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On 03/04/2024 at 15:25, long island jack said:

i hope they do a American themed day, i miss the one day show Nick Palette use to do at Armitage!!

To be fair to the organisers though, there must be enough of a following for an european-only show to justify one outright and despite the crossover with other genres in Continental Modeller, most of the layouts in there and subsequent voting favour those European prototypes.

There is also a danger that the same weekend next year could clash with the NMRA convention in nearby Derby. 

12 hours ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

Personally, as the owner of a viewer-friendly Chinese HO layout, I am looking forward to meeting a greeting serious modellers from other modelling sub-cultures - aircraft, boats, military - as they will look at the layout without the pre-conceived ideas that some hard-core railway modellers view things. I make no criticism of hardcore railway modellers, but some do have a limited view of our hobby and these 'other' modellers will simply look at every layout with fresh eyes.

I think Beijiao will do well, from memory the trains and layouts at previous mixed events looked drab and dour when compared to other more exciting action models, and visually only really on a par with static military models. 

It was proven a couple of weeks ago at the South Notts Show that something different looking will find favour with the public, members of the hosting club voted for a nicely built N gauge layout (I'd describe it as a tailchaser but it wasn't) as their favourite but the public voted for an American switching layout set at night that had hundreds of individual LEDs because it wasn't like anything seen before.

BKTY are covered in this album, it's a game to work out the original owner: https://www.flickr.com/photos/96383454@N00/albums/72157706717818305/

First of all I'd look on Fallenflags for that number or similar:

https://rr-fallenflags.org/up/up-frt.html

Unfortunately that doesn't work for patch renumberings if you don't know the new code. I suppose those RPM guys over there will take a photo of something they've actually seen, but another option might be to look to see if that livery has been produced in patched form by a model company and search for others with the same code.

Not my video of VP-BDA landing at Kemble yesterday, delivered new to Basel 9 years ago but never completed as a business jet as intended. The airframe has less than 20 hours flying time and is likely to be parted out for spares.

On 16/04/2024 at 21:09, SHGP Media said:

 

Video from the South Notts show

Thanks for taking and sharing the video. Looking at the video now, I wish I'd done more with the smoke effects, but couldn't get the output from the humidifier to draw up a factory stack and wasn't sure of the long term effects of the vapour. Also, due to the distance to the socket in the room we were in meant I didn't have a spare 13a socket handy, but could use an adaptor lead as I have a spare c14 socket on the variable height stand.

I've bitten the bullet so to speak, and overlaid the new plates towards the front of the tank. Problem solved!

Bit of a disaster when de-naming a Dorothea to fit custom plates, the varnish I had temporarily used must have lifted the green underneath when I started to remove the printed name with IPA. Does anyone know of a good match for the green because ideally I'd like a centrally mounted plate and the theme for the layout is a bit of an estate railway so judicious weathering to cover it won't be possible....

13 hours ago, stivesnick said:

Thanks for this. Photos inside car barns are rare so this is useful. I did think about having an internal crane, but worried how it would work with the overhead wires. I must obvisouly look again at photos to see what actually happened.

 

Nick 

Plenty more if the Carbarn here:

https://www.loc.gov/resource/hhh.wa0200.photos?st=gallery

18 hours ago, stivesnick said:

Work has started on the car barn for the interurban line. Using Slaters sheet with doors, windows and roof trusses from York Modelmaking.  The main doors will be scratchbuilt to allow for the non-existent overhead line to pass through. 

You could model a genuine Niles Crane:

https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/hhh.wa0200.photos.169724p/?co=hh

AFAIK the Carbarn in Yakima was never wired, there is a knife switch on the wall and a long piece of cable called a "Stinger" that hooks onto the trolley pole to power cars.

It's one of those where you wouldn't notice it until it was pointed out, then it might be a bit jarring. Furthermore, you'd have to chop up some of those Mountain Spew trucks so one had a back end on the front, so the reflection in the mirror would show another rear of a going away vehicle, and not the front. 

Am I overthinking this? Possibly...

Something I did notice through the weekend was there weren't any hire vans in the car park, despite the presence of several large club layouts. Obviously this is an ongoing concern for both access to them and cost, but if this is the new future of exhibitions then we'll do just fine.

