rail show? I think there are probably too many big exhibitions for them all to be viable so some market adjustments were probably inevitable. But it is still very bad news.

I wonder how much the decline of trains amongst young people is related to the decline of youngsters trainspotting? When I was young I was allowed to hang out at stations on my own with other boys. I was also put under the charge of family friends to visit distant locations and stand on main line platforms all day while they went to the pub. I had a great time, learnt a lot and grew in social confidence with strangers. If that happened today they'd put my parents in gaol... Modern child protection policies are important, but they have consequences.

Very sad to hear this news. The staff have always been great and I hope their expertise finds work elsewhere. I am sure it will. We've seen a lot of model shops close in the north west despite the fact there is a vibrant model railway scene in the region and that retail real estate costs are often lower than elsewhere in the country. It is a puzzle. It seems even those that offer an excellent online offer like Hattons are not immune. I do sometimes worry higher prices have produced a smaller market that might ultimately cause problems for retailers. Having said that there is still a lot of choice out there across the hobby. I recently picked up a sweet running Mainline Peak for £35. I could have spent £150 on a DCC ready Bachmann version or £220 on a DCC sound Bachmann version. There is still stuff out there in shops for every pocket if you look.

Personally I think the problem is manufacturers have realised the money is to be made in selling expensive premium products to a late middle aged market with high disposable income. That's fair enough but it does make it tricky for youngsters to collect. Of course everyone has a different approach and views on this but... In another thread I advocated a retro approach - buying cheap second hand 1980s products and gradually learning to detail and improve them. Buy a good feedback controller and you will have excellent running at a fraction of the cost of that latest DCC toy. With this method youngsters will learn real modelling skills and also learn how to fix things. That for me is one of the most interesting aspects of the hobby.

Well they say man makes plans and God laughs.... My layout room is now under two feet of floodwater. Fortunately all the stock has been rescued but the boards and supporting legs are landfill. Unless I take up modelling boats I don't think the room is going to be in use for a while. Looks like I might have to build a Minories style portable folding layout for the time being (and keep it upstairs!). Not what I'd hoped to do but I suppose following one of Freezer's plans is fairly retro in itself... Overall, it's not been the best few days of our lives but I know many people have suffered worse than we have. Most of our important stuff was moved before the floods arrived.

Thanks. It will be compact urban station that takes inspiration from Wolverhampton Low Level and Snow Hill. There might also be a bit of High Wycombe and Leicester Midland influence too (think blue brick retaining walls and tunnels drawing on "modern" 1890s/1900s railway practice). Just don't be surprised if the odd Deltic and Calder Valley unit turns up! Deltics were trialled on the GWR Birkenhead line in the 1970s in an attempt to speed up through services. Calder Valley units appeared for similar reasons and due to a major DMU shortage in the Wolverhampton area... (Oh, and because I like them!)

Yes, I suppose I was suggesting combining two separate approaches: (1) Retro modelling (making use of older "good enough" stock that itself has a history) to help model (2) a more impressionistic sense of place and time (using restrained colour palettes and simple materials to create the feel of a place and time, rather than worry about getting every tiny detail correct). At least that's what I'll be attempting in 2024... A retro impressionistic approach to model Birmingham's GWR lines in the early 1970s, with the assumption that the Birkenhead to Paddington services survived - just an excuse really to run my Hornby Hymeks, Mainline Warships, Lima Westerns, Replica Peaks, and 116/7 DMUs in a run-down urban setting. Now I really need to start putting it all together! Happy new year everyone!

Yes, I loved his West Midlands line book - a railway that was a work of fiction but one that seemed to me more real than many models based on real prototypes You might also enjoy Tony Koester's recent tribute to his friend Allen McClelland's amazing V & O layout (called Allen McClelland and His Virginian & Ohio). It is not as substantial as the WM book but it shows how thinking of a model as a system makes it much more fun. It's not surprising that some of these layouts had very long lives compared to many modern Finescale efforts that are beautifully made but don't have as much operational potential.

I recently found a copy of Edward Beal's Railway Modelling in Miniature in a junk shop. I have sent it to a friend who is just starting up again. Beal's West Midland line is still inspirational and shows what can be done with simple readily available materials (he revised much of the book during WW2 so there wasn't much about at all.). He was also into system modelling where everything had a purpose within a real railway setting. A real gem if you can find it and an inspiration for my retro modelling. On MK1 coaches I happily run Mainline, Lima and Triang in the same rake. The differences in underframe add to the quirkiness and history of my line. As on the real railway, underframe details and bogies often get changed and modified, with those changes adding history and character to each vehicle. Some have a few minor paint scratches but for me that is patina and tells the story of when those coaches were once someone's prized Christmas gift on a 1970s railway. On my line they have new life. Much better than the perfect stuff that never leaves its box to enjoy life. Sure you can pay £70 and get MK1 uniformity. I pay £5 or £10 and have a lot of fun modifying and painting detail on something that then becomes unique.

