Pacific231G

Nice thought Colin but I think the satellites used for uplinks are all geostationary. There used to be a whole farm of satellite dishes on the roof of a low building to one side of TV Centre and I never saw them tracking. BTW I'm quite amused watching Fireball XL5 on TPTV. There the whole "Space City" HQ building goes round and round rather than just the radar dish! The horizontal ski jump launcher is also quite good fun (I suppose that is a sort of railway!)

Hi Nick and Paul OnTopic In 2001, the setup modelled by you Paul would be pretty typical for a live report- You could add a stand light or two or even just the director pointing a "hand basher" at the reporter (been there done that many times) but I don't think they'd add much and the scene is fine without it. OFFTOPIC - so read no further if you don't want to. Nick, it IS possible to get broadcast quality pictures and even sound from a Smartphone. In fact, in May I produced a practical session for the Royal Television Society on this very topic (with ex BBC News camerawoman and mobile journalism trainer Deirdre Mulcahy). However, though they are useful for when the reporter gets to a story before their crew, is on holiday when all hell breaks loose , or wants to film very discretely, a Smartphone (which does have limitations) is no substitute for a properly equipped news crew which, for a mainstream news channel, would normally include a reporter, cameraman (or woman), sound recordist and possibly a producer. If you try to use a crew that's too small (e.g. just a camera operator and reporter) then things actually take longer and screw-ups (like recording an interview and finding a buzz or nothing at all on the audio) are far more likely. Jack of all trades applies to TV production as much as to anything else (though the crews of 15-20 or more that ITV sent to Downing Street for simple interviews with Thatcher did the TV industry no good at all) ENG/mobile trucks are by no means obsolete even today. If you're in the field (espcially if it's a very large field) you can't alway rely on getting a 4G or 5G connection so modern ENG trucks can often switch automatically between those and a satellite connection. Also, a lot of news reporting is not running round chasing breaking stories. For things like news conferences, launches, live interviews and many other events you need an established contact whether via VOIP, fixed lines or satellite. If the ENG truck is something like an SUV then it can of course be what the reporter and crew use to get themselves to the location. If you still think ENG vehicles are obsolete, take a look at this which was first seen at IBC (The International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam) in 2018 https://www.mastervolt.com/references/the-bbc-megahertz-ev-van-the-first-ever-fully-electric-newsgathering-vehicle-powered-by-a-mastervolt-installation/ It is all a far cry from this veteran Portugese OB vehicle from 1957 that I saw restored and displayed at IBC in 2014 I think it was a four camera unit but have no idea how this vision mixer worked. Possibly X is cross fades and H and V are horizontal and vertical wipes/split screens .

Hi Paul I've been looking into that a bit more and in Europe production facilities companies seem to vary between those who mark their vehicles with their own name, boldly or discretely, or leave them unmarked. I still don't know how well developed the facilities market is in China, but I did find CTVS (China TV Services) and a few others. It looks like broadcast stations there probably do still own more of their own production facilities than is now common in Europe. Some images of CTVS trucks show them with a discrete logo that would be easier to apply than the one above and curiously neither of them include any Hanzi text. For obvious reasons, TV News organisations generally have their own ENG/uplink trucks which likely would carry their own logos though nowadays in the UK and Europe they tend to be more discrete about attracting attention to themselves than they used to be (in some situations they can become targets) In the USA, where the local TV news market is very competitive, remote vehicles (the US name for OBs) are generally used as billboards so proclaim the channel/station very loudly In China now it looks like they do carry logos or names but not very loudly but I've no idea about the situation in 2001. I do have a friend who was very high up in the BBC's coms set up and I'm pretty sure worked on their coverage of the Beijing Olympics who might remember. If you want to look at a selection of Chinese OB vehicles there are a number here though the logos etc are current not 2001 https://www.live-production.tv/search-results/category/mobile-production/country/China .

for my H0 (Peco) and H0m (Tillig) layouts I've found the Peco track rubber to be a bit abrasive but the track rubbers sold by the Double O Gauge Association (I'm not a member) seem far better in that regard. For the Dartmoor and Valley Scenes, Pendon uses specially built bogie wagons with a small rectangle of hardboard rough side side down mounted on a weighted carriage. However, the scenes there are behind glass so won't be subject to the usual household dust. For cleaning behind point blades etc. I generally use cotton buds with IPA.