There are also several videos of layouts at the show now appearing on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cotgrave+model+railway&sp=EgIIAw%3D%3D

It seems the great British public do fundamentally like foreign layouts, my US HO scale nighttime switching inglenook "Blue Heron" was voted favourite by the public at the Bingham MRC show at Cotgrave at the weekend. It was up against some credible opposition but seemed to pick up votes either because it was in a darkened room so the individual lights had more of an effect, or because it is mounted on an opticians instrument stand so can be adjusted in height remotely to suit all. 

I would explain the winning concepts but that would ruin the content of my forthcoming book "How to build a good exhibition layout and pick up lots of accolades without trying to sound like a complete narcissist".

There was a list on here a few years ago...

Day 1 of the South Notts show, TBH I wasn't exactly looking forward to it but the organisers remembered the brief and put the layout to the side of the stage in a darkens room. This seemed to make a massive difference to how the layout was perceived and there were lots of favourable comments and no failures that weren't caused by operator error on my part.

Thanks to @doctor quinn for operating (and allowing me to go plane spotting) at lunch time, we'll be there tomorrow from 10 to 4.

One Air's other 747, G-ONEE returning to the UK today after five weeks of maintenance in Victorville. Seen on finals for EMA from the car park of the South Notts show in Cotgrave. And it's fin is still red...

20 hours ago, Morello Cherry said:

 

I think tone matters a lot and thinking about how what you say might be recieved by all audiences, including your hardcore purist volunteers. I have met an awful lot of very tone deaf managers in my time. Recent examples include a manager who during the cost of living crisis and general job insecurity would send us a monthly email (ostentiously about what is going on at work) which seemed to be about their trips to the local farmers' market. To the staff it confirmed that they were a completely divorced from reality, wealthy idiot who lacked the brains to think about how they were coming across to those lower down the pay chain. The second one was a manager who sent an email announcing that he welcomed constructive feedback - in other words, if you give me feedback that challenges me then I am going to dismiss it unconstructive.

 

What I would say is this - I have no reason to doubt that filming etc is extremely lucrative, but that is only possible because Dave, Joe, Bob, Sue and their dog Cyril turn up every tuesday from November through to February to do various tedious, thankless, dull tasks on the station to keep it looking beautiful so that film location spotters can go 'that would look perfect in my film'. (At the same time, there wouldn't be a station to keep up if the money didn't come). The point here is that both need the other.

 

If it wasn't filming it would be Thomas/Peppa/Bluey/Paw Patrol/Diesel Galas that would be seen as the betrayal of the ethos of the railway.

 

Managers need to put themselves in the shoes of those at the bottom, and unfortunately, as we can see all around us every day most seem to be devoid of the most basic elements of human intelligence necessary.

 

I have to say, that I think being part of a fly on the wall/reality programme is about the worst thing you can do for your business. If for no other reason than some people take it as an opportunity to become 'characters' even though no one likes someone  who spends their time going around gurning for the camera like Greg Wallace on speed. (Bangers and Cash is the worst one for that it has to be said).

I wonder if the original character from the first Moors TV series is still volunteering? The one who kept borrowing the speed gun and tried to book everyone doing 31mph...

4 hours ago, Nick C said:

This is even more important when you're dealing with volunteers, as if someone doesn't like the environment they will leave. Let's say that Bob volunteers on the station maintenance team - he's been doing so for years, and he comes in every Wednesday to paint fences. New manager comes along, and decrees that painting is now to be done on Thursdays, and that the Wednesday team will now do hedge-pruning. That's going to upset Bob, and could easily end up with him leaving, unless there's a seriously good reason for it, and it's explained to him properly*.

 

(*compare and contrast:

"Due to Health and Safety rules, all painting must now be done on a Thursday." vs

"Hi Bob, I'm really sorry, but there's been a change in the working at height regulations and our insurers insist that anyone using a ladder cannot be lone-working. Would you mind doing the painting on a Thursday instead when there are more people around" - which is more likely to get a positive reaction? The first will lead to Bob being angry - the second might well elicit a "ok, yes, that's fine" - or perhaps an alternative way of achieving the same aim -  "well, my niece Alice wants to volunteer too, could she come with me on a Wednesday so I'm not alone?")

Or "That's 'elf and safety gone mad, yet again. People these days seem to have forgotten how to do things, unlike in my day when things got done. What's all this nonsense about door locks anyway, we didn't have door locks in my day..." (Edited quote from a family member).

