Pacific231G

On 18/03/2024 at 21:07, Compound2632 said:

 

Interesting. The usual London Terminus for GWR when Paddington is inaccessible is Reading.

14 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

Waterloo has certainly been used in the relatively recent past.   Belive that a bit of electrification up Acton bank is going to be done so that IET's  can terminate at Ealing Broadway then reverse at Acton.  It would also give a vital electrified. Ink to Euston. 

 

Jamie

Ealing Broadway was the (or a)  terminus for trains on the GWML for a couple of weeks after the Ladbroke Grove disaster. With two Underground termini there it provides good connections for central London though it was rammed. During that period I believe that a number of services also terminated  at Reading.  

On 18/03/2024 at 21:16, BernardTPM said:

Of course, everyone knows post boxes are red, as this old postcard* proves:

 

 

*or not 😈

These are screen grabs from the colour (not colourised) version of Jour de Fête note how the shades of green vary between different shots of the same box. 

I'd probably go for the shade of green in the third and fourth frames but perhaps let down a bit. 

Tati's first feature film also includes a rather nice sequence of shunting on the metre gauge SE Centre at Marçais (a once important junction on the metre gauge network- it had all closed by 1951 - just a few years later- and the station building is now a farmhouse.   

More screen shots of that sequence here https://fdelaitre.org/lpf2/Jdf.htm

SainteSainte-Sévère-sur-Indre never actually had a railway but the level crossing scene was shot where the now long dismantled line from La Châtre to Montluçon crossed the D917 road about eight kilometres north of the village while Marçais is about thirty three kilometres to the north-east in Allier.

1 hour ago, BachelorBoy said:

 

Original

Photoshop conversion to B+W using default settings

Photoshop colourisation using default settings

 

 

You can definitely see how far Da Vinci got it wrong. How much better his paintings would have been if only he'd had the support of Adobe. 🤣

A few years ago I wanted to know what shade of green a typically weathered French post box would have been in the 1950s. So, when I got hold of the colour (not colourised)* version of Jacques Tati's 1949 Jour de Fête I thought a scene where the local kids are taking the mick out of François the local postman around a post box would provide some kind of answer. How wrong I was.  The scene involves about half a dozen different camera angles and in every one of them the colour looks significantly different thanks to different angle of the sun, lighting, background etc. 

I actually think that contemporary paintings might be a better guide to colours pre reliable colour film stock as though a professional painter may not have got the details right they probably would have been able to get the colours right as they saw them.

*Tati shot the film using the new and unproved  "Thomson colour" 3-colour process but had the good sense to also film it in parallel in black and white. Wisely as it turned out as Thomson could never get the colour to print properly so Tati edited and printed the filmfrom the B&W negative.

Forty years late Tati's daughter Sophie Tatischeff, who was herself a film editor and director, and the cinematographer François Ede, were able to use digital techniques to recreate the film in authentic colour from the original colour negatives. The edit was somewhat different as colour films require a different cutting rate than B&W.      

45 minutes ago, DCB said:

Come to think of it my ideal layout would be a copy of an existing layout, the Sea wall scene at Pendon,  with nose to tail summer Saturday  passenger services 

Or just bulld a model of the actual sea wall the Pendon scene is also a  model of! 

7 hours ago, BoD said:

My brain fog may well be kicking in but, at one time,  wasn’t there a competition organised for ‘Minories layouts’.

There was, it was in 2007 (the  plan's anniversary) and was organised by DEMU but that's not what  I'm remembering.

That competition, defined "Minories" layouts as a terminus with three platforms in seven feet and, as far as I recall, entries included Birmingham Moor St. in scale four (which I think won), Ripper Street and a couple of others.  The year I remembered was  2017 (so the 60th anniversary) and there were three or four layouts at Alexandra Palace much more closely based on CJF's actual Minories plan with the characteristic 'diamond' arrangement of crossovers.  Hallam Town was the 2mm scale example but I'm not sure what the others were except that one was 3mm scale and another was 4mm scale-  possibly Tom Cunnington's  EM Minories (GN) 

3 hours ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

It would take someone really brave (or daft) to name their layout Buckingham, Charford or Borchester. 

