Jenny Emily

The rotating axle boxes are loose on the pre production samples but will be secure on production models. This was explained to me in an email from Hattons prior to the review. Two of mine fell off but I am prepared to accept Hattons’ explanation that this was an unfortunate quirk of it being a pre production model so didn’t make a thing of it.

my review now live. Haulage capacity was astounding and the finesse of the tampo printing amazing.

Yes I did a load test. All will be revealed in tomorrow’s video.

I received and reviewed a pre production sample over the weekend. The video will go live on my Youtube channel tomorrow, as will New Junctions own video of his pre production sample. the production models of up to and including the rail blue model are in transit. Those that ordered the DC and plain DCC versions before the cut off date will get theirs before Christmas. All the rest are coming in January. i reviewed a GBRf example. New Junction has a Freightliner one.

War of the Worlds will be at LFORM at Ally Pally. Currently it is stored inside Hattons’ warehouse thanks to their kind offer of space. It has been carefully split into three sections to be transported which took a little doing. Long term future for it is uncertain. Despite impressing a lot of people and generating a lot of questions and interest from the public, it has no long term home at the moment and will likely get stripped after Ally Pally. Halloween and Dr Evil’s volcano lair were dismantled on site at end of filming of the final. The boards were donated to Team Corby for their club. Scenery bit and pieces have been recycled into several members’ own layouts. I have the Bates motel from Halloween on my own layout; it was a very nice Noch card kit and too good to junk despite Simon hating building it up.

same reason we made lots of trees in our heat from seagrass. The rules had so much about points being awarded for so many technical things, only for judging to ignore all that and go only on the subjective opinions of two people. It was a bit like trying to judge a Jackson Pollock against a Van Gogh without using any objective framework to do it and relying instead only on personal preference.

we had so many issues ordering for the finals for the same reason. We kept getting told something wasn’t available, when their website was still saying it was available to buy. After three attempts to order locos got knocked back we asked if they could confirm what was actually in stock they just sent us the same copy of the full price list we already had which was no use.

Orders that were delivered to Fawley for teams that didn't in the end make it through would have been returned to the suppliers. In our semi layout our Hornby order got messed up and arrived at my house after we had left for Fawley. So the production team got them to send a duplicate to Fawley which failed to arrive until after filming wrapped. They wouldn't let us have the duplicate and sent it straight back to Hornby (we did get to keep the original order which was waiting at home when we got back)

I’m also miffed at Kathy’s comment about either end looking like an afterthought of plonked stuff. If they had actually paid attention to the interview with team members (cut from the transmitted program) they would have known that every item had a significance as either something pertaining to a team member, back story or social reference.

Behind the scenes. I captured Steve’s reaction to ‘his’ items getting given out for the scratchbuild challenge along with Tim’s Baywatch comment that appeared to get cut even though team Corby later mentions it. So much that was filmed got cut out. I have no idea where the judges and production got the idea of the tree supposed to be ‘bursting’ through the floorboards. We explained repeatedly that it was the kids model railway coming to life as an evil tree grows up through the middle bringing evil life to all the toys. Quite a few continuity errors, and changes in the scores that go unexplained. All three models were brilliant. it was never 100% clear what and how it was actually being judged. We completed the brief and our plan and everything worked perfectly. The judging felt very subjective rather than objective.

One thing that comes out of the edit is that Steve seems to talk teams up to the mark he gives making it seem like he is awarding points up to his final mark whilst Kathy comes across as taking marks off to bring the teams down to her score. I've noticed this in most of the episodes. Even if the marks they give are the same, it seems this is the way they put it across. None of the teams were ever privy to this side of filming. We learnt what judges were saying about us watching the final episodes. Even the scores were a QI inspired mystery to us despite trying to cajol information out of the production crew. I talked to Steve a lot, and got on really well with him on set. He wasn't like I expected, having only previously communicated with him via email. I didn't talk to Kathy much during filming as she kept herself to herself a lot when not filming.

