HonestTom

My local model shop tell me that the ones with lighting haven't been selling so well. I guess for me personally, the problem is that if I run them with lights, I'll need my locos to have working lamps, the stations to be lit, etc, etc...

Oh hey, this thread exists. Well, I've been working on some Hornby generic coaches. I thought I'd see if I could make them look less Stroudley-esque. In the long run, I want to make a set of GER-style coaches, but that's quite an involved conversion. So to begin with, I thought I'd try messing around with an LSWR brake coach. Here was the starting point. My phone really doesn't like focusing on the black ends of these coaches, so apologies for that. The "conversion" consisted of altering the windows, which was an easy job. I used styrene strip to give the impression of the top bar of a window frame. Happily, the width of the windows is almost exactly 5mm, which made measuring easier. I glued it in place with poly cement. As you can see in the second photo below, I touched the lower edge of the bar in black, as I figured this would be basically impossible to paint once it was in place. The final stage was painting. Fortunately, the ends of these coaches being black made things easier. The ends are flush glazed, which appears to have been achieved by making the whole thing out of clear plastic and printing the livery on to it. Therefore, I painted the inner windows black, along with the bars themselves and the "glass" above them. Here's the result in cruel close-up, next to somewhat dusty coach with unmodified windows: And here it is with another coach atop a viaduct: I guess I should get an engine to haul them...

IIRC, there was a layout in Railway Modeller many years ago where someone had replaced the axles and wheels on a Hornby one and used it on an O gauge layout.

Speaking as someone who does earn a living from it, why? We produce something that people want. People demand, we supply. Maybe you personally don't demand it - that's fine. I don't like sport, most modern music isn't to my taste and I don't watch TV, but I don't resent people for making money out of those things (even though all are far more intrusive than my little YouTube channel). From my perspective, the process of making a typical video consists of: 1. Research. This will involve consulting several different sources. I may have to purchase books, magazines or website subscriptions to do this, or visit archives or libraries. 2. Writing a script. This has to be a balance between information and entertainment - I have to give people a reason to come to my video. Maybe because it's entertaining, maybe because they can't find the information anywhere else, ideally both. 3. Filming. This can involve travelling for several hours. It usually requires visiting more than one location. I may even end up visiting a location more than once because I decide at the editing stage that the footage I have is inadequate. 4. Assembling any other elements I need - images, clips, quotes, graphics. 5. Recording a voiceover. 6. Editing. This is by far the most tedious part of the process, and a short video can take up an entire evening. 7. Uploading and dealing with the various boring things YouTube requires you to deal with (highlighting any advertiser-unfriendly content, age rating, declaring any commercial tie-ins, uploading a thumbnail, adding a description and any necessary links). This has to be done twice, because I produce an advert-free version for Patreon. 8. Promotion. I do all this three to four times a week with no assistance. This is just on an individual video basis. There are larger, more general matters that also need dealing with. Business negotiations to be done and financial matters to be dealt with. Responding to emails and comments. Analysing the response to videos. Planning ahead. I sometimes get asked to do podcasts and guest spots in other YouTube videos. I might have to deal with my videos being pirated, that happens a lot. I have other social media accounts that need to be updated. Oh, and on top of all that, I also work a full-time job, because YouTube income is very unreliable. I could in theory quit and go full-time with YouTube, but it's risky and the earnings are variable. I'd like to own a flat someday, and if you apply for a mortgage and list your occupation as YouTuber, they just laugh at you for 8-10 hours. I don't have weekends, and I'm lucky to get an evening to myself. Some weeks I get no free time at all. I'm often up late working, or up early to film. I work extremely hard in order to produce something for other people. It took a lot of time and effort to get where I am, and I'm not exactly rich. Why shouldn't I earn a living?

I'm not too bothered about renumbering - my modelling is always based on semi-fictional locations anyway, so I can argue that such-and-such a locomotive would have been allocated here if that place had existed, or something. Shed plates aren't really visible from normal viewing distance.

As a modeller of the Great Eastern suburban London lines in the 50s, my wallet just felt a great disturbance in the Force.

Thanks for having me on the show!