Well indeed and I know from studying the internet that it wasn't Britain that won WW2 all on its own but America. Britain joined in very late and there was almost no involvement from Canada. It's all on the web so it must be true. Even here I've learnt that H0 is a scale invented by foreigners, that those using P4 are morally superior to other modellers, and that the GWR wasn't the very best of Britain's railways (actually I know that's not true, not least because the GWR could do with ten wheels what lesser railways needed twelve for)

Except that the pyramids weren't built by slaves (so forget the scenes of Israelite slaves in Cecil B de Mille's Exodus) but by paid workers, mostly poor farmers who supplemented their income by work on the pyramids during the wet season when their fields were flooded. It was the ancient Greek historian, Herodotus in the 5th Century BCE, who claimed that the pyramids were built 2000 years ealier with the labour of 100,000 slaves. However, in the past fifteen or so years, archaeologists have found considerable evidence of a specially constructed village where the workforce of about 10, 000, who worked in three month shifts, were housed in long dormitories. Food remains show evidence that they were well fed with meat and bread while those who died while engaged in the work received simple but honoured burials complete with beer and bread for their journey close to the sacred sites. There were slaves in ancient Egypt but they didn't get to build the pyramids.

I've just had a leaflet inviting me to vote for one of a list of names for the Northolt TBMs. Thankfully Moley McMole Face isn't one of the options. This lis obviously a rather pathetic attempt to garner "local engagement" and therefore support for HS2 during what will inevitably be local disruption. I am actually very much in favour of HS2 (and no the money wouldn't have been spent on other railways) but I couldn't give a monkey's what the TBMs are called. TBM N1 and 2 would be fine with me. I'm not actually sure if I'll ever actually get to travel on it and even if I do it looks like being about as scenic as the Channel Tunnel given the hideously expensive measures to hide it away in tunnels and cuttings. I was at the French Railways Society Summer rendezvous in Lenham on Sunday which meant travelling alongside then under HS1. I barely noticed it and I look for railways.

Indeed. I'm afraid there are plenty of people on the right of politics who believe in the ability of the "Free Market" to solve all problems with the same blind faith that Soviet aparachniks had for "The Five Year Plan". Neither has ever been capable of pragmatism or seeing either the market or rational planning as a useful servant but an apaliling master. I came across this a lot in my career (in public service) but also as an FE College Governor. The mantra was that educational institutions should be run not in a business like way, i.e efficiently and with goals, but as businesses where the bottom line was far more important than fulfiiling our actual mission. So, though Britain is notoriously short of engineers we had to close our expensiive engineeting courses (we were in an area with no major industrial employers) but our hairdresing courses thrived.

I don't disagree that there is such a market, clearly there is, and starting with "iconic train" sets undoubtedly made sense as a launch straregy for a new (to Britain) scale. BUT, for the scale to be successful in the longer term, and it deserves to be successful, it needs to develop fairly quickly beyond the train set market into a full model railway range so that those starting out with it need to see where they might be able to get to. Most established modellers, likely do have too much "stuff" to change horses, so it is more about giving the new entrants that TT120 has drawn into the hobby a pathway, or rather a series of possible pathways, to move on with. Watching trains going round and round on a (far more conveniently sized) table-top may satisfy for a while but I know several people in my wider circle, beyond "serious" railway modelling, who set out to build the super-duper Hornby train set they'd dreamed of a youngster with several circuits laid out on a board (what Loco-Revue rather charmingly desribes as a "locodrome") and simply lost interest after a year or so. The comparison with TT-3, though there are major differences as you say, is that, while Tri-ang were selling 3mm scale train sets, those buying them could very soon see in the magazines etc. model railways built by "serious" railway modellers in the same scale. A very good example was was Mike Bryan'ts 4ft x 2ft "Pint Pot", run as a five part beginner's project layout by MRC from January 1958 so just a few months after Tri-ang TT-3 actually became widely available. It wasn't Pendon but it was a layout that anyone could build and would then have a "proper" model railway with good operational capacity (branch line teminus with continuous loop and reverse curve) rather than just an extended train set.