There have been other Borchesters including an RM railway of the month based on plan 24L in "Plans for Larger Layouts" . I think Frank Dyer (Borchester Town and Market) always wrote for MRC and one has to remember that, in those days before the internet, if you subscribed to one magazine you could be in complete ignorance of very well known layouts offered in the others so modellers coming up with the same name  might be doing so entirely independently. I knew nothing about Frank Dyer's work until comparatively recently. 

I can remember being very frustrated that Mike Bryant included a lot of photos of his 4ft x 2ft layout in his "Modelling in TT-3" book but no plan to tell me how he's done it. My father and I took Railway Modeller and I had absolutely no idea that a complete step by step series of articles by him on building the "pint pot" layout had been published in MRC in January-June 1958. Had I seen those I might well have made far more progress in TT-3 than I ever did.  

2 hours ago, John Besley said:

 

Charford was a classic, wasn't it originally built in a caravan?

 

I often think of that every time I am on the Axminster - Bridport road

John Charman housed it  (the two boards - each 5ft 5ins- stored upright behind a curtain) and brought it out to operate, in a large (27 ft long) residential caravan, probably not the sort you'd be stuck behind on the A303 but still cramped.  Whether he actually built it in the caravan is less certain though in his first article he did mention his wife putting up with a lot of sawing and drilling over a year.  That was in 1955 and, by 1959 the caravan had been sold and he'd moved into more spacious accomodation(RAF Married quarters?) with Charford extended as an L. 

It's not a problem. At Ally Pally a few years ago there were three Minories, in 4mm/3mm and 2mm scale respectively. They all used CJF's track plan and they were all different.

Ashburton is an odd one as it was a lovely station (I visited it when the DVR was still planning to have it as their terminus before the Vogons decided to demolish the track to make way for a bypass) but it's a very limited one and very difficult to work - in reality and in model form. I thought Peter Denny had the right idea with Buckinham mk 2 which was based on Ashburton - Great Centralised of course- but with the mill move to the other side and the kickback mill siding turned into a goods loop. 

Though he never seems to have acknowledged it, Derek Naylor's 00n3 Aire Valley was effectively a close copy of the 00 Madder Valley. The original version of Saltaire was Madderport less one siding and, in the final version (RM July 1972), most of the scenic features are drectly lifted from the final version of the MVR - though without John Ahern's artistic flair. Even the sawmill in the corner with the watermill on the other side of the railway and the branch on the near side of the river.  

I seen nothing wrong with that but I do think that if you base your layout on someone else's you should acknowledge it. I can't imagine building a Minories and describing it with no reference to CJF or using the Inglenook name without acknowledging Alan Wright.

The new train was being tested again today. I watched, and heard, it passing on the embankment just south of South Greenford and, though not "eerily quiet" it was quieter than normal Distric Line stock.

I then walked down to Castle Bar Park to get the train to W. Ealing (I was enroute to Ealing Broadway) . I'd hoped to see and photograph it coming back towards Greenford before my train arrived but found it still at W. Ealing on the charging rails. The Lizzie line train arrived as the Greenford train was pulling in, so I only had time to get a couple of snaps.  

On 09/03/2024 at 16:54, Mike Harvey said:

Rivarossi produced the Nord 231 Chapelon in N as well in the early days of the scale. Admittedly not an SNCF locomotive although inherited in 1938.

I bought one by mistake on eBay once thinking it was H0. It found a good home. It wasn't one of SNCF's "Unifiée" (standard) locos but, as in Britain, the majority of its steam locos were inherited from the former main line companies on nationalisation. The difference was that there had already  been quite a lot of commonailty between the major companies before SNCF was created, far more than there ever was from the RCH. That was mainly on coaches and wagons through OCEM but applied to some extent to locos as well. 

