HonestTom

I keep the boxes for locomotives, if only because they have so many fine details these days that it's the easiest way to ensure nothing gets knocked off.

Yeah, according to 'Sodor: Reading Between the Lines,' it's operated by Class 86s and unspecified EMUs.

I understand that sometimes there are issues with signal, and I do work on the basis that smaller shows probably require cash, but I think we're increasingly reaching the point where the ability to pay cashless is becoming an essential. A lot of charity collectors take contactless - I even encountered a homeless man who took Paypal (I don't know how legit he was, but I gave him £3 for enterprise). I recently had a rather frustrating time at a swapmeet at a heritage railway because there was no cashless facility - I'd spent the not inconsiderable amount of cash I had and neither the refreshment room nor the buffet car took cash, so wound up going without lunch.

According to 'The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways' (a work of imaginary history that makes Tolkien look like a slouch), it was British Railways but retained a lot of its old identity. For instance, it's specified that while the standard gauge railway is officially the North Western Region, everyone knows it as the North Western Railway. The other lines are effectively heritage railways, although there is a certain amount of goods carried. I don't think it's ever been specified what happened after privatisation, although I do quite like the idea of it being taken over by the Sudrian government. My headcanon is that to keep things economically viable, there are a lot more diesels than we see, but they never do anything interesting. I can't believe I'm a grown adult trying to come up with economic justifications for Thomas the Tank Engine. I could have been doing something more grown-up. Like working out the mechanics of Star Trek spaceships.

The books seemed to go with the idea that it was just a railway where steam had been retained. There is acknowledgement that steam has been abolished everywhere else and in the supplemental materials, it's suggested that the Fat Controller supplements the railway's income by manufacturing parts for heritage railways. The TV series seems to be set in this kind of netherworld where it's permanently somewhere around the 1940s-1960s with occasional hints of earlier/later periods.

I gave it a look and... yeah. I'm honestly not surprised they've gone in this direction, even if (as someone who grew up with the books and the TV series) I am a little disappointed. Mattel is a toy company, toy sales have been down, so go with a cheaper-to-produce series I guess my big problem is that I just don't get the impression that the people making it care about the property. It feels lazy. There are quite a few animation and continuity errors. Some of them actually appear deliberate. This is a bit hard to explain, but there are certain shots that are angled in such a way that you can't see how many tracks there are or how close together they are, which appears to have been done purely in order to conceal the fact that what you're seeing doesn't make physical sense. For instance, there are a few bits where an engine nearly runs into another on the same track, only for disaster to be avoided by one of the engines stretching upwards to allow the other to pass beneath, with both characters staying on the rails. There are other errors which seem to have been caused by reusing assets and animation, like points that change direction between shots. There are aspects of the world-building I find confusing. Like, the coaches and trucks can now move on their own - so why do engines exist? Why are there turntables and points if engines can just jump around? Why, for that matter, is there track? I don't know if I'm overthinking this children's TV series, I probably am, but when I was a kid I would definitely have asked questions like that. And that's before we've got on to the railway realism issues, which are so far removed from the creators' priorities that it's hardly worth dissecting them. There was a blog entry a while back that filled me with foreboding. In the press conference, one of the directors seemed to actively dislike the fact that the characters were engines. I got the overall impression that they hadn't actually watched any of the old episodes or read any of the original stories, or even skimmed the wiki. Okay, fine, they're trying to do things differently, but I feel like you can't recapture the appeal of a classic property if you don't know what that appeal was to begin with. Overall, it doesn't feel like a grand reimagining of a beloved classic property, but Mattel trying to justify their investment with a short lead time, low budget series to make a little bit of cash back before they drop the whole thing.

There's a Sentinel steam railmotor from Egypt preserved at Quainton Road. That model looks to me like Clayton trying to crack the same market.

A friend of mine went to China some years back to photograph the dying embers of industrial steam there. Which isn't strange for us, but the locals thought this Westerner photographing what they considered obsolete industrial plant machinery was very suspicious. And since neither party spoke the other's language, it was very difficult to convey the nature of the situation.

