colin smith

I'm a left and haven't come back, though I am tempted by the much better variety that's on offer now in rtr. It would be tricky finding a prototype as I'm torn between French tramways, Mediterranean island railways, and Chilean nitrate carriers. Either way it would have to be something I haven't seen done, or only rarely done. For me, the parochialism is part of the problem. You see much the same in US magazines where hardly anyone models anything outside the US and most are doing diesel or steam/diesel transition. I've always been attracted to the new and the exotic. I agree my GWR branch line termini reference is dated and agree that 90% of layouts are BR steam/transitional or current. Those are the ones I walk past as I have no interest in personal nostalgia. Perhaps growing up next to the Hastings branch was uninspiring compared to railways visited on holidays, such as the Isle of Man, Talyllyn, or La Rhune in France.

Fn3 doesn't like sharp radii and anything under 4' radius is sharp. Plus the footprint of any building in OO is sixteen times bigger in Fn3 so you'd need the depth of a 5x10 board.

I agree that a big part of the problem is I prefer BBC4 science documentaries to 95% of 'popular' TV. A model railway, to me, is a 'model' (defined as a three-dimensional representation of a person or thing or of a proposed or actual structure, typically on a smaller scale than the original.) railway and not just anything that runs on rails. But Bachmann do make RTR in both On30 and Fn3. 18" gauge is sweet.

Fn3 is completely different from On30. On30 is what we call O:16.5, except their O scale is 1:48, not 1:43.5 Fn3 is a variant of LGB using 1:20.3 (15mm=1 foot) on gauge 1 track to represent 3' gauge prototypes. LGB is much looser on scale/gauge but mainly represents metre gauge. But again, it's not about what's televisual but about the modelling. It can be done. Programmes about writers don't show writers writing. Even I wouldn't watch a hour of someone typing, cursing, and staring out the window. Instead it's writers talking about writing and why they write, and so on. I accept that GMRC is a game show crossed with reality TV, but wish it wasn't so. Writing plug

Well, that's good. Gives a big range of scale and gauge.

Not necessarily. There are thousands of great prototypes that you never see modelled. There are thousands more models of GWR branch termini than there were actual GWR branch termini, but when was the last time you saw anything modelled from South America, or North Africa, or Scandinavia, or Russia? Railways don't end at Dover.

And with the exception of programmes like Qi and University Challenge, I hate game shows. Tbh, I barely recognise most of the layouts in GMRC as model railways. Glorified train sets, maybe, but not model railways.

But not all OO surely? But it isn't about modelling 'interesting prototypes' it's about showing the variety of scales and prototypes. Hell it's about showing there are actual prototypes to model. The Fn3 idea would be for the movie challenge and would be High Noon. Two lengths of straight track laid diagonally across the boards. Then the six pre-builds would be the depot, an animated water tower, and a few buildings from key scenes in the film plus the wagon Will kane rides away on at the end. The three days would be spent mostly on groundwork to bring it all together, figure modelling, and sound effects. I stopped hobby modelling when it became my real job and since then I've found writing is a better way of creating an alternative reality.

Bachmann certainly do make stock in Fn3 and 1:22.5. Track is an issue I admit. But this is all part of my point. If this show wants to showcase model railwaying then you don't have pointless (pun intended) restrictions on what can be modelled in terms of fixed scales, fixed geography*, and fixed baseboard sizes. That means binning the silly rules and themes and widening the range of sponsors to include at least one major retailer and maybe Peco so you have a decent range of track. *In the sense we've only seen British outline or Sci-Fi.

This is the one for me. Admittedly I'm tempted to go for their 'Big Hauler', which is a 1:22.5 4-6-0 Baldwin loosely based on the Tweetsie Railroad's #12 but as I doubt I'll ever have space for anything to go with it, the little WD Baldwin wins it. The 'Big Hauler' was something of a game changer for large scale narrow-gauge and I think the WD Baldwin will be a game changer for British outline OO9.

Still boring. HO gauge, O gauge, 1 gauge, LGB, Fn3, plus all the narrow gauge variations, would get away from the bog-standard British outline OO/N gauge stuff. The world is full of amazing prototypes that hardly anyone models.

There is that. I'm just thoroughly bored by 90% of OO British std gauge modelling. There are great prototypes out there but too much is too familiar.

Which is a massive shame.

Whereas I would love it. I'm an ex-architectural modelmaker and I agree that for the vast majority of people the buildings they work and live in are shoddy, dull, mass-produced crap. That is a massive problem and some TV show needs to be made examining why that is and what can be done about it. Hopefully Jonathan Meades would present it. But not all episodes of Grand Designs have been about people with bags of money: many have examined new-builds done very cheaply, but with imagination, and many have looked at restorations of historic properties. In particular, Grand Designs works for me because it is NOT about the ordinary. I'm not interested in ordinary or what ordinary people can achieve. If I want a role model I'm not going to choose someone ordinary. I'm happy with the tone of GMRC and the contest formula but would like a greater focus on the modelling of actual railways and less focus on gimmicks. The chief obstacle to doing that are the themes. If they used themes that lend themselves to the realistic modelling of actual railways, real or freelanced, and then reward the models for their verisimilitude rather than their gimmicks and you'd have a decent programme.

Yes. Often. I agree those tropes do reappear (though not all at in every episode) but you usually end up with an interesting house that function as a house and if you like architecture and design, as I do, then that's the most important bit. So far, none of the finished layouts in GMRC look anything more than the best that could be achieved with a daft theme and not enough time.

I was thinking specifically of this site which is a virtual model of a 2' gauge railroad in Colorado. http://gilpintram.com/ Tons of research and great 'modelling'.

God no. I'm all for a variety of prototypes and scales and I'm irritated that apart from a couple of bits of N gauge and OO9 everyone has gone for British outline OO. I love foreign railways and especially narrow gauge and like different scale combinations. More obscure the better. For example, I'd have done the movie challenge as High Noon in Fn3. But whatever the prototype, for me the emphasis is on translating that prototype into model form with a degree of verisimilitude. GMRC has almost no proptype element at all and gives the impression model railways exists in a bubble completely separate from real railways.

Not necessarily. Watching people build a house is boring but somehow Grand Designs makes it interesting without turning house construction into a circus. Obviously, plonking a camera in front of the average layout will result in boring footage, but showing the research involved and all the compromises involved in modelling would be interesting. The problem is that Bake-Off was the model rather than Grand Designs.

Hmm. The Triang gimmicks never did interest me. I went very quickly from trains going in a circle to 'this should look like the real thing'. I suspect the real future of model railways for the young is in virtual reality rather than traditional modelling.

Don't agree at all. You can sell something to the public without turning it into a circus. Think of a programme like Grand Designs which takes an esoteric subject and makes it seem exciting, challenging, and rewarding.

After watching the third episode I'm losing patience with it. I thought the Blackadder layout in the second episode was good because it used the TV series as an excuse to portray something halfway representative of the real WW1 railways. But the third episode was just dire. It's not that I mind gimmicky layouts but the only team that attempted something that looked like a model of an actual railway got criticised for lacking imagination. The great majority of model railways are attempts to portray an actual railway, real or imagined, with some degree of authenticity but this series shows none of that. The problem is the idiotic themes and it would have been so easy to come up with themes that allow for either a realist or an imaginative interpretation. Here's my thematic suggestions City Industry Food Holidays Frontier Past, Present, and Future