The real problem is that, though there were quite a lot of ex German, "reparation", locos in France from the end of the First World War and to a lesser extent from the Second, there were never enough, except perhaps in Alsace.  to make them typical and German steam locos did have a distinctly different "look" when compared with French. 

This probably won't change so far as steam is concerned as enthusiasm for it is far less marked than it is in Britain and the most popular epoch seems to be IV/V (when steam no longer reigned but "tradtional" railway operation was still the norm with wagonload goods and making and breaking of long distance passenger trains still very much a feature.

Judging from exhibitors and attendees at shows, the average age of modellers is also a  lot  younger than it is in Britain    

16 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

The late Gordon Hafter, who knew more about the Underground than most people before or since, used to reckon on 5 minutes street to train, interchange or train to street plus 2 minutes per station for all central London trips. On that basis, LB to VIC via the Jubilee and District/Circle lines, would take 5 + (3 x 2) + 5 + (2 x 2) + 5 = 25 minutes. Taking away the two train/street times, that falls within your 11 - 16 minute band. I was never late for a meeting when following Gordon's rule.

It depends of course on where in London Bridge and Victoria your end points are. From the main concourse at LB it's a fair walk to the Jubilee platforms which are fairly deep. The District/Circle Line platforms at Victoria are of course cut and cover so closer to the surface than the tube lines. 

All this rather reminds me of the old gag about telling a visitor to London that you can get around on foot faster than the tube and demonstrating it with a journey from Queensway to Bayswater. They look well separated on the Beck plan and involve a one stop journey on the Central and District lines with a change at Notting Hill Gate but are in reality a 3-5 minute walk. 

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

A lot less. Even the TfL journey planner, which sets a really low walking pace, says 1h32m to walk. I’d say an hour is more like it.

four MPH is a pretty fast walking pace and, according to Google maps, the distance from Ealing Broadway to Shepherd's Bush station is 3.9 miles.  You'd probably also need to add ten minutes for the four major and umpteen other road junctions. I used to cycle most of that route to work along the Uxbridge Road from Ealing Common to Television Centre and it took about 25-30 minutes - I gave up because I fancied staying alive! 

The "Super Loop 7" express bus (previously known as the 607) that stops at about every four bus stops does Ealing Broadway to Shepherd's Bush railway station in 30 minutes. 

I travelled on the Greenford Branch on Friday (For me it's a handy way to get to the Waitrose in W. Ealing on the site of the old goods yard) and they were testing the new train then. It was running in counterpoint to the service train but I think they were doing other tests enroute as well as on the battery banks at West Ealing. There was pobably  test equipment aboard that would have made it impossible to carry passengers and there will also have been a load of testing of doors, emergency functions and so on as well as driver training before they can be brought into service. 

I understand the way it works is that the battery banks at the charging station are gradually charged from the ordinary public supply but deliver charging power to the train at a far higher amperage within the five minutes or so that the Greenford Train turns around in. This system will obviously make sense for GWR's other branches such as Marlow, Henley and Looe (to name just three) that are fairly short. The Greenford Branch makes sense as a test site as there are alternative public transport services covering all five stations it so a failure would only leave prospective passengers inconvenienced not stranded.   

some pictures of the installation at W. Ealing 

one of the two charging rails with the battery banks behind

fast charge battery bank no 1

optical ? train detector 

2nd charging rail (closer to buffers)

On Friday, I only saw the train in motion from a service train going the other way but others who've seen it say that it's eerily quiet- far more so than even a normal electric train. I assume this is because of the distributed power.  

On 10/03/2024 at 01:45, RobinofLoxley said:

@Pacific231G Thanks for asnwering my query and not debating the (Obviously arguable) criteria.