I'd love to visit Pyongyang out of morbid curiosity. Trouble is, I think I'd have trouble resisting the urge to stir things up. "Hey, there's that guy again, do you think he's following us?" "How come there are no photos of Kim Il-Sung's other side?" "So, Kim Yo-Jong, hot or not?" Either I'd "disappear" or my guide would get sent to re-education camp. Or both.

To be honest, I don't mind waiting for the LNWR coaches. I know Hornby do that livery, but I want something that looks different to my LSWR and LBSC even if it isn't strictly prototypical. And the Hornby livery is visibly too light. While it's disappointing that they're delayed, I do give Hattons credit for keeping us posted on the situation.

I forget whether it was Kernow or Dapol (or both?) but a couple of years back there was going to be an O gauge Beattie well tank. One I remember was that in Hornby's Thomas range, for a long time the boxes advertised a "Fat Controller, Driver and Fireman" set that never appeared.

Lucky there are so many Great Eastern engines available these days.

I think it depends. How are we defining "the wrong way?" A way that gets a bad result, or a way that gets a good result, but isn't what you personally would do? Did they acknowledge their mistake? Is the builder happy with the end result? Are they looking for advice? Unsolicited and unneeded advice on your work from total strangers, regardless of the intentions behind it, has a tendency to come across like this: Many crafting channels on YouTube leave the mistakes in, often at the viewers' request, so people can see the pitfalls, can see how they can correct their own mistakes or just for the reassurance that you can get a good end result even if you mess up along the way. Modelling can be quite an intimidating hobby for beginners and if all you see is fifty-year veterans of the hobby turning out perfect results every time, it carries the unspoken implication that real modellers just don't make mistakes and there's no place for those that do.

I'm not giving £2800 to anyone who uses Comic Sans in their announcements.

There's an interesting might-have-been that you could maybe use to justify a decent passenger service. In 1947, during the planning stages of what would become the Victoria Line, London Transport proposed something called "Scheme D." This was an Underground line that would basically have followed the course of the present-day Victoria line with two additions - a branch in the north to Waltham Cross and in the south, it would go beyond Brixton, through Streatham and Norbury and down to South Croydon. Early versions had it going further, to Coulsdon North and Sanderstead, but by 1951 that had been scrapped. Budgetary constraints and changing priorities resulted in this version of the line getting canned. However, one consistent point was a station that would have been called "Croydon Central" (1947 version) or "Town Hall" (1951 version). This would have been located immediately to the south of the site of Central Croydon station. Perhaps you could imagine that this version of the Victoria Line actually did get built, justifying a far more intensive service than would have existed in reality.

For my channel, I did a bunch of videos on low-budget modelling, including painting and weathering older models. I kept a list of what I spent on everything, and it is entirely possible to get all the stock you need for a decent start for less than £50. Admittedly some of the items I got were a real bargain, but nothing impossible if you're prepared to shop around. - Lima 94xx tank. Decent all-rounder, looks okay, runs well: £7 (eBay) - Triang 16 ton mineral wagons x3. £3, £3.50 and £5 (swapmeets) - Lima vent vans x2, £4 each (swapmeet) - Mainline oil tanker, £4 (swapmeet) - Hornby Prestwin, £3 (antique shop) - Hornby standard BR brake van, £3 (swapmeet) Total: £36.50. For that, I have a loco and 8 wagons, which is more than enough for a micro-layout. I intentionally limited myself - the loco is in BR black, so I went for BR steam era-liveried wagons. If you're not fussed about time and place, you might be able to do better. I've certainly seen beaten-up old wagons go for £2 a piece. How about the rest? I'm going to say, for the sake of argument, that a good starter layout is a 3-2-2 Inglenook. It doesn't take much space, it doesn't require any complicated wiring or control and it can easily be set up on a temporary basis. I have a Hornby train set controller that I picked up a couple of years ago at a swapmeet, complete with power clip, that I picked up for £8. It's nothing fancy, but it'll do the job to begin with. Based on the prices at my local model shop, I reckon the following is a realistic price for track. I'm going to Hornby on the basis that that's what shows up second-hand cheap, and I'm going with nickel silver rail: 2x points, £5 each 2x double straight, £1.50 each 1 half curve, £1.00 1 single straight, £1.00 A couple of those tiny little bits of straight track, you know the ones, 75p each Total: £16.50 So, track, power and rolling stock: £61. Really, to get started in a new hobby, that's not much. I reckon if you set yourself a budget of £100 and were frugal, you'd have a pretty good shot at getting a complete layout going. Nothing too fancy, but also nothing out of the reach of most people, especially since you don't have to buy everything at once.

