LocoLadies CF

Just catching up on all the comments this evening and saw this about the crochet trees. I don’t have a pattern but have been asked if I could do a Video on YouTube...... yet another new challenge in my life! I keep having a quiet giggle to myself, as I really didn’t expect the crochet trees to attract so much positive attention, especially after what Kathy said about them.

When I designed the LocoLadies Bucolic Britain I didn’t realise it at the time, because it was for a competition after all, that I had really made an exhibition layout that was repeatable and could run continuously. That may well be why we are going to Warley NMRE as Special Guests. However, our ‘repeatable’ animations didn’t appear to excite the judges. Our crochet trees have attracted a lot more positive comments than I think Kathy anticipated. I always knew they would be a bit like Marmite though! Love or hate!! However, all power to the teams in this semi final though. You all did a terrific job.

We could have done with a 6th team member. I will tell him when I see him on Friday!!

Ha ha. Trouble is we were LocoLadies and a female team!!!

I agree it was lovely to see children there. We weren’t as successful in twisting their arms to allow our younger family members to come. Well done for getting them there. Ironic really as one grandson appears with me working on my railway at home in our heat ..... and even HE wasn’t allowed to come. And he was the reason I entered the GMRC in the first place by saying last year “Grandma, YOU could do that” !

I hadn’t realised that you would be doing the semi finals straight after your heat. We were completely exhausted after we finished our heat and all power to you for setting to and creating another layout immediately afterwards. Looking forward to seeing it on Saturday.

They were right to be transfixed by the rocket and that is how it should be. Shame that more children couldn’t go to see that layouts and presentations although it would have been a long day for them.

That explains it. Shame though as we had a number of disappointed grandkids who weren’t able to come and see it. Pleased to see you got through as the wildcard and really looking forward to seeing your semi final layout.

This is a general question to everyone who participated in the Great Model Railway Challenge. Was anyone else told that children could not attend the presentation because Knickerbockerglory is only licensed for over 18s? As some of you will know, I got into railway modelling because of my grandchildren and none of them were allowed to attend on the last day to watch our heat 3 presentation. My family have just pointed out that episode 5 there were a number of children there watching. Just wondering if the rules were changed as the series progressed.

Having now watched four of the five heats (looking forward to the fifth tonight) I am a little sad that the editing of the episodes doesn’t show enough of the excellent modelling skills that are only glimpsed. A slow panoramic sweep across each finished layout would have been appreciated by all of us viewers I think. Having said that .. it has been really enjoyable.

Thank you for that .... it made me laugh as well. Nice to do something a bit different. As I said before ... we all liked the crochet trees even though Kathy didn’t like them.

Don’t worry. I didn’t take it as a criticism.... none of the teams can predict how they will be edited. The directors kept wanting me to say “we are better than the men which is why we were going to win”. Needless to say I neither thought that nor said it. We just wanted to make an interesting layout that was enjoyable to look at. Photo is just to prove not all our water ran off the board. This pond stayed in place.

We decided we wanted a lifeboat and had difficulty finding one apart from the Langley one. Chrissy had to do a lot of additional work on it to make it as good as it was so if the era was wrong we were still very happy with it. it is a shame that this bit was seen as a ‘damp squid’ as we had a chain going round on cogs underneath with magnets attached and with a magnet on the lifeboat. The ‘water’ was dry at the end of the second day but humidity (possibly the additional cameras and lots of extra visitors) left it a bit sticky and it didn’t move initially. It should be working seamlessly when we go to Warley as it has now had months to dry properly!! Come and see us at Warley if you are going and Chrissy will show you how she made it work!!

We are going to be taking our layout to Warley as special guests, and while we didn’t make the layout for exhibition, we are rebuilding it now ready for showing. This will be once only though as we have been asked to take it to other exhibitions and have decided that it is too unwieldy for us to manage again and we aren't a model railway group, just a group of like minded modellers. We don’t even live near each other. The board will be divided up between us and the items on it shared. I will eventually auction the crochet trees for Breast Cancer Awareness when we no longer need them. However, the track has continued to run faultlessly once we reconnected it and we want new people to the model railway world to know that you can start in a modest way and expand later. My layout at home was made for and with my grandchildren and we all got together yesterday to plan how we are going to expand it and what we are going to do on it. To be fair, there will definitely be wiring !!!! We went as serious modellers and created something we were very happy and proud of. The way we were portrayed on the show came from the editing. The Cambrian Coasters commented at the time that I was being interviewed far more than the rest of the Team Captains and they obviously chose to use these as clips. It certainly wasn’t done on purpose as it took me away from the layout building far more than any of us had planned for. My family loved it though. Grandma on the telly!!

We used settrack and a power rail and the only wiring was to our controller. Once we got the track laid properly and running and the ballast finally dried it ran faultlessly for hours. However. Kathy really didn’t like it and said we should have wired all the joints. So yes going down that route works buts certainly doesn’t get brownie points from one of the judges.

Neil. Thank you for your lovely comments. We too had a great time and have very fond memories of working with all three teams. It was a really good experience.

Thank you for the offer but we made the decision that as Warley is the pinnacle of exhibitions and the layout is rather large and cumbersome to transport ... we would only be showing it the once.

Really proud to be able to tell you that the LocoLadies team are appearing as Special Guests at the Warley National Model Railway Show at the NEC 23/24 November 2019 with their Great Model Railway Challenge entry layout Bucolic Britain

Thank you ... we were serious contenders and wanted to show what we could do. The trees seem to have been very popular though. More than Kathy thought they would be maybe ......

Bit nervous now. Our Heat The Best of British is airing tonight. Photo is of the LocoLadies with the presenters Tim Shaw and James Richardson. They were great fun..... fewer puns this year just funny. Watch the start of our programme though. Still haven’t worked out how they did that.

I remember meeting you. Were you as tired at the end of it as we were? Great fun though. Really glad we got involved.

You might want to look out for something that I said to the “interrogator” if you watch our Heat tomorrow. Her name is Suki - she was lovely really but........

And so the route to being on this Fridays Great Model Railway Challenge began. A camera crew came to my house to film my model railway, myself and my LocoLadies team.

Discovered to my amusement that my picture is on our BT box recording Heat 3 this Friday. My family call this fame at last. Not sure!!! First female team to be on the GMRC.

Thank you. I had to make this pattern up but it seems to have worked. When you watch the show next Friday (27th) the rescue is explained in that.