My pleasure Robin

Hammersmith (H&C) was essentally a GWR station and even now there are still GWR benches on the non Island platform. It's therefore a reasonable assumption that, had the GW built their Shepherd's Bush terminus of the Ealing and Shepherds Bush rather than agreeing with the Central London Railway for them to operate it as an extension from Wood Lane/White City, that might well have been a rather similar three-platform affair but one operated by conventional trains, steam then diesel, into modern times.   

This is more of an "almost was" than a "might have been" and, if the CLR's original plan to extend itself by looping south to Hammersmith then back into the City via Kensington, Hyde Park and Fleet Street had come to fruition, might well have been built. The GWR wanted the line to provide a more direct link to the City and, in the end, it made more sense to make that connection at Ealing Broadway rather than establishing a new suburban terminus at Shepherd's Bush.  

At yeserday's Wealden Show, someone had a layout based on how that terminus might be now rationalised and cut back and there was a 3mm scale Minories based ( but single track) layout based on it.  

OT but, while looking for more about the proposed Shepherds Bus terminus, I was highly amused by this from TrainLine 

Travel from Shepherd's Bush to Ealing Broadway by train in 1 hour 20 minutes

If you want to know more about the journey from Shepherd's Bush to Ealing Broadway by train, look no further!

The average journey time from Shepherd's Bush to Ealing Broadway by train is 1 hour 39 minutes, although on the fastest services it can take just 1 hour 20 minutes. You'll usually find 6 trains per day travelling the 4 miles (6 km) between these two destinations. You'll need to make 2 changes along the way to Ealing Broadway. You'll be travelling with Thameslink, London Overground or Southern on your way to Ealing Broadway, as these are the main rail operators on this route.

Or 15 minutes by tube! The perils of automated journey planning.

I also found this piece of nonsense. 

Thinking about taking the train from London Bridge to London Victoria? We've got you covered.

It usually takes around 34 minutes to travel the 3 miles (4 km) from London Bridge to London Victoria by train, although you can get there in as little as 56 minutes on the fastest services

Their 34 minute route is Thameslink to Blackfriars then the Underground, but the Underground alone via Westminster (Jubilee + District/Circle) takes just 11-16 minutes. The 54 minute "fastest" route is the "direct train" that offers an unguided tour of South London.  This is all a useful reminder that computers and AI systems don't do common sense.  

On 08/03/2024 at 17:20, RobinofLoxley said:

Just asking, but how many UK stations actually conform(ed) to the Minories prototype, viz a 3-platform terminus with a loco layover/shunt thing, with some parallel moves for arrivals and departures, and the outermost (furthest from the station) turnout being a trailing turnout on the departures side)?

I'm not sure that any fulfil all those parameters. Birmingham Moor St. was the obvious example of a three-platform terminus with a busy service. Windsor (Riverside) also had three platforms off a double track and would be quite an interesting prototype though not so intense.

Of the other London termini, Marylebone had four platforms and wasn't just a suburban service but I think Fenchurch Street,. also with four platforms,  was about the most compact of them. Although the terrminal road at Liverpool Street (Met) and certain other aspects of the station were Cyril Freezer's direct inspiration for Minories, he said that the idea in Minories of a suburban route worked entirely by tank engines came from the LT&S line out of Fenchurch Street.  There were three terminal roads at Blackfriars with loco layovers but also two through platforms for High Holborn and the Widened lines. The suburban section of Kings Cross with its overall roof and a solid wall between it and the main line station had three platforms and the air of being a separate station.   

Ealing Broadway's District Railway terminus was (and still is)  a three platform terminus and, with its short overall roof and original station building (now shops and offices) at street level with stairs down to the platforms is worth looking at as a model if not as a prototype. It must have had some turnover pattern of operation between its opening 1879 and electrification (still partly loco hauled) in 1905. It was originally a two platform station and I don't know if the third platform road was added with its electrification but the 25 inch OS map (National Library of Scotland) definitely shows a loco layover road with what looks like a coaling stage. The same thing must have also been true of the Hammersmith and City terminus at Hammersmith which is also a three platform station (and even now quite Minories like in its appearance) though there was a loco depot there in steam days rather than just a layover track and it too may have been a two platform station before electrification. 

