Professor Yaffle

So after a bit of searching Ive found the snaps of my scratch build

The Jaguar chase car with the camera jib.

That used the eye lash doh dah thingmy bob. I got the camera in the wrong place it should have been slung under the jib, not balanced on the end of it - I blame the lack of mobile signal at Fawley for poor research,  honest.

The soundman with his fishpole and boom mic.

That was the end of the head massager wires with a modified Russian soldier. It was just a joke for the TV crew more than anything, they seemed to appreciate it.

The studio light lamp stands.

Again the head massager wires chopped, bent and glued. With a 3D printed lamp on the top. I think this is where I lost a lot of time as I tried to make a lot of lamp stands. For whatever reason the araldite was not going off properly and there was a lot of re-gluing of these. I suspect sweaty fingers was the main cause in hindsight. 

War Memorial.

The thing I was most pleased with and it seemed to get left on the cutting room floor. Yet gain the head massager wires for the tree trunks and part of the handle as the base for it. Some basic green foliage screwed into a ball using a tad of PVA to hold it for the top of the trees. An interior part of the head massager made the statue plinth and 2 Russian solders to top it off.

One x Wonky Chimney.

Oh the shame of it, I spent too much time doing the rest and this was a 15 minute panic, it was frankly shocking.

Other thoughts what to do with the baby bio bottle were;

• Matt suggested a grounded steam boiler - I thought it was a bit big for this (sorry Matt).
• Pour the liquid into something and use it - I rejected that as we had done it in heat 5 with the tanning oil and thought it would have been seen as a obvious rehash.
• A water tower - Not carried forward because I couldn't work out how to do it at the time, however looking back I can see exactly how it could have been achieved and I had already cut all the bits or disassembled them that I needed, but just couldn't envisage the next move required - so annoying now. The plastic handle of the head massager upside down on the top half of the baby bio bottle. All I had to do was stick them together and then pour the liquid into the top, job done. DOH!

As a team we did wonder what would be broadcast of the Wonky Chimney judging. The long silent pause of Kathy and Tim was the acceptable version. The one that didnt make the cut had Tim 'examining' the Wonky Chimney in a particular way. He did ask if his gestures and comments would make it past the edit and the director said 'Well it is Channel 5'. And contrary to what you may think, Kathy can smile.

The other teams use of the items were top notch and I was much impressed with were they were used. Good work lads

Chris

 .

On 20/10/2019 at 01:27, CharlieJohnson said:

IPlus I was daft enough to wear that T-Rex outfit during the demonstrations. 

 

You should of had a medal for wearing that costume in the heat of the weekend.

I thought your use of the tat we were given to cobble something together with was inspired, specially making use of the eye thing for the animated dinosaur - top marks

Chris

5 hours ago, Mattc6911 said:

Are there some who will take on a well used knackered roll and try to fix it up so it can be used with a bit of fiddling ?

Guilty...

1 minute ago, noiseboy72 said:

At least you didn't have to do any filmed running...

Not in my contract I believe

On 20/10/2019 at 17:31, CharlieJohnson said:

It's fun to see what clips in the episode are shown out of order to how they were filmed. 

 

Cause one of my scratchbuild items is on the layout during day one in the show. Plus WCR were filmed first for the challenge then Railmen of Kent and lastly M&GNW. 

 

There are also many other clips shown out of order so it makes the layouts look like they are rapidly progressing then suddenly double back. 

I totally agree. That bit of me sawing the baby bio bottle up was about 6 mins before the wonky chimney hit the layout table - 'Could you do that again?', 'Err, no.'

The 4 min warning from Tim was a 'for TV' moment as I had already put all the other scratch build items on the set, but my TV minder hadn't noticed and I hadn't told them (someone is Head of Blame here), so I had to do it again. I'm not sure retakes were in my contract, where's my Agent?
 

Chris

2 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Because the series is not a sales vehicle for model manufacturers. If it encourages more people to take up railway modelling that will have been a useful by product so it's in the manufacturers' interest to supply "props" for the competition. 

It may also have something to do with the rules around product placement which are still fairly strict in the UK.

