jonhall

For our club show we use the CMRA steel barriers that have to be collected and returned from lockups in either Crawley or Welyn Garden City, the 6ft barriers are each estimated at around 9kg each, and the feet 2 or 3 kg each, which made our 'order' 1.9 tons or thereabouts.

This weight needs more than a common or garden transit van, and 4 people prepared to take Friday off work to collect it, and then having done a full weekend at the show, to drag them all back. The unload and reload at the venue can probably rely on about twice that number of people, but none are getting any younger and we have been lucky in having help from 'friends and family' to make up the numbers of able bodies, without those people we would have to make the difficult choice to either drop the barriers, or indeed give the show up as beyond the abilities of those available.

Jon

It looks like I have several sheets of 40thou middle spacers but no 20thou outer skins - since the middles are just plastic waste without the outers I'd be prepared to dust off the cutter and run off a sheet or two so that the middles go to someone who can use them, but it might be a few days.

PM if interested (and if anyone else might want to jump on whilst I get the cutter out).

Thanks

jon

42 minutes ago, Captain Kernow said:

Interesting. So what diameter are the prototype wheels, then please?

1000mm - standard for the continent

Jon

1 hour ago, rob D2 said:

I seem to have entered a parallel universe .

 

I start a thread asking if it's possible to get more info on layouts before spending money to go see them .

 

But apparently I'm selfish and unsupportive ,

please leave my thread to what was intended or take your zeal someplace else !

Or to put it another way you start a thread criticising volunteer exhibition organisers for not doing their job the way you think it should be done, and then tell them that even if they do, you might well use that information to their disadvantage (unless they happen to be a mind reader and know what you want and that sufficient others have the same interests as you) , so they might be wasting their time and costing their club a significant amount of money.  That doesn't seem to be the most promising way of getting them on side either?

Jon

27 minutes ago, rob D2 said:

So I should spend money to go to a show with nothing to interest me, so that show exists in 2024 , with probably nothing to interest me again. 
 

Doesn’t seem a very wise investment ?

 

 

But the '24 show might have a dozen different things to interest you - but only if it happens, and whilst your £5-10 on the door  wont individually make the decider,  100 people like you leave a £500-1000 hole in the budget might well stop a club from holding the next one.

If you (and others) take the selfish view and only attend shows that interest you, then there is some likelyhood that there will be fewer shows, those shows that survive may be further away than the ones that fail, and therefore your costs to travel to the survivors goes up, they put the entrance fee up to cover the costs with fewer visitors,  and in turn you attend fewer because the cost/reward ratio goes down. 

There are lots of reasons that clubs are giving up shows, but a big one is the risk/reward ratio is terrible. 

As a (not very good) analogy, do you pay your taxes because you know will need an Ambulance this year? or because you want an Ambulance to be available when you do need one*

Jon

*who has already required both a fire engine and an ambulance on separate occasions in 2023, and who's 84 year old dad with a suspected stroke would have had to wait 2 hours if I hadn't been able to take him to A&E myself.

I think the other side to this is that actually a lot of Exhibitions are precarious at the moment, and need your support. If you want to have a choice in future years, then they need your support this year - if a hypothetical 2024 show is cancelled because insufficient people come to the 2023 show, then the likelihood of the '24 show having something to interest you enough to leave the house, becomes a bit of a moot point.

Jon

I'm treating myself and a few friends to a tour next month, for my 50th Birthday.

jon

We had 3 sumups for our show in November, and found around half the door tickets went on a card (I don't have the absolute numbers) we found it sensible that until the queue on the door was cleared to have one desk cash and the other card, as the throughput on card was slower. I've heard from elsewhere about being caught out by transaction limits on unregistered readers, so worth checking if you will exceed them - also consider where you will charge them - one of the items discussed in our wrap-up meeting was buying an extension lead for the USB because it couldn't be left plugged in (having at least one more than you need is operationally sensible).