15 hours ago, britishcolumbian said:

No, you're definitely right... but it's better than nothing... there is a good amount of stock for eras 4 through 6... but a dearth of power. There's the Beckmann État steamer I have... a V36 good for post-ww2 period... and a TRAXX in silver and green era VI... but now Tillig seem to have an 040TX, so a second post-war engine:

 

https://www.tillig.com/eng/Produkte/produktinfo-72014.html

 

But your point is still true, yeah. Can you make a French scene of any sort without some form of Nez Cassé?

But the 040TX- though built in France- were, like the 150X, a German design  (a KDL4 - Kriegsdampflok 4) that had been ordered i 1943 by the occupying Germans from the French builder Schneider in Le Creusot. Apart from the first four (which were sabotaged but later repaired)  they were completed by Schneider for SNCF after the liberation. 

The first time I knowlingly saw a Nez Cassé, it was an ONCF  diesel in Morocco!

On 03/03/2024 at 21:48, F-UnitMad said:

I agree with this. The traditional "British Exhibition layout mindset" has hidden sidings as being a 'must have', but is hidden staging really needed for a home layout...? After all, at home who are you trying to kid that a train has arrived from far away, when in reality it's come just a few feet, regardless of if that area is 'hidden' (again, from whom, exactly?) or scenicked.

 

I've had a slightly odd experience about this. I designed my small French terminus layout to be capable, for casual use , of being shunted with its three road fiddle yard replaced by a blanking piece in which state it fits neatly on the back of my worktable. The idea is that the daily goods train has just arrived and I can spend a pleasant half hour or so shunting it and replacing incoming with departing wagons until the loco is at the other end and the train is ready to depart. It is then only necessary  to run the loco round and move the brake van to the other end to repeat the cycle with the formerly outgoing wagons becoming the next day's inbound. This is much the same principle as shunting an Inglenook but with rather more variety in the shunting.

This idea worked fine but, rather to my surprise, I found that I still really wanted the train to enter  from offstage and exit offstage right as well,  The fiddle yard (which adds passenger and other workings) made the layout a bit too long for my table so I built a "fiddle stick" with a single  piece of track the length of a train (loco and five wagons) . The departed train still needs to be brought back for the loco to run round the train before propelling it off stage during the "interval" ready for the next cycle.  Somehow, this seems far more satisfying , even though I can see the train lurking in the wings,  but I'm not sure why. 

It's possible that exchange sidings would avoid this desire as the trains on your short line railroad complete their journeys and the class 1 fairies come and take the wagons away (or just change their cards) during the night. 

Though for a very different footprint this may give you some ideas for a complete short line. with two termini, one of them with an exchange siding, rather than a terminus to fiddle yard.   

I've always rather liked this plan  designed by Charles Small in 1951 to fit on a standard 9ft x 5ft table tennis table which, rather to my surprise when I re-drew it, fitted this small  area using ordinary Peco track with a minimum 18 inch radius. 

 The track that ends at the G of Gulf is obviously the exchange siding.  Nowadays one would build this as a shelf layout  which would allow for more gradual curves and avoid the spaghetti bowl appearance and,for a diesel era layout, you wouldn't need the turntables. Nevertheless it creates plenty of work for the train crew as this extract from Small's description of a trip for the daily "peddlar" freight run makes clear. It looks like he was using trains of five cars plus a caboose and they'd probably be 40ft cars. Small also assumed passenger as well as freight working but "mixed train daily" was a thing then and not only the title of Lucius Beebe's famous book on short lines.  