Fair comment. Look at the gaffa tape that is on the scratch build challenge cardboard box which they pick the objects out of (but don't look at heat 1 and 2 for this, someone forgot) and even the objects. It reminded me of how Blue Peter used to operate

2 hours ago, noiseboy72 said:

We were quite careful about that, as quite honestly the dark and twisted sense of humour pervading from some of our team would probably have had us ejected from the show...

What did I say?!?!    '....Can ya tell what it is yet?' (Add Australian Accent)

Well done to the winners, it was well deserved, really nice layouts with fab features.

What didn't get a mention was how hot it was over the three days. Jon and I decided we needed a breath of fresh air after being cooped up in the hot shed, but quickly came back inside after we realised it was considerably warmer outside. On judgement day the missus's car was reading the attached temperature.

Chris

ps Please don't mention the chimney, Im still having counselling

Can I just send my sympathy to Simon of the Rail Riders following his accident with the drill.

I don't know anyone else who would have been so ham fisted with a power tool....      ....oh wait....

But it may not have been caught on camera  

21 hours ago, jwealleans said:

We were at the filming of Heat 5 and they did at least four, possibly as many as 6, takes of that moment.

Certainly as we were announced as the Wild Card that was done three times - for continuity sake I had to say the same reaction word 3 times, luckily that wasn't caught on mic. I suspect they used the first take.

To be fair to the production company, by this time we were used to the retakes and from the otherside of the fence I know that having several versions of something to edit from gives you a lot more freedom to tell a story or the they way you would like it to be seen. Reality and truth are in the eye of the beholder

9 hours ago, stivesnick said:

My concern over some of these layouts, is how they might be seen at exhibitions over the coming year. What is being produced is based around a 2-3 minute presentation to the judges. But how does this translate into an appearance for perhaps 6-7 hours at a show as many of the actions are not easily repeatable (the earthquake scenes come to mind)?

The actual presentations to the judges took 10-15mins usually and the TV editor has the final say.

There was quite a bit the operation of our Mars layout on the cutting room floor - various shunting moves etc. I'm sure this is true of all the layouts in one way or another. And lets be honest, shunting moves do not make great TV, but does prove the set functions operationally to the judges at the time.

Are they repeatable animations? I suppose that depends on what it was. The door on our rocket shed should be but, it worked on the judging first time, however I understand it hadn't been approached about the numerous retakes that were required later. It was particularly obstinate about this, but did work again eventually before throwing a complete strop and storming off to its trailer to ring its agent. 

And of course those animations were the items we had time to cobble together in the 24 hrs we were allowed. I would expect a few other ideas and animations, etc to be added to our layouts that we didnt have time for or might dream up now, extending the dwell times at an exhibition. Steve Flint was disappointed that we didnt launch our rocket, 'a step too far for them', but I have thought of a few ways this could be done, however most of them are not repeatable as the rockets re-entry to the earths atmosphere may produce its own problems.

Three really interesting layouts, well done guys.

If I was wearing a hat, Team Grantham, it would be doffed in your direction. As we shambled away from heat 5 we really felt for you. We were knackered after 3 days, Ive no idea how you felt after 6 days of it.

Well done again all

Sighs loudly, but.....

Broadcast times change again

Sat 19 Oct 6:25pm-7:30pm (1 hour 5 minutes)

Slightly shorter too - may be they'll cut out the peacocks?

58 minutes ago, RailwaySleepers-James said:

 

Yes - Planet XVI was saved from the skip... 

 

It is most of the way through a slow restore with portability in mind.   including running the LED billboards off 12v power supply rather than 9v batteries. 

... and we aim to exhibit it somewhere, at some point in the future.

 

I know what you mean about the signs, if we had our time again there would be a few things done differently. We quite possibly over engineered a few bits.

Personally the opening door of the rocket shed to allow the rocket out is in that category. Instead of wiring a loco up (9v battery in use here too) and inserting below the door, I might just of used some string and pulled it open. That occurred to me as you flew your spaceship 'why didn't I do that??!?' That piece of practical sensibility seemed to elude me during the build up to the filming, probably because of the time constraint of being one of the last teams in. Then there was also a bit of the scratch build challenge that also suffered from overthinking too.

26 minutes ago, RedgateModels said:

360 degree access will need some thought though .....

Err no to that. This was our first outing and we learnt our lesson about that idea, unless you have some cattle prods available?