I agree and it seems to reflect a perceived market for "iconic" locos and trains that fit the trainset market more than the developed model railway market. This isn't exactly new though- my own first Hornby Dublo model railway (it was permanently laid on a baseboard) had a Dutchess of Atholl, three coaches and about three goods wagons. In many ways the original TT-3 offer of a Jinty, suburban coaches and wagons followed by a Castle, and then other locos and main line coaches was better suited to layout builders. I see much the same with Hornby International's H0 brands with "iconic" (and well represented in preservation) locos like the 141R and the 140C on offer but the one thing you can't rely on buying is a balanced stud of locos to operate a model railway in a realistic way and, while it's truie that a far higher proportion of modellers have moved on from the steam era, the Jouef brand doesn't even offer a diesel shunter. The fomer Jouef brand did offer a wider range of motive power. Fortunately, for H0, there are other brands available.

I've used a fibreglass pencil to very carefully remove the very German markings from Tillig H0m wagons. They have some with a short wheelbase that fits very well my French "d'Intêret Local " but not when they have DR markings all over them. It took quite a long time and the paint below was slighty roughed up. I have a couple more still to do so will try using a drawing rubber. Getting the white print from between the planks was the trickiest part and I'm not sure that a rubber would manage that but it might be better for the main parts.

I also really enjoyed your layout at Lenham yesterday, Rod. A lot of the detailing (like the tables outside the Auberge) was very effective (and nobody playing boule! - the French equivalent of buses on bridges?) I'm glad to know that you got the catenary and Ogives (Ex DutDut Productions) from Ardennes Modelisme as there seemed to be a hiatus in 2020 after (according to the LR Forum) Jérome Collard bought Atelier Belle Epoque from Olivier Tanou. I think he used the combined name Atelier CJmodels for a while until registering Ardennes Modelisme as his company name but still uses it for the website. I happened to be looking this up a few days ago having wondered what had beome of ABE and am now hoping that more of that range become available. Were you able to order them directly from France for delivery here? (I was looking for replacement Jouef buffers recently and the company that had them had a list of countries in their ordering address field that included the Russian Federation and most other European countries including Eire but not the UK so the order couldn't be made)

Yes, sort of. I think watching things at Liverpool St. Met (while waiting for trains?) provided CJF's inspiration for the turnover loco schema (Also used by Geoff Pitt on Horn Lane though only on one platform AFAIK) but it was some later doodling that led to the particular crossover arrangement.

Hi Clive Hmm, for me a true Minories needs to end with buffers and use CJF's neat crossover arrangement (though other arrangements can have a Minories feel- like Hammersmith) So, as far as I'm concerned, Tom Cunnington's Minories (GN) is no longer a true Minories in its current format with through platforms and goods trains charging through. It's still a perfectly good layout but only when it's exhibited as a terminus (which I understand it still can be) is it properly Minories. Despite the fourth platform and its three way point this (Geoff Pitt's Horn Lane LT) to my mind IS a true Minories and about the only situaton where using small radius points for the characteristic throat doesn't look silly (the whole point of CJF's neat crossover arrangement being to avoid immediate reverse curves an advantage that gets lost when the points are too small relative to the length of coaches.)