“Upon arriving at Gulf Siding, the train holds the main track. The brakeman then cuts it one car ahead of the caboose. This car and the caboose are left standing on the main while the engine and the other four cars pull down to clear the far switch of the siding. When this has been set for the siding, the engineer horses over his Johnson bar and pushes the four cars through the siding track and tunnel and on into Jone’s Mill. Here three cars are set out. The engine and one car (the one picked up at Bayou) come back, reverse the previous moves to couple onto the car and caboose left on the main line and the train departs, chugging on to complete its run at Lake Creole” 

With short trains anf maybe a branch,  I think you could get this sort of multi depot approach into a 19 ft x 11ft 6in L 

On 04/03/2024 at 00:23, jjb1970 said:

When I was young there was something which tended to be called an operator layout, basic scenery (possibly none) but with very prototypical signalling and operation. That was another part of model railways, one which seemed to fade away.

I think that approach may have reflected a world (which I'm just old enough to remember) where, if you wanted to watch steam hauled expresses on one hand or the shunting of a marshalling yard on the other you could just go out and do so but what you couldn't do was to experience the actual operation of a railway. 

Modelling the operation of a railway is just as valid an area of modelling as recreating a railway scene. They're not of course mutually exclusive and many of us at least try to do both but the degree of each will inevitably reflect our own interests.

I do find that the layouts that most appeal to me at exhibitions are those that present me with a credible railway scene in which trains do more than just run through it. Good examples of this for me have been the late Geoff Ashdown's Tower Pier (with its Widened Lines atmosphere and operation effectively from a  lever frame and block instrument  equipped signal box),  Bradfield Gloucester Square, Peter Denny's Leighton Buzzard (as exhibited by Tony Gee and also operated with block instruments), Borchester Market, and a number of others. 

Though I'm not sure if I'd describe it as a layout, one of the exhibits I found most attractive  at Abingdon was Peter Boyce's GW Broad Gauge "Parlour Railway"  with its mahogany panels, velvet curtains and green shaded brass lamps. Though trains (all beautifully modelled in 7mm scale) just shuttled back and forth .It rather reminded me of the fully signalled training railways (usually Gauge 1 or even 3 )  used by railway companies mainly to teach signalling staff

LNWR training railway 1910 

(on a table 20' long in two sections of "sound mahogany, French polished")

but also the display railways  presented at major exhibitions  by several pre -grouping railway companies.

LMS display 1925

I think such approaches  could well still have their place. 

I also find it interesting that, of the model railways, that seemed most influential in the 1950s and 1960s, only the Craig and Mertonford didn't have a heavy dose of operation. The many articles from the builders of Buckingham, Charford and Berrow  (to name just three) all included detailed accounts of their operation and timetabling.   

On 03/03/2024 at 06:33, britishcolumbian said:

I have a pre-SNCF steam locomotive (BR 38, in État livery) which was produced by Beckmann RTR some fair few years ago. Tillig and previously BTTB did an SNCF version of the V36, and I'm fairly sure Tillig has done some very recent/present day French motive power, too. Oh and there was a short-run production of a Michelin railcar by (IIRC) Union-TT, I think it was a resin body. And of course the various wagons you mention, BTTB also did some ex-Prussian passenger stock in post-war SNCF lettering, though I don't know about the accuracy of those.

 

Here's a link to a post with a pic of the État locomotive:

 

Versions of German locos that ended up in France, mostly as reparations after the First World War, have long been fairly common in H0 as well. So have coaches such as "Bastilles" and thunderboxes and standard European wagons in SNCF markings. All have been fairly simple for manufacturers to add to their ranges requiting little more than relettering. However, while these are useful additions to models of native French stock they are no substitute for it in creating a French themed layout.  

23 hours ago, Gordonwis said:

 

I well remember your expertise on the filming locations for the film, but I hadn't seen it for a while, and I always feel that the high shots around the area with the tunnel scene does look remarkably like the Verdun area - so they did a great job.