Interesting. I suppose if you wanted to hide the lack of daylight, then you could maybe have some junk on the footplate. I find myself speculating as to whether the terms of Bachmann's licensing agreement would allow them to produce a more prototypically accurate body and sell the engine as a regular Tattoo. I note that most of the non-TV-accurate details are below the footplate.

I did once have a mad idea for an urban diorama where you'd be looking through the arch of a viaduct, and you'd hear the sound of trains from up above. Then I started playing with the idea of a street scene in Victorian London where you'd have an opening between houses, and every so often a blast of smoke and the noise of a train going by underneath.

That's quite naughty of them. If your video is sponsored, you are supposed to click a little box which causes a banner to appear at the start of the video, announcing that the video is sponsored. (I do sponsored videos and I find it a bit redundant for my videos, since my sponsor insists that I mention them at the very beginning)

I actually think those videos are a good illustration of one of the advantages of YouTube. Obviously 3D printing has been a tool in the modellers' arsenal (hello mixed metaphor) for some years now. For me, not a technological person, it's always been a bit intimidating. Sure, lots of people say it's easy, but I don't know what they mean by that - they could be very tech-savvy. Sam's videos on the subject clearly illustrate how you go about designing and printing a bit of rolling stock, the advantages and disadvantages for a beginner, and he shows the end product and its use in a model railway context. As a result, I'm now thinking quite seriously of investing in a 3D printer. Other videos convinced me to try my hand at scratch building. Again, by showing rather than telling. I tend to be a fairly concrete thinker, so if someone can show me what to do, I can pick that information up more easily than if someone tells me.

It looks like it would be pretty good fodder for a conversion kit. Perhaps something for the 3D printing experts.

The first one looks like something out of Chuggington. Fascinating.

It's pretty fun when I get paid.

100% agree. I've found plenty of prototype footage that fills in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. It's also very useful for getting a real feel for a setting. I can read all about a period in books, but if I can see actual footage of the time and place I'm researching, I can see what it was really like. Fun fact: advertisers actually prefer channels that are more specialist and less "popular." Specialist channels tend to get a more interested and loyal viewership. Obviously they do want channels with a lot of viewers, but they'd rather have someone with a lot of viewers who actually pay attention.

You may find this video of interest.

I think this is the great advantage. There are a lot of basics that really aren't obvious to the beginner. Obviously magazines don't have the space to write the absolute basics in every article, or to take you through the author's thought process, or show you every single stage of the process. You'd wind up with a magazine the thickness of a telephone directory that would quickly become boring and repetitive for regular readers. But with videos, you can see exactly what they do and what tools they use. Many of them will explain their thinking in using a particular method and often, they'll even include their mistakes. A lot of channels I follow include "basics" videos that they'll link to when needed. It was videos like these that convinced me to take the plunge into scratchbuilding structures, because they showed me that you don't have to be an expert or spend a lot of money to get a pleasing result.

Most of what I get in my recommendations are documentaries or videos on crafting and model making. I think they do sometimes slip something completely different in for variety - it's kind of weird to see a history of the Blue Pullmans, advice on crafting in foam and then "WE CUT THIS CREEPY DOLL OPEN AT 3AM OMG!!! (SCARY)" in my recommendations.

It's fascinating how many different niches there are. I didn't imagine there was a channel specifically devoted to drain unblocking, but I'm really not surprised. Not something I'd watch over dinner, though...