Mordor's throat is Minories plus but the effect is rather spoiled by it not being an actual terminus as the tracks continue past the station to the car sheds (fiddle yard?) beyond. Mind you, I'm probably biased as the only time I've ever been there, was for a rather dull meeting with the local council. It seemed an awfully long way down the Misery Line and when you got there you were in Morden. I think the closest in overall feel to a real Minories that I've come across, certainly in London, is Hammersmith on the H&C. It has a short throat running onto a viaduct, is surrounded by urban buildings and has three platforms with still a Metropolitan/GWR steam age feel. This was especially so when it had actual loco hauled trains as it it did during Steam on the Met in 2014 (alright it was only one train!) but, with its GWR platform seat and valances, it still holds that impression when it's ony handling modern stock. It even used to have a goods yard (albeit a coal yard) It's a funny thing that while main line termini rarely seem to have just three platforms, they're quite common at UndergrounD termini. Ealing Broadway (District), and High Barnet come immediately to mind though the first lost its Minories like status by abandoning its real station building above and beyond the buffers (were they thinking of extending the line to Greenford Broadway etc?) and High Barnet is just a BLT with tube acretions. Though it would have bu**ered up most of my own commuting journeys, the one I've long fancied was the GWR's planned and authorised (in 1905) terminus at Shepherd's Bush of the Ealing and Shepherd's Bush Extension Railway. Looking at the site it was planned to occupy with a presumed subway connection to the then terminus of the Central Railway (which at that time was planning to loop south and then back into Central London to the discomfiture of the District Railway) I guess it might have been quite similar to their joint station at Hammersmith but with proper trains with GW locos on the front (OK probably prairie tanks rather than Halls and Castles) terminating there from west of London and maybe further afield. It was reckoned, with the CLR, to give a better connection for commuters and to the W. End than that terminus near Paddington Basin but in the end they decided that connection would be even better on the GWML at Ealing Broadway so gave the CLR running powers on the E&SB from a connection to its later Wood Lane terminus i.e the Ealig branch of the Central Line.

Olivier Taniou sold ABE to Jérôme Collard (CJModels) in I think 2020 who combined the two brands. He now trades as Ardennes Modelisme though his website reflects the original brands https://ateliercjmodels.comThe Vernueil station doesn't appear in his current N gauge listing as such though, apart from stone quoins and door and window surrounds it does, from the star-boutique advert, appear to be identical to the Ouest three door station building (which has an ABE product code) on offer for €49.00 + postage. However, the Star-Boutique image is marked as generique so there may be differences, ABE's models were always very specific. The etched brass fret for Verneuil's doors and windows is still on offer for €20.50 and the optional two open doors are a very nice touch. It may be the same fret supplied with the Ouest station building as doors and windows could be pretty standard. The rust colour of catenary masts is a nice touch Jon. I noticed it on secondary lines in the Pyrénées some years ago and at first thought they were just old but seeing it on the remaining Ogive masts on the Midi main line in Landes suggests that it is the colour of a protective coating (paint?) I'm looking forward to seeing the layout at Lenham on Sunday.

This topic sometimes makes me feel like someone who went to the seminary but was never ordained! I did half of my phase three in Shields in 1969-1970 (then bu**ered off to University) after spending two years in Plymouth getting my OND. Plymouth was then far more a naval town and its relationship was far more with the RN than with the sea per-se while Devonport dockyard, which I think was the city's largest employer, was very much on the other side of a high wall. We used to go to Millbay to visit actual cargo ships (mostly foreign and very hospitable to snotty cadets) and sniff around their engine rooms but it was really a port for coasters and short sea traders rather than larger ocean going ships. Tyneside was still involved with shipbuilding but, perhaps like Glasgow, was far more about building ships than working them so, when Britain stupidly lost its shipbuilding industry, ships and the sea became a memory rather than a daily reality. (It also btw took me a long time to realise that S. Shields was still a coal mining town!) When I was there the largest ship ever built on the Tyne left the river and half of Tyneside turned out to watch it but it was a bit of a swansong. Apart from the loss of shipbuilding, I think the big changes were the globalisation of crewing, which meant that seafaring stopped being a major source of employment for ordinary Britons, and later the container and bulk revolution which meant that ships spend hours rather than days or weeks in port and the ports themselves often became far more removed from the traditional port cities. I lived and worked in Southampton in the 1980s and the city did still have some relationship with the sea. The port was in the town (though you couldn't actually see much of it behind its walls) so there were quite a lot of people who worked in the docks and quite a few others who worked or had fairly recently worked on the liners. I did make a TV programme "Sea Change City" about the city's changing identity with the port no longer its raison d'etre. Ironically, Southampton now handles more passengers than it ever did in the era of the great liners but, apart from jamming the city's roads when three or four cruise ships are in at once, the city's relationship with the sea (which it is actualy qute a long way from) now seems fairly marginal. The ships aren't crewed by Southamptonians and its doesn't take many people to handle them in port. There were and probably still are specialist firms associated with provisioning ships and other shore support including engineering but they weren't an obviously distinct commercial sector. If we as a nation have lost our relationship with ships and the sea, it is perhaps because seafaring has lost its relationship with us.