Surprised at Tim's comments about cutting into the board. The eagle eyed may have noticed that on War of the Worlds we cut and lowered two sections of the board. The water that the Thunderchild sat in was below baseboard level, as was another patch of water which mysteriously disappeared overnight - the only magic that Aqua magic performed was a disappearing act. There was a whole frame built of 2" x 1" wood underneath to stop the layout from otherwise breaking in half as we had cut out so much. I thought Grantham's build was very good on the engineering. I really liked the scale of the countryside. The radio telescope was also a marvel in miniature.

I sympathise with the 'chauffeur' comments. For many years it has narked me at exhibitions that when I take a male friend as my +1 to operate my layout, men still almost exclusively turn to him to ask questions about the layout. They take great delight in answering "I dunno. Why don't you ask Jenny, as she built it" whilst pointing back at me. I'm very impressed at the number of women modellers in the series. We had two on our team, and the first episode had a few too. Perhaps a better showing than series one got. I would have been team captain of the Rail Riders, but the TV company bumped me from the role and made Les captain; a role he did not want to do. Perhaps I had annoyed some-one in dropping out of series one, though it suited me as when five expectant faces turn to me and ask "what now, Boss?" my response is usually "I was going to ask you guys the same question"

The heat shrink scenic mat was a Woodland Scenics product. Anyone familiar with Arcadia models in Shaw will see them to their right as they enter the door of that shop. An interview with myself and Les Cliff for Hornby:

Perhaps they were hoping that the Martians would destroy it with their heat ray. Good riddance to it.

The navy does reuse names a lot. Not inconceivable that had there been a real one there would have been more than one over the years. The kit was the right scale and if we had used something else the rivet counters would have moaned that it was the wrong scale or overwhelmed the layout. The music was an original piece composed and recorded by Bruno Grife who is a well known Israeli music producer. It is intended to invoke the Jeff Wayne music without being a copy. The full piece can be heard here: Just remember that most of what is filmed gets left on the cutting room floor. Rolling stock was a mix of what we had that was guaranteed fault free running. There are not prizes for trying to be a hero with unreliable stuff and failing. I wanted pre grouping but was outvoted. But in the words of Monty Python: “it’s only a model”

Team Rail Riders from Heat 2: Whilst preparing for and filming the series, I also found time to build my new layout:

Enjoyed filming this series. I would echo the hard work and stress. A big thanks to Hattons too whose warehouse currently houses stuff that is waiting for the series to air so it can see the light of day again. The biggest take home from the filming was that I got a lot better (and quicker) at modelling, found I could do things that I had never tried before, and got to play with materials that I would otherwise have never even known about for modelling.

Everyone is (quite rightly) keeping quiet about the filming of this, but you can spot me in the trailer that Steve Flint posted.

Rails were kind enough to allow me to review their Terrier against a Hornby one:

I did a live stream as 12:00 rolled over. Hampered by Bachmann's site falling over, but Andy York was the legend who came through with the list here on RMWeb so we all had something to go through! Probably a good consolidation year, and certainly my bank balance breaths a sigh of relief after the Hornby announcements and orders that followed. There are a few gems hiding in the re liveries but I'm awaiting seeing some pictures to be certain. I'm particularly interested in the Rail Stores van.

The latest fad from poor drivers seems to be trying desperately to put their foot down and racing every other driver into the start of roadworks with average speed cameras only to pull in sharply in front of the overtaken traffic, brake hard, then crawl through the roadworks at far less than the speed limit. I'm seeing this a lot at the moment. I have also witnessed a few times in the roadworks on the M6 middle lane hogs who move to lane 3 instead of lane 1 when flashed for lane hogging by vehicles stuck behind them. Am I missing something?

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke Flow my Tears the Policeman said by Philip K. Dick Non-Stop by Brian Aldis Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliffe Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn Any of the Jack Reacher books by Lee Child Any of the Bernard Samson books by Len Deighton

The Duchess of Montrose in the same green livery that the Hornby Dublo version carried is inspired. This model holds fond childhood memories for me and for this alone it has an appeal that will see me buy one. I'm sure that many other people will too for similar reasons. My old Hornby Dublo model will be retrieved from storage at my parents' house for old time's sake. Now if only Bachmann would release a standard class 4 tank with early crest as 80054....

I'd love to see a properly tooled class 06, perhaps to cash in on the success of the Pecketts and Sentinals. The classes 02 and 01 also remain unmodeled; about the last BR classes left to do.