TEAMYAKIMA

Another good question. I'm guessing that the loco has hauled the box cars from the marshalling yard off-stage to the left and has uncoupled ready to move back to the marshalling yard once he gets the go-ahead (which he never does!) I'm also guessing that this is a Chinese TV team and so they can speak to the driver before they do anything too ambitious - and the driver has probably gone off to take a tea break anyway!

Good questions, but things have moved on quite a bit since we had that issue in the past Going to a show - all boxes will have been checked and co-ordinated by me in advance and so all are correctly assigned. All the boxes (YELLOW, BLUE, RED & GREEN) will be physically split up and set up in entirely different areas of the layout i.e. the yellow zone, the blue zone etc. Once the appropriate person begins to unpack boxes, he will unpack one box at a time and return the lid to the correct box before moving on. When re-packing there will be a similar routine in place and 'YES' each box will be colour coded and labelled to match its lid. And only one box in any zone will be open at an given time. To sum up, I think the experiences you refer to were in the 'early days' of using these new stock boxes, we are far more experienced in their use now and as a result we are far more disciplined these days.

I managed to get the reporter off relatively easily and have blu-taced him in a new position - I think I prefer it as I think he stands out even more now

Ok, I'll try that, but I don't want to have to move the cameraman - he's 3D printed and superglued down and I've already moved him a few times so that he is more prominent and the more I fiddle with him, the more likely it is that I break him. I'll mock that up and post again in an hour

Yes, I get our point and I've been thinking how to deal with that aspect - maybe a China Rail official (in uniform) supervising it? But I think you can see that the cameo jumps out far more than if the reporter was just standing against the clenders

There has still been some modelling as I couldn't resist a new cameo. So, I had cleaned up the 3D printed TV van - but it looked crude. And so, I cut off the roof detail and fitted it to a more appropriate van I had available. Here was the original concept with the reporter stood on the path alongside a QJ connected to a rake of boxcars - unfortunately, the photo with the stock in place was deleted by mistake, but you get the idea. That's when a TV expert on RMweb suggested that the camera should be linked to the TV van by a cable - Hmmmm! That made me re-think the whole idea. The reporter was originally going to stand alongside the front of the QJ , just in front of the cylinders, but when I mocked that up, the whole cameo was somewhat 'lost'. So I separated the QJ from the box cars and had the reporter stand on the track in front of the loco - result : the viewer's eyes are instantly drawn to the scene - "What's happening over there?" - well, that's my hope anyway!

As I have mentioned before, there are a lot of 'issues' with a large exhibition layout, over and above the modelling - here is an example. On a home layout, the stock is bought, taken out of the box, put on the track and that's (basically) the end of it. 🙂 Not on an exhibition layout! Every item of stock has to be (safely) packed away and packed in some kind of logical order so that the operators know where to find items when the want to set the trains at a show - and return them to the boxes at the end of the show. Both the set-up and the take-down need to be as logical as possible, as easy as possible and, hence, as quick as possible. All this is heightened with layouts where guest operators are used - and so it is with BEIJIAO where to a greater or lesser extent most/all operators are guest operators. So, now that 99% of the modelling is finished, I have turned my attention to addressing this issue. One thing has changed recently - we have settled on specific locos on specific trains and specific locos as spares for those trains. I tried to make things easy by labelling everything, but discovered that my sticky labels were not quite sticky enough. So, this morning, I got the UHU out ........................ There are four 'zones' which need setting out and I have colour coded them and, hence, the appropriate boxes. Anti-clockwise trains are coded as YELLOW and so the stock boxes for those routes are labelled as yellow and numbered in order. That's box #25 done - only another 24 to do!

Just out of interest, is there anyone reading this who is a member of Oxford MRC or who lives around Oxford? If so, please send me a PM - thanks. Paul

I've tried the email quoted on his home page but it bounced back - thanks

Absolutely right. I guess someone sent that info to that website a year or so ago and forgot to follow up when it was permanently cancelled

I have to admit that my idea of moving on to do different things has not got very far yet and it's been a case of working on the layout pretty much every day - but at a more gentle pace than before! So, here is an update............................ The road roller cameo has progressed (based on advice from an RMwebber) .... The office/storeroom by the level crossing now has some workmen taking a break One subtle issue I've been thinking about is the spread of detail/cameos. By that I mean making sure that the detail at the front of the layout is spread along all 20ft of scenic area, so that every viewer has something interesting 'under the nose'. For example, I have plenty of unique 3D printed figures on the layout and they were originally somewhat packed together in one large cameo in the middle of the layout and when I was front-of-house man at Keighley (standing at the extreme r/h of the layout) all the things I wanted to highlight were at least 10ft away from the person I was speaking to. So, I decided to move Jane and Alan who were just 'in the crowd' down by freight house.... to a far more prominent position down by the level crossing area which was relatively barren and moving them down to the r/h end of the scenic section will give me something to point out to visitors without having to walk them down to the middle of the layout. That's it for now, more later.

I totally understand your position on that (assuming you're not just joking) but this comes down to the difference between home layouts and exhibition layouts. At home you can do whatever you want and it's nobody else's business and even at an exhibition the organisers may want to reach out to specific demographic and show potential newbies that you need a 30 x 12 shed to get into the hobby. And also, my original post was asking about 'tweaks' - I think an A4 on two MK1's on a BLT is slightly more than a tweak. 😉 My definition of this topic is " At an exhibition, how far can a 'serious' model railway go in distorting reality in order the entertain the paying customers and still be considered a serious model railway?"

