PMP

If it helps Hatfield still had semaphores in 1970, and it was around 1972 that WGC changed over to colour light signalling, prior to the electrification scheme and the building of the stabling sidings and flyover.

All that image sums up is that the camera angle isn’t the same, so the various curves aren’t replicated via the camera lens. We’ve been here before with these ‘comparisons’ many years back with electric nose. The easy way to see this is looking at those two images. The model the sides perspective are going upwards along the length of the model, the prototype the sides are going downward, and you can see more of the left hand side. Therefore the central point of the lens isn’t at an identical location, and that’s without ensuring the focal length of the lens is the same to exclude any lens distortion. The buffers aren’t even level between the images and the right hand side you can see the angle of the body reflected by the left hand buffer being lower against the horizontal. No dog in this fight, just highlighting false flags. To me the models face does successfully capture the 47. I’ve been going through Newark recently and there’s a pair there, and looking at them, nothing stands out as ‘wrong’ for me.

I agree, it’s quite well covered for BR steam eras considering how few items are available compared to the OO market!

Some images here https://albionyard.com/2023/11/26/warley-2024-images-from-the-trade-3/

Mine running on Shelfie2, all it does is bring short rakes of wagons into or out of the layout, so far with total reliability and controllability using plain vanilla DC and a Gaugemaster W controller.

The line certainly covers that aspect, and if you're working in either OO (in particular), or N you can get a good head start with plenty of appropriate RTR locomotives and rolling stock. With the scenery and availability of appropriate stock it's always surprised me there's an absolute paucity of good welsh layouts particularly covering the central core of the country, and the far mid west.

One bit that wasn’t particularly good was the queue organising this morning. On arrival 0920(ish) I was directed to join the ‘model railway’ queue. What wasn’t made clear was that this was for pre paid ticket holders. I followed this round the loop in the building until it became clear on reaching the show entrances that is was for pre paid holders. I then joined the ticket buying queue which was feeding into a room around the room and out again to the booths. The NEC staff then told the queue to fill up the room in effect disperse the queue to become a room full of people with no priority for anyone. everyone played nicely and pretty much retained their queue place, but plenty of wtf is this? comments. On reaching the booths the card only queues were relatively slow, but there was one window actually taking cash which is what I did to cut the wait. The above is obviously an NEC issue rather than the show organisers, but it was a bit frustrating for me and others who had the same experience. As far as the show goes I felt it was good but not exceptional, having been to most of the NEC Warley shows, plenty of varied trade and layouts. Paying in effect £25 entry and £18 NEC parking it was reasonable value for money, and nothing in the above puts me off going next year.

There’s very few that I can recall that have been made if you’re referring to layouts made based on the central Wales. In one of the Model Rail layout plan books Paul Lunn and I worked up one based on Builth Wells. There’s also an 2FS layout based I believe on Llanidloes, and Iain Rice drew up a very good version of Swansea Victoria.

I’ll have one. Apart from that‘nothing in it for me’… 🙂

Warley hasn’t happened yet, these and other announcements are now regularly being done in the fortnight before the show.

That’s a relief, if you know, you know.. 🙂

This. ^^

Well your list of items that make a model or layout ‘average’ means that even an S4/2FS/S7 modeller is average. You mention a bell curve but provide no statistical model to work from. So without ‘qualification’ in a form that most people can relate to, your ‘average’ discussion point is perhaps unclear. The levels of detail has been discussed many times here and in almost every item new release thread. Manufacturers have responded, and continue to do so, to the market wanting more details and more functionality. Simples.

It’s currently in tooling 🤐

Nope, they don’t have tie bars, and the axle guards are different. https://albionyard.com/2022/11/10/peco-quality-line-n-gauge-wagons-review/ The brake lever stirrup is chunky on the seven planks, but can be cut thinner with a scalpel.

https://muc-off.com Use their spray leave it for a few minutes then I agitate it with a 3 inch paint brush and wash it off with sponge and warm water. Works with this ^^, it’s not cheap but it is very effective and fast. If you have to put a bike away dirty, it’s excellent on dried on thick mud too.

Quite, but it seems those rolling out the trope can’t have been paying a great deal of attention to the publication they’re commenting on for those 29 years. 🙂

The strapline has changed several times over the years but the average word dropped in 94, so I do wonder why it regularly comes up 29 years later! It also seems odd that RM has been criticised for having used it when other retail magazines, Hornby Mag, BRM, Model Rail, Model Railroader, Continental Modeller etc., all cover similar themes, sometimes featuring the same layouts. They too are addressing the 'average' market readership, so their readers and content must be average too yet no critique of their approaches.

A long time ago, we had a Merchantman inbound declaring a Mayday, one of the races horses on board was going postal and kicking its way out of its stall. They always used to fly with vets on board, still do AFAIK, with instant lethal measures available. Due to the aircraft size, horse location, injuries it caused itself and to prevent the others stampeding it had to be used in flight. It was apparently a very valuable horse and had won several notable steeplechase races and was being prepped for the Grand National. Loading large animals like horses can be a bit of a game too, especially if they are new to it. Where practical transporters and service vehicles make a corrall to pen them in if they get a bit punchy, letting one go in an open space like an airfield would be an interesting retrieval challenge!

I think it's just a company livery thing, none of easyJets 200/300/700's ever had it. I was fortunate enough to ride up front many times with them in all three types and a320's and can't recall any notable difference from a jumpseat perspective. The a320's were definitely quieter and lighter inside due to the shape of the windscreen and relative sizes than the Boeings. The ARJ21's are nice lookers but to me look more Canadair/Bombardier RJ 'clones' than MD's. If I were allowed to have a commercial airliner of my own, on looks I'd choose one of the later MD90 types or stretched DC9. Apart from the 757 I always preferred the MD design looks over Boeing/Airbuses. In other news nine years ago today, I worked this one for the first time, which I had the pleasure of doing on two occasions 😊

So what is an average modeller? And it doesn’t alter the fact that as far as I’m aware Peco, the publisher of Railway Modeller has not referred to their readers/customers as average modellers. The same goes for the other magazines too, as far as I’m aware.

If an exhibition manager accepts a layout for a show, it by definition is to an appropriate exhibition standard. If a layout doesn’t appeal, walk past. Of course if one really felt strongly about it you could complain to the show manager that layout X isn’t to a suitable standard. Then they’d know not to invite it again, or not recommend it to other show hosts.

I’m not sure there’s any point in asking Peco. To my knowledge they’ve not, and don’t refer to people as average modellers. Their strap line above, so often mis quoted by people who haven’t bothered to read it, is average enthusiast. From your generalisation and using your criteria, these above are typical average layouts, yet you don’t see many like them. With your average designations we should see quite large numbers of layouts like these but we don’t, why not?

If that were the case the contemporary high quality products wouldn’t sell. They clearly do, and we see plenty of new releases across the scales, and we’ll see further announcements in the next twelve days. Set track is still the biggest selling type of track by a significant margin. The market doesn’t appear to be bothered. Perhaps you should define what an average modeller is, (I have no idea), and provide some examples of them, then we can see what point you’re trying to make, at the moment it’s unclear to me. What are the consistent standards for an exhibition layout, who determines them, and why?

Yes the couplings do pull out of the NEM pocket. Mine is being run in DC and the switch configuration was on the second setting. Scroll through about half way through the video and it shows you how to remove the roof and alter the switches. It’s a minute or so to do and quite easy.