Our previous exhibition manager was very anti-cards (and no doubt still pays his bills with a cheque) and tried using the logic that we wouldn't have cash to pay exhibitors expenses, but this is backwards logic, in reality we paid exhibitors in cash as a way of reducing the amount of cash we had to bank on Monday, we still had plenty, but it would have made the books easier to reconcile if we had paid them by bank transfer. Certainly reducing the cash on hand in the box office and after made security a great deal easier.

Jon

2 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

What is with the asterisking out of the name in the topic title?

because the name changed depending on which imagined organisation as being used to front the show.

Jon

The urban transport museum on the other side of the river at Szentendre is also worth a look if you are in that area.

Jon

but its neighbour has a different frame arrangement - the frame is lower, and the standard gauge wheelset is sitting above it, so that the bogies (with almost identical diameter wheels)  and the brake equipment all stick up above the frames.

(both at Zittau)

These two shots show a couple of differences between German transporter wagons - by way of demonstrating that there are differences in design.

This seems quite a common layout - the standard gauge wheel is sitting on an inner rail a little below the mainframes of the transporter wagon, which is deeper allowing all the bogies and brake gear to sit more or less below the top edge of the frames.

just to mess with your head, transporter wagon, carrying std gauge wagon, carrying narrow gauge wagon!

jon

15 minutes ago, Edge said:

I suspect that it’s simply complicatedly a business agreement between two multiple companies to supply new versions of previous toolings under the EFE brand.

 I think I've fixed that for you. ;)

Jon

3 minutes ago, Edge said:

I’m claiming nothing of the sort. A business agreement or something like that. Don’t see that that is a peculiar standpoint as we all know that this is how EFE operates 

@Edge - can I just check if you know that @arran  who posted immediately before you is I believe, one half of Realtrack, and consequently should know what they have/have not agreed to? 

15 minutes ago, arran said:

Realtrack has not given any licence to EFE to produce models from any of its tooling ,

 

Regards Charlie and Arran 

love the bogie wagons split across two transporter wagons!

Jon

52 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

Several Continental lines that use them are 75 or 76cm gauge (2’ 6”, give or take) so I’m not sure it’s that.

This shows the 760mm transporter wagons at Oshatz, which I think has quite a similarity with the L&M. http://www.tuff-tuff-eisenbahn.de/oschatz/oschatz10.htm

Alas I'm away from my own photos of German transporter wagons.

Jon

you also need to consider the gauge of the narrow gauge - the L&M was  2 ft 6 in (762 mm) but I'd guess the continental wagon you have shown as an example is probably meter gauge, so there is a bit more room on the L&M wagon to get the frames between the standard gauge wheelsets, which would allow the carried wagon to sit a bit lower.

I think that the ONLY example of British transporter wagons was the L&M, and therefore you are only talking about 5-6 wagons total.

Jon

its probably due to loading gauge restrictions on the Leek&Manifold that weren't present on the continental systems 

Jon

Thanks - looks like the warflat and warwell are different - its not the end of the world, as I can always work out the wheelbase from the diagrams - I still need to source some bogies for the job anyway.

Jon

yes please - needs to be the version with the diamond bogies - I have the instructions for the modern airbrake GPS versions - its the bogie pivot bit I'm interested in

Thanks

Jon

Interfrigo was formed as a partnership of European rail companies in 1967, it was registered in Switzerland, but a number of national railways provided stock to the pool, and would have registered them 'at home', so an Italian or Belgian registered vehicle with a Swiss address is perfectly reasonable. 

This model pictured is a European loading gauge model, so wouldn't have been seen in the UK, but Interfrigo did own other types that were to UK gauge. I don't know how much Interfrigo wagons were pooled, but I'd suspect even if they weren't common user, an Italian van would be seen quite frequently in and passing through Switzerland (but not on the narrow gauge RhB

Jon

3 hours ago, bubbles2 said:

 

 

I didn’t realise this livery version had a bauxite underframe.

I think this shows that quite well.

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

Interesting video on European rail travel

 

Clickbait - yes there are problems, but its a whole lot easier than he describes.

Jon

5 minutes ago, doilum said:

Is this the Airfix / Kitmaster Interfrigo model I had as a child?

No, not at all