I've collaborated a bit with Chris myself and he's been a great source of advice on how it works and yes, I agree his stuff deserves more credit. He puts an incredible amount of work into his videos. I think people often don't appreciate how much work goes into something like that. A ten-second shot of a locomotive might require hours of travel and lots of patience, plus years' worth of knowledge and experience to know how to get that shot. It's very difficult to know what YouTube likes. I was bumping along with less than a hundred subscribers for over a year before my channel kicked off. But you can never tell which videos will be popular. You can make a video that will be huge, then you make a video on a similar subject and hardly anyone watches it. Case in point: I've done a few videos on postwar housing developments, which have been really popular. Then I did a video on Thamesmead, which was one that a lot of people requested. I did a lot of research, I spent an entire day down there filming (I clocked up seventeen miles on foot). The edit took days. I revised it and revised it before publication. I was proud of the end result, which being a very self-critical person, is rare for me. And... it did okay. Some people watched it. It wasn't a hit. I wouldn't say people disliked it, but it was a disappointment. The trouble is, you can't really complain about something like that. A part of me wants to grab viewers by the collar and say, "You see that? Do you know how hard it was to get that footage? You'll sit down and watch it, my lad, and you'll click that like button!" But if people don't want to watch, you can't make them. You just have to learn what you can and keep going. I don't see how this is specifically a YouTube phenomenon. You might as well argue, why exhibit layouts? Why write articles or publish books? Why, for that matter, post on forums? We could go the whole hog - why even discuss your hobby with your mates? Isn't that also deviating from the concept of doing something for the sake of doing it? All that's changed is that these days, the technology exists to make publication easier. Armchair modellers have existed since long before the Internet. It's just that before there were online resources, they were limited to reading magazines and visiting exhibitions. How is reading a book or magazine any better than watching a video on YouTube? I'm going to be quite honest here, I'm not seeing any arguments here that are specific to YouTube. The issue seems to be that you object to people who passively consume the hobby without making models themselves, which is really nothing to do with the medium.

I'm planning to get some for that very purpose. Hornby's LNWR livery looks rather off to me. That being said, I have wagons that could run with it, so this is definitely an "I want it" rather than an "I need it" purchase.

You could hold out for the Longmoor Military Railway ones and say they've been transferred? Or the NCB ones are relatively plain.

Exactly where I'm at. I'm lucky these days if I get even an evening a week for modelling. I don't have a permanent modelling set-up, so I have to get everything out and put everything away at the end of the session, so that's even less time. My period/region is East London in the late 50s/early 60s, but I have a handful of pre-Grouping liveried locos for no other reason than I think they're pretty. I just want rolling stock that looks "about right" to my uneducated eye. I don't want to spend what could amount to months on a low-priority project. In the long run, I'd like to swap the generic stock out for something more accurate, but I'm happy for my Terrier to pootle along with a set of not-quite-Stroudleys in the meantime. I have a pair of Hornby 6-wheelers in BR livery to make up a (historically non-existent) workmen's train, and I'm planning to strengthen the rake with at least one Genesis in LNER brown. I want that mismatched look, to suggest that this train is not very highly regarded by the Powers that Be. Indeed, I think the great strength of two ranges being available is that you can run coaches representing two different companies together and have them be visually more distinct than just the liveries. Ideal both for your shoestring light railway and your pre-Grouping main line. 1900, eh? I can see why the Genesis coaches caught your eye.

Thank you! I am currently considering a sort of half-and-half reimplementation (which the spellchecker informs me is not a word). Something like, here's a modelling project I've been working on, now let's look at the real life inspiration for that and how I can recreate that. That way, there's something for the modellers and something for the people who prefer the real life stuff.

I do, but I don't know if you'd count me as a railway modelling YouTuber. I used to put modelling videos out very regularly, and I still do over on my Patreon page, but for various reasons they're no longer a regular thing on the main channel (that's a whole rant that I won't get into right now). I am, however, best known as a railway YouTuber. I'm not going to go into the exact amount I make, partly because it's crass and partly because it varies from month to month. I am at a point where I could theoretically quit the day job, but the income is very varied and I live in constant fear that I might get a couple of bad months. Plus YouTube has this fun habit of suddenly changing the way it does things, which can wipe years-old channels out in an instant. There are quite a few hobbyists who do make their living off their channels, but most of them either have very low overheads or are in far bigger hobbies than ours. I know Sam's Trains makes a living off it, there may be others. But the impression I get is that for most modellers, it's a sideline at best. There's something of a balancing act with YouTube. What the platform likes is creators who produce long-form content frequently. It's very hard to produce long-form content several times a week that people will actually watch. This is why so many of the most successful YouTubers are people who stream games - actual quality content that's worth watching takes time. This is also why so many videos feel padded - YouTube encourages longer videos by allowing more advertising and therefore a higher income. I know there are those who complain about excessive advertising on YouTube, but it's very much a case of "don't hate the player, hate the game." Personally, I tend to put out short but numerous videos to make up the shortfall, but it takes up nearly all my free time.