On ‎07‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 14:26, LocoLadies CF said:

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. 

As our team Capt. has alluded too, he had to jump through quite a few hoops for the inclusion of his daughter to be part of the team.

However what the rest of us were unaware of (we probably didn’t read the blurb properly) is that the ‘audience’ allowed wasn’t the quite the friends and family we expected. This would have been a major problem for one team member and from a personal point of view awkward and disappointing for myself. I had ‘assumed’ (we all know what that means) that kids were ok on the judging day, as that is surely a major part of the target audience in itself? That bubble was burst a few weeks away from filming and there was genuine moment of horror within the team as the news spread. We looked at episodes of series one - no kids could be seen. What would happen? But to be fair to the production company once contacted, the situation confirmed and explained, they went away and sorted it out. Many, many thanks to them! - Lots of brownie points. All we had to do was sign our childrens' souls away to the gods to TV, nothing too awful.

I hope that explains why you saw our sprogs on Heat 5. It was a proper delight to watch the older ones cowered in embarrassment and the younger ones yelp with glee as they appear on TV on Saturday night.

Just for anyone else who might think of taking along their offspring, be aware there is a lot of hanging about and retakes that are a necessary evil of TV production. What you saw on telly of the judging section was at about 2-3 hours in reality. Each demonstration took 15 mins plus retakes, then there was the who had won bit too and they do like you to stand in the same position throughout for continuity reasons.  This may not be suitable for every small person or even the bigger ones.

On ‎07‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 14:55, noiseboy72 said:

It's noisy and chaotic, so don't put it next to any "proper" exhibitors... 

Harsh....

Its all completely under control

15 hours ago, noiseboy72 said:

Team Muddle and Go Nowhere are just an extended bunch of friends with various railway interests and only a few of us really model in 00 to any extent

I think the last time I really did any railway modelling was when I was about 14 - I'm older and wiser now.

The rocket shed on our layout was my prebuild, Kathy was right, it was wrapping paper, but hopefully I did Clintons proud. Luckily she didn't realise the rest of it was a veg box, I dread to think what she would have said. It was loosely based on the Cardington airship sheds – it was the only thing I could think of that would be of a similar construction to the idea in my head.

13 minutes ago, RedgateModels said:

Does that put it before Strictly???

Strictly 6.40-8.30pm. You'll have to put on the VHS

20 hours ago, RailwaySleepers-James said:

truncated to just "the sky's the limit" on the day

Yes we noticed that too. Hope your layout has found a nice home it was fab.

FYI Guys

Series 2 - Episode 7
Semi-Final 2: Blockbusters
Sat 19th 6.15-7.30pm

Another slight change in broadcast times, is Love Island on?

37 minutes ago, RJS1977 said:

in this most recent episode we've had two layouts set on Mars. Are the teams no longer advising the production company in advance as to what they're planning?

Only one layout was Mars, MGNR, and the other was Planet XVI, not quite sure where that was exactly. I'm sure the Railway Sleepers can comment on that. I understand we did have to submit our ideas for approval.

Chris

MGNR

7 hours ago, whart57 said:

But guys, you were a bit blatant about using Channel 5's money to buy stock for your own layouts .........

Sadly none of it any use me on cheap O gauge clockwork or blue plastic track Plarail (this was used to open the rocket shed door, so you can get other odd systems involved too)

Chris

MGNR

3 hours ago, whart57 said:

 I wondered why all three teams had rockets and why no-one thought of something like "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines" 

Our layout idea did start of with quite a sensible earth bound setting, however I suggested a Wallace and Gromit style trip to the moon and not long after we had arrived on Mars. So there was some sensible ideas, however...

2 hours ago, Legend said:

what sort of backward community are they on Mars that use Radial Tanks, Fowler 4fs and a Coal Tank to shunt the rocket .

Part of what you didnt see explained this...

The idea behind the setting was that after the failed Martian invasion of earth in the late 19th century, that the human race then backward engineered the alien technology and mounted their own conquest of Mars. So the stock used reflected the period we though this all happened in c.1900 and what may have been taken to Mars.

Remember don't dwell on the historical accuracy, its all fantasy twaddle anyway, just enjoy silliness of it all
Chris

MGNR