 

The old 030C that was used latterly in the film alongside the 230Bs was not an Est loco AFAIR

No, it was an originally CF de l'Ouest loco from a class built between 1867-1885 that remarkably remained in service until 1965 . I suppose it was rather the Ouest's equivalent of a Dean goods. I think the old loco used to create havoc in La Bataille du Rail was also an 030C 

The last of the Est 230Bs remained in service until 1967 but I assume the six (not five ) used in The Train* were being withdrawn.   They were part of a class of 390 built between 1901 and 1912 and, according to Wiki, the largest class of "ten wheelers" in France. I've always thought it must have been someone in SNCF who came up with the idea of moving them from Region Est - where the action is supposedly set- to Normandy (Region Ouest), where most of it was filmed.  The production did use the "art train" to move their equipment around the French railway system.   

I agree about the Y shaped viaduct coming out of the tunnel looking very Estish . the left hand leg was the line to Louviers and Acquigny and the right hand leg was a connecting line down to the double-track line from Oissel to Glos Montfort that passes beneath the viaduct (though unseen in the film) 

The Train is sort of based on a true story. Just before the liberation of Paris in 1944, the Germans tried to ship five final van loads of looted art to Germany, mostly impressionist and modern art that the Nazis despised. The cheminots, warned by Rose Valland, ensured that they never got out of the Paris rail system though by far more subtle means than those shown in the film (which were in part based on scenes in La Battaille du Rail)   and were finally taken in charge by a unit of the advancing French army.

The film implied that "Mlle. Vilard " was making her first contact with the resistance and begging them to stop the art train but she had in reality been working with them through the occupation. Working at the Jeu de Paume museum that the Germans were using as a depot for their looiting of art, Valland had secretly, and at great personal risk,  recorded the contents and destinations of  looted art shipments keeping the Resistance informed so that they wouldn't be blown up and, after the war enabling some 60 000 item of looted art to be identified with most of it returned to its rightful owners by 1950.

The actual story can be found here  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Valland  

* The 230Bs that appeared in the film were nos. 517, 614, 617, 711, 739, 856 

On 23/02/2024 at 09:24, TEAMYAKIMA said:

OK, let's stop talking about being positive - let's DO something positive - let's support a club which is being VERY positive.

 

Abingdon & District MRC are celebrating their 50th anniversary this year with their first ever TWO DAY show on March 2/3.

 

Yes, that's right - at a time when clubs are pulling out of putting on shows, at a time when two day shows are shrinking to one day shows, Abingdon and District MRC are going the other way - they are expanding, they are being positive, they are taking a risk in order to send out a positive vibe - time for us to put our money where our mouth is and support this kind of positivity.

 

How do I know so much about this show? Because we are going to be there and so, if you want to learn more about Chinese railways, you can always come and talk to me.

 

 

 

I went to the Abingdon show yesterday and it was very good indeed with a good range of layouts from the very large (like Yakima that was attracting a healthy spectatorship) to small simple layouts.  Overall it presented a very positive image of our hobby. 

I've been looking at videos of a couple of recent largish shows in France and this one particularly struck me 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtopULJoBQ8&ab_channel=LF_MODELISME

In terms of seeing the layouts there are better videos on Youtube of this particular show (St. Mandé 2024 held in the town hall of one of the outer Paris suburbs) but, unusually,  the videographer, interviewed the presenters of as many of the layouts as possible. They're probably saying much the same as their British equivalents would if asked and I certainly didn't wade through 2h23m of it but what did strike me , spinning through it ,  was  their age profile which seems to be significantly younger than it would be in Britain. That  accords with my own impressions from past exhibitions there. 

Overall the hobby is smaller in France than in Britain  with an estimated (by Loco-revue) total of about 30 000 active modellers (excluding collectors)  of which about 7000 are members of the country's 280 or so clubs.