I think just upgrading the clerestories would do the job for a lot of people. If they tooled up a flat roof (the roof being a separate component), I think they could really open up the possibilities for plausible liveries. With modern livery printing techniques, to be honest I'm kind of surprised that they haven't taken more advantage of the tooling they have. They've produced the coaches in GWR, LMS/Midland, LNER, BR (!) and a couple of totally fictional liveries (Thomas and Railway Children), but there are a lot of pre-Grouping liveries that I think they'd look pretty good in. And the popularity of the new generic coaches demonstrates that there is a market for something that looks sort-of right.

And the great thing is that now we have a choice. You want ready-to-run? There are models that we wouldn't even have dreamed of twenty years ago. You want to build you own? You still can - and now there's a whole array of tools and materials that didn't exist not so long ago if you want them.

Modelling itself does not have to be an expensive hobby, it just depends how you go about it. I have buildings that cost me literally pennies, made entirely out of household bits and rubbish, and I am not a skilled modeller. Work in progress below: (They are actually supposed to be dilapidated - I want a Victorian slum. Admittedly partly because it's easier at my skill level to build dilapidated houses than nice ones) I would say that, for a hundred pounds, you can get a pretty decent start. That will get you a basic Hornby set. Or you could shop around, get some track, a trainset controller, a cheapo loco and some rolling stock to play with, maybe even some buildings or scenery. If the hobby isn't for you, you can sell the stuff on. If you decide you like it, you can work your way up (and you already have something to practice detailing, painting and weathering on). I would argue that the real luxury these days is space. It's hard to build that layout of a lifetime if you can only afford to live in a small flat, or you're stuck with your parents, or you're renting.

I think it's a case of finding dealers you know you can trust. My local model shop has a very decent selection of second-hand stuff, fairly priced, and they're honest about the condition. You might find cheaper prices online, but I've been burned before by apparent must-have bargains (literally in one case). I consider it worth paying a little extra for the peace of mind. In the pre-COVID days of swapmeets, there were a few regular traders who I would always visit. As for the rising price of second-hand, I think that only really applies in the case of locomotives that were expensive to begin with. I actually think that the price of older locomotives hasn't risen in line with inflation - you can still get, say, a Hornby 0-4-0 for a tenner, which is about what I would have paid a decade ago. On the other hand, the introduction of new versions of old models has reduced demand for certain second-hand locos. You can get a Triang M7 for about £30 these days, whereas I remember before Hornby introduced the new version, I'd regularly see them going for eye-watering prices.

I think that's a pretty decent description of my modelling. I don't mind if the loco has the wrong number or even if the wagons have no numbers, but it bothers me if a building is obviously wrong for the area, or if the liveries on the stock are significantly out of period. When I think of the eras/regions I model, I tend to work almost from a mental picture. My trains are representative rather than fully accurate - my banana van train consists of four vans, my passenger trains are two or three coaches, and the unusual is far better represented than the ordinary.

I often don't bother numbering my wagons. They're going to be heavily weathered, there are lots of them, they aren't really the "main event," most of the time the numbers won't be legible anyway. I take a fine brush and paint something that looks from a distance like it might be writing and once there's a coat of dirt, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. In real life, I don't pay any attention to wagon numbers, so they're not a priority for my models.

Well, that was quick. A bargain-priced Oxford Radial showed up just when I needed one. I know it’s not as super-detailed as the Hornby one, but since the coaches are a compromise, I’m not losing sleep over it.

That wallpaper was the choice of a former flatmate. The guy had a bit of a drinking problem. Last I heard, he'd changed his name and the bailiffs were after him. There are some interesting people in this world. I'm sure his taste in wallpaper was unrelated though.

Indeed. I've been doing some work on the Hornby generics because they're so very affordable and now my appetite is whetted, I'm looking forward to the Hattons ones giving me a whole new lot of raw material to play with.