And a good example of the wisdom of not getting the public to make a decision in a referendum without being responsible for the consequences (in this case it would have made Britain an international laughing stock) but instead electing responsible people to make such decisions. I can't imagine even the elected committee of the Much Binding in the Marsh Sailing Club taking responsibility of a name as daft as that and I wonder what the crew of the RRS Sir David Attenborough really call their ROV.

Hydrogen made by an electrical process is primarily a secondary fuel (as indeed is electricity), in other words, a way of trasferring energy from where it's made to where it's used so its value as a replacement for fossil fuels depends upon its actual production. If it's simpy a by product of hydrocarbons then it's just another fossil fuel but if it's produced using a very carbon neutral and abundant form of electricity then it likely will provide a way of fuelling transport that won't create an environment ideal for dinosaurs but not for humans or many of our planet's other current inhabitants. However, if you use electricity to make hydrogen then use it to produce power using internal combustion, you're wasting most of the original energy (basic thermodynamics) Fuel cells though are not heat engines so effectively reverse the hydrolysis process used to make the hydrogen at an efficiency of about 60%. That's far less than the efficiency of electrical transmission but it is rather difficult to transmist electricity to cars and planes when they're moving (electricity can of course be transmitted to trains on the move which makes them a far more sensible way of transporting people and goods than cars, airliners and trucks) We have used hydrogen as a fuel in the past (though as a fossil fuel). Town gas produced from coal was about half and half hydrogen and carbon monoxide and there was enough hydrogen for town gas to be used as a lifitng gas for balloons. It's major downside is of course carbon monoxide's extreme toxicity and, deaths apart, the inevitable leakages from any piped system couldn't have made for a healthy urban atmosphere) I think two aspects of pollution have got confused. Poor air quality and global warming are very different problems though cars and other road vehicles using IC engines are the largest single contibutor of both . Using sustainably produced electricity is probably the ultimate answer to both of them but, for example, diesel engines are far more efficient than petrol engines (basic thermodynamics) so contribute less CO2 per unit of transport than petrol engines but, because the higher temperatures that allow that also produce more NOx and partculates, they are contribute more harm to urban air quality and that does kill people. Unfortunately, road transport will still contibute to poor urban air quality even when fully electrified due to particulates from tyres etc. that even electric cars produce. So far as transportation is concerned, the best technical solution for both aspects of pollution for any likely future is still the one that emerged in the nineteenth century of using steel wheels on steel rails.

It was indeed. Looking for that quote though I came upon Stephen King's top 20 rules for writers and several of them seems relevant to this topic 1. First write for yourself, and then worry about the audience. 8. Don’t worry about making other people happy. The least concern of all should be polite society and what it expects. Does your layout tell the story you want it to tell, not what you think might please the public. 10. You have three months. The first draft should take no more than three months, How many of us have spent years trying to design the perfect layout 14. Stick to your own style. “One cannot imitate a writer’s approach to a particular genre" How many layouts are pale imitations of inspirational layout 17. Leave out the boring parts and kill your darlings. “Mostly when I think of pacing, I go back to Elmore Leonard, who explained it so perfectly by saying he just left out the boring parts." Leonard's actual rule was "Leave out the parts readers tend to skip". 18. The research shouldn’t overshadow the story. This is something I've been guilty of in writing, you learn a lot while researching and have to resist the urge to include it all, wheher or not it helps tell the story. I think the same tihng may well apply to layout building and was always struck by Peter Denny saying that he knew very little about the GCR when he started building the Buckingham Branch but didn't put off building it until he did.

Would anyone here care to try to nail down the difference between a ship and a boat. It seems to be the sort of thing that you usually know when you see it without being able to define it and with a fairly large zone of uncertainty (like when do a number of grains of sand become a pile?). A rowing eight is definitely a boat but, having been brought up in Oxford where they were a daily sight, what were the Salter Bros. steamers that we took from Oxford to Abindon? They had more than one deck, a separate engine room, and were as long as a small coaster so "steam launch" seems a very inadequate description.