My impression has also been that clubs there are rather more successful at attracting younger members and railway modelling seems accepted like any other loisir (hobby) and it's quite common for male exhibitors to be accompanied by their wives who often operate the layout .

The hobby also seems to be less engaged in nostalgia than in the inherent pleasures of modelling though layout operation (i.e, shunting)  is far more limited and most large club layouts are based on trains running through often quite magnificent scenery. 

Based on those who used to bring layouts from Europe to British shows like ExpoNG or Eurotrack it looks like the picture is similar in countries  like Belgium and the Netherlands but I can't be sure of that. 

It's always worth watching. There are also some rather modern looking cars in the Vaires car park but I'd not noticed the catenary. The other "goof" was that much of the track, including the section that Lancaster's character saboataged to finally stop the art train was bull head rather than flat bottom and that wasn't used on the Est. That does of course reflect the reality that, apart from the scenes in Paris, it was filmed on the west region with most of the action on an already closed section of the former Rouen-Orleans line with "Rive-Reine" being the real station at Acquigny with Louviers and Heudreville also putting in appearances. What they did get right was to bring in I think five recently withdrawn 230B locos from the eastern region. 

I'd call the 1964 film  The Train rather than Le Train as there's a French film of that title (released in English as The Last Trains) starring  Jean-Louis Trintignant and Romy Schneider from 1973 based on Georges Simenon's 1963 short novel. It's about two people who meet on a refugee train crossing France ahead of the advancing Germans in 1940 from near Sedan to La Rochelle (before it was electrified). The train itself was hauled by 230G353 but I think a 141R does put in an appearance though in the dusk. It's also well worth seeing. 

On 01/03/2024 at 20:34, GenericRMWebUsername said:

I could be wrong, but I think we're still a while away from seeing Continental manufacturers entering the British TT market.  While TT has made strides in recent years in Western Europe, there's still a lot of prototypes available for modeling. Continuing to grow TT in Western Germany, France, the Netherlands, etc. seems like a more a natural progression for those firms.

So far, unfortunately since it's what I model, I've seen no evidence of TT gaining any foothold at all in France. If you want to build a German, Czech or Hungarian etc. layout in TT things are fairly rosy but, apart from the odd wagon- which could of course be found outside France, I've seen no sign of anything being available in TT scale* . The hobby base is smaller there than in Britain or Germany so it's probably too much  of a niche. It took a long time for much French material to be available in N scale though the market is pretty well served now.   

*Even for narrow gauge, relatively few French modelers  use 12 mm gauge track for H0m, despite the fact that the country once had some 20 000 kms (12 500 miles) of metre gauge railways. Most narrow gauge modellers there use H0e or 0e, even though the total of 60cm (2ft more or less) public railways was only about 450 km and the 750-760mm gauge that H0e properly represents was confined to just one public railway 12km long. 

On 28/02/2024 at 13:24, Siberian Snooper said:

I had a visit several years ago to the Brighton rifle club that uses the tunnel as their rifle range, from the outside you wouldn't know that there was ever a tunnel there.

 

 

Was it they who once had a shooting range under the now long lost West Pier? I did doing some 22 rifle shooting there when I was at University but only a couple of times.   

By the way, looking at alternative histories of Brighton's railways There is a good precedent for a terminus next to the sea with Ramsgate Harbour/Beach which was ideally compact and also emerged from a tunnel. I could well see something like that having appeared at Brighton as, for a seaside town, the station is rather a long way from the sea (though Kemptown was also rather a long way from the main seaside attractions). 

3 hours ago, 009 micro modeller said:

Like this, you mean?

Idris is exactly the sort of dragon I had in mind- though a small heraldic dragon might be a bit less than an A4 would need to raise steam at 21 000 ft. You'd also need to lower the boiler pressure by 0.8 bar (though, since the pressure gauge and I think the safety valves work on relative rather than absolute pressure that's not a great problem)