Another university sector employee here. I've already been made redundant once due to financial cuts and almost every year for the last decade we've been threatened with more redundancies. Meanwhile university managers pay themselves record salaries while wasting tens of millions on building projects than bring the uni closer to financial oblivion. It can be very depressing. Railways are a massive help for me. I often tell my missus if I hadn't spent so much money on trains I'd probably have ended up under one. It is a joke but there is some truth in it. More fundamentally, I find my faith is a big help. Faith is a personal thing, but it is worth exploring if you are inclined, especially at this time of year. Jesus loves us all and the support of local church communities can be a great help to people fearing they have nothing left or have no direction in life. Above all, when things are going wrong, reach out to others for help. The world is not such a bleak place as it can sometimes feel.

I've recently acquired an old Gaugemaster feedback controller and it has absolutely transformed the running of old Lima and Mainline models. It is absolute witchcraft. How does it turn a knackered Mainline warship (cost £30) into something that runs like a modern DCC fitted loco? It is insane. Go buy one if you are any way into Retro modelling.

It is possible that they release the less common liveries (Res, Virgin) first and then the bread and butter liveries (blue, green) later as they know the latter will sell anyway. We've been waiting for Res and Virgin for a very long time - they've been promised for about a decade and I think there have been two 47 retoolings since they were first announced! Great to see them finally appearing but it has been so long that sadly the layout for which I wanted them has now been scrapped and replaced.

The layouts I find most interesting are those that are operated purposefully to a timetable or at least a schedule (preferably with a screen or flip chart / card to show what is going on). Yet there seem to be very few of these today and maybe only a couple at Warley?

On parking I paid £9 at Birmingham International - and it was much closer to the hall than the NEC parking! I appreciate organisers can't force small traders to go but one local trader I use regularly said it was just too expensive. I don't know if this view is widespread but I do think the variety of small traders has always been a great strength of this show. A lot of the big traders tend to sell the same premium priced stuff at broadly the same prices. If anything can be done to get the small shops and traders back I would certainly welcome that as it does add variety. Overall though it is still worth going to - and thanks to the organisers for all their work as I know it can't be easy to please everyone

Sorry my mistake! Anyway great layout. 👍

Another vote for Edington Junction. Beautiful modelling with great atmosphere. One of the lads exhibiting told me it was their last exhibition - do go to see it if you are there tomorrow. It will be a real loss to the exhibition circuit. I agree that much of the rest was fairly average in quality and (if I'm honest) not really justifying the inflated £25 entrance plus parking. Where have all the layouts from overseas gone - are customs restrictions making it difficult to bring layouts into the UK? The modern image content was particularly disappointing. The main exception was the Wigan Finescale layout which was genuinely outstanding. Other than that we felt the overall quality was well behind Ally Pally. There was a good supply of traders but a noticeable absence of the smaller traders and shops compared to previous years. Are they being priced out? Having said that I picked up some old Lima stuff I was looking for so happy in that respect.

Does anyone know if there is a full list of all the BR outline products Lima produced? I'm sure I saw one on the interweb once, but I can't find it now. Wasn't there a Lima society at one stage that documented this stuff? I'd also be interested in tracking down lists for Mainline/Replica but that might be a long shot

I totally get not wanting to mix hi-fi with retro unless you absolutely have to. I suppose my approach is to have ALL retro so there is a consistency of standard and appearance. I'm finding an early 1980s Mainline Peak is about the same in visual standard as a mid 1990s Lima Hoover so they look okay together and maintain the retro look. I'm sticking to Lima and Hornby coaches for the same reason. (Btw I'm not against hi-fi and have quite a bit of it in store. I'm just trying to do something different now and be creative in a different way)

The ultimate? How about a working 4mm shunting horse? The strange thing is I've seen some amazingly modelled P4 layouts that look sterile - a bit like some of those Pre-Raphaelite landscape paintings that are photographic in detail but convey no feel or atmosphere. That's why I think of retro modelling as more impressionistic - communicating an emotion, impression or feeling, often with a limited colour palette (for 1970s, grey, blue and browns).

I guess magazines have to promote new products to some degree - the problem comes when that excludes other approaches or discourages people on a tight budget. I wonder if the drive towards ever greater detail is shaped by the sorts of small, single-station layouts and small exhibition layouts that tend to get built in the UK? If your layout is small and diorama-ish you can afford to lavish £50 on a single, highly detailed wagon (as you won't need many). If you are building an operation-centred basement empire with 30-car trains, you might be more willing to put up with that 1980s £4 Hornby wagon from a swap meet! One American Model Railroader author pushed the "good enough" concept - decide what's good enough for your operational needs rather than lavish too much time or money on any single item. I like that idea and it is definitely influencing my retro modelling.