In the late 1960s I worked briefly as a cadet on a steam turbine ship (The Kinnaird Castle) and only the Chief seemed to know much about steamships- when we were preparing for sea overnight (I was on the 12 to 4) he simply gave us a typed list of instructions on which valves to open or close at what time- we didn't need to know why. The deck officers were also unfamiliar with steam and, while we were manouevering out of Liverpool, the telegraph was going rather too often. Muggins was sent up to the bridge by the Chief to ask them to reduce their rate of telegraph orders and explain that if we tried to go straight from half ahead to half astern the next noise would as he put it "be the broken turbine blades tinkling away in the bottom of the casing" I also understand that when the SS Shieldhall was built in 1955 with two triple expansion engines, Glasgow Corporation got a good deal on the price from Lobnitz by accepting a lot of otherwise redundant machinery. I made a film for the BBC about her about a year before she left Southern Water's service (and was then preserved) and was amazed to discover (and film) things like the two cylinder reciprocating steam steering gear, models of which I'd seen (and played with) in the Science Museum's ship's machinery gallery (now long gone I believe) but never expected to encounter on an actual ship.

I've just been watching Waterfront (1950) on TPTV and it includes a good number of shots of the Liverpool Overhead Railway. In one shot there is a timetable board listing the times (minutes after each hour) of trains for the various Liverpool main line stations. I assume that was for the LOR but it could have been the Mersey Railway. (I'll look again and see if I can make out whether the destinations included Birkenhead Central) Correction- I have looked again and they weren't train times but tram routes to Exchange, Lime Street & Central The film itself is set around Liverpool's dockland during the depression and its cast iincludes a young Richard Burton in only his third film role (he was already very good though) as a ship's engineer who discovers that his future father in law (who had abandoned his future mother in law years earlier) had, in a brawl outside a pub, just killed the 2nd Engineer whose job Buton had then immediately got after several years on the beach. Some of the ships do though look decidedly modern for the depression era. One of them, the SS Clan Alpine (built 1942) later became notorious when in 1960 a tidal wave from an exceptionally powerful typhoon carried it several miles inland from Chittagong in E. Pakistan (now Bangladesh). It was on its last voyage anyway being due to be scrapped in Japan and, after its cargo was unloaded, was broken up the following year where it stood. Clan Line then got the insurance for a total loss (which apparently was more than they'd have got for scrap)

I'm also glad to see that Ffarquhar is still going strong. Operationally it was always a very good design (and it occurs to me that the Maurice Deane type fiddle yard scheme could be used for a 4ft x 2ft H0m or 009 Microlayout or perhaps a 4ft x 2ft 6 in layout in TT)

Chemin de fer Économiques Forestiers des Landes That's true but it's between the two and the divergence from exact scale gauge is about a quarter mm narrower and half a mm wider respectively. Both are less than the difference betweeen EM's 18.2mm and the exact scale of 18.87mm so barely if at all noticeable. Convenience of modelling seems to trump gauge accuracy. I've noticed in France, where for public railways there were over 20,000km of metre gauge, about 440 km of 600mm gauge and just 12km of 750mm gauge , that amost all narrow gauge modellers build often exquisite models of rural villages served by railways using 0e and H0e which, though commonly used to represent 600mm gauge prototypes, even more inaccurately than in 4mm scale, is only really prototypical for the 12km Chemin de fer Économiques Forestiers des Landes which ran from 1907 to 1934 and of which there are only about three photos*. That used not to be the case when a number if artisanal manufacturers produced kits for 12mm gauge representations of the equipment used on the vast filigree of metre gauge lines (from roadside tramways to heavy railways like the Reseau Breton) that once covered the French countryside and are very attractive prototypes but. despite the greater avaiability of 12mm gauge and H0m equipment, metre gauge seems to be very much a minority taste. * It seems to have bought some cheap secondhand industrial equipment from a German contractor so was allowed to deviate from the metre or 600mm gauge mandated for NG public railways in France.