Another interesting issue

Apologies, I missed this first time around. That is an interesting point (no pun intended!). As I may have mentioned in a later post that with my route selection set-up the exit and entry points work as one and consequently I cannot (easily) send out another train from a different road until the original train has fully returned to its dedicated fiddle yard road. I had it set up so that exit and entry routes work in tandem so that it's a simpler job for the operator, but it does have unexpected consequences - not least due to the length of trains on my layout i.e. a 20ft long train takes longer to settle safely back into its 21ft long FY road than a 5ft one would.

Absolutely brilliant and I love the photographer

Having thought about my last post for 30 minutes or so, I guess the motto should be : "It's better to exhibit a good model based on an interesting place, than a perfect model of a boring place." Obviously, that statement refers to exhibition layouts - it may also apply to home layouts, but that is not the issue under discussion.

Maybe one way to sum everything up, is that 95% of 'reality' is boring. What do I mean by that? If I walk down my local high street on an average day, there is not a building on fire, there are not police cars/fire engines/ambulances with vibrant flashing lights. I will not generally be passing a wedding couple posing for photographs outside a church and it's very unlikely that I will see a funeral taking place. I think the secret is to replicate the 'average' in as extraordinary way as possible as opposed to the 'extraordinary' in an average way. Or to put it in another way, one question I ask myself before I add some new cameo is "Will this be a feature or a gimmick?" Feature = let's do it Gimmick = no! In the early days of P4 there was quite a large Ex-GWR (I think) branch line built by a P4 pioneer which was in many ways perfect - but boring. It was perfect and boring for the same reason - it was a perfect model of a boring place! There were very few trains, very few people, very few road vehicles - because that was what many country branch lines were like in the pre-Beeching era. The modelling was absolutely superb, the entertainment was virtually non-existent.

Yes, good point - very odd situation in what we like to call a totalitarian state 😉

YES, I note your use of inverted commas - it's really the opposite of a tweak which is designed to make things more interesting than reality - it's a "tweak" that makes things less interesting than reality. And also 'YES' to you as well. Both contrasting opinions are valid in contrasting situations. It's a case of 'horses for courses'. EXAMPLE : The double- track main lines on my Chinese layout are dead straight and the exhibition manager of a well-known major exhibition posted on RMweb that he would never book my layout because he didn't like layouts with dead straight track, he liked layouts where the track swayed artistically across the scene. PROBLEM: My layout is set inside an expanding Chinese city and typically the tracks are dead straight - that was a given when I designed the layout, that is one of it's USP's. When Chinese cities expanded into virgin territory they tended to expand in straight lines. This is not a perfect photo, but you can see my point - I hope.

I've been putting more thought into this and there is something I can 'get away with' because China is such an unknown country as far as 99.9% of viewers are concerned. If I was being 100% accurate in portraying China in 2001 (as I attempt to do) most diesel hauled trains would be green DF4's - the Chinese equivalent of a blue class 47 - and most passenger trains would be hauled by a blue & white DF11 - the Chinese equivalent of a Deltic. But each of my diesel-hauled trains has a different class of loco or at least a different colour of loco where the same class is repeated in one case. So, again each train has it's own personality. Each loco was a 'possibility' in NE China in 2001 but in reality you would never see the variety of locos you see on my layout at one location on one day - but 'That's showbiz!'

Again, I couldn't agree more.

I've been trying to think of examples of what I mean with reference to my own layout. In case anyone doesn't know. let's start from the premise that my layout is Chinese HO and the vast majority of potential viewers know little about China and even fewer know about Chinese railways and so my layout had to have some 'extras' - some eye-catching features which grabs the viewer's attention. Two relatively subtle 'tweaks: 1. My bi-directional line at the front of the layout has four steam hauled freights - two in each direction. They are all hauled by QJ 2-10-2 locos but the average 'Joe Public' doesn't know or care, they could as well be 9F's for all he cares. So, how did I tweak things? One train is single headed, one is conventionally double-headed, one is double-headed, but tender first and the last is double-headed, but tender-to-tender. If all the double-headed trains were conventionally set up they would all look 'the same' to Joe Public, but by having three distinctive set-ups I have made each one unique and Joe Public is wondering what the next one is going to be like. And yes, I did see those three variations in the same place in China and so whilst 'unusual' it's authentic. 2. Each of my ten freight trains is distinctive and different - either they are a distinct style e.g. loaded coal, empty coal, oil tanker train etc or if they are 'mixed freights' each will have a unique set of four or five or six freight cars directly behind the loco and so each train is distinctive and stands out (hopefully).

I couldn't agree with you more. It's like in a film or play when the director tweaks reality to move the plot along in order to keep our interest going.

Absolutely, and probably that train (B set and prairie?) would be exactly the same train every time and if there was to be a freight train you would have to see that B-set about six times before that one freight a day made an appearance.

I totally understand your point and don't disagree with your thinking behind it, but ................................... I come to this 'discussion' from a point of view which differs from most modellers. I have an 'exhibition-only' layout - it is simply too big to be set up at home. Therefore, irrespective of what I think, it will only ever be operated at public exhibitions and it will only get invites if EM's think it will be popular with visitors. Consequently, to an extent, those who have layouts which a home life and but which can be exhibited can have far greater freedom to decide the 'tone' of their layout, whereas I and those like me have to always bear in mind how everything would go down with the paying public.