They seem to have forgotten that the rule book has been written in blood.

I vaguely remember a show at Coventry Central Police Station in the late 1970s. I can't remember much about the layouts, apart from a large scale narrow gauge one with a coach that had fallen into a swamp.

Then another show at Beduth' Civic Hall where a birthday present in the form of an Airfix Prairie was chosen (technically my third loco, although I'm not counting the abomination of a Lima LNER J50 when I wanted a Pannier). Later on I remember going to the combined hobby events in Digbeth halls in Birmingham.

Blommer's is to close...:

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/news-photos-chocolate-factory-closure-further-reduces-downtown-chicago-rail-customers/?fbclid=IwAR0Rl3zUYnt59XCiUZNqrOf7KUuQB-vuEkRMYxTzdsgnZTVDee2-me1_XRU

Just practice for Monaco where he'll be enjoying a leisurely Sunday drive in the slowest and widest car.

On 21/03/2024 at 11:09, steve1 said:

 

Does the writer of the original piece also do the lottery? They were pretty accurate in their predictions in that article.

 

steve

...or more accurate in the sense that he didn't predict and we haven't got a class 83 and 84. The 81 would have been covered by Lilliput and the 82 by Triang, and although the former was a good model, neither are to modern standards.

18 hours ago, Northmoor said:

If I did see a common theme this year it was a lot of long and narrow layouts representing very little beyond the railway boundary; I find that "width" greatly helps with creating a sense of place so a few of them didn't grab my attention for long, but the quality of workmanship was consistently high.  

Conversely, I've seen plenty of photos from OnTraxs of layouts that regardless of their size, are very much of a scene with a train in and not what you describe, but that is an example of subjective analysis Vs selective photos. I can see how they might take longer to build, be less interesting to operate and more difficult to transport, but it's something that has piqued my interest and am looking at for the future.

Another order of custom decals turned around quickly by John from Precision Labels- I thought I'd messed up by not specifying double pass white as I must have done previously and they look quite thin on the backing sheet, but seem to have sufficient density when applied. I copied the font from a side photo of 965 in the Hershey archives, noting that it lacked the serifs on the lettering. As usual the S was the most difficult, but I found a similar font to manipulate:

The lower car of the three is an incorrect Walthers 40' box, finished before I realised the dimensions and weights I copied from a builders photo pretty much pointed to all Hershey cars being 36', the Accurail inside and outside braced cars being closest in design (1049 is now relegated to test status as I have enough 36' cars).

If I was smart enough I would have worked out exactly where the bracing went and adjusted the artwork to sit over it, instead of cutting it in position and painting over the gaps. 

On 14/03/2024 at 09:34, dasatcopthorne said:

We discovered that the problem with fully solid state juicers is the power rating capacity.

 

One loco mostly seems to be fine but beware of locos that draw more current than the juicer components can handle.

 

Dave.

Similarly, I've known of issues with solid state juicers requiring a minimum current (2a) that is higher than a Powercab with a wall-wart (1.8a).

Something I never figured until I started modelling Cuba is I think (and please correct me if I'm wrong) is there is a certain resentment- for example, one friend described my purchase of a Rapido GMD-1 in Cuban Railways livery as a "Cuban Crisis" and I've heard the word "Communist" used in hushed terms...

The actual era I'm trying to portray is pre-revolution when Cuba was a bit of a playground for the USA, think Hemingway and "Our Man in Havana" from that era and more recently the D-list sequel "Dirty Dancing-Havana Nights" which is actually as good at describing the pre-revolutionary years as "Who framed Roger Rabbit?" is about the demise of the Pacific Electric Interurban. I showed this photo of the Hershey to someone at the layouts debut and they were quick to point out the US Navy Sailor: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/original-slide-hershey-cuba-102-scene-2076329018 (link opens a slide listing on Worthpoint).

I was hoping the layouts recent outing in front of knowledgeable US railfans in Stokenchurch might make them realise that it wasn't actually an American layout, despite fundamentally looking like one, but complacency still seems to reign and the Hershey didn't seem to be more recognised than at normal shows. I suppose that's the problem when you model something specific, by comparison is @TEAMYAKIMA's Chinese layout a specific industrial city or could it be anywhere?