Quotulatiousness

January 31, 2024

The ghost of Beeching haunts model railways?

Filed under: Britain, Media, Railways — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Critic, Richard Bratby notes the solemn departure of the very last model railway train in Britain, at least based on recent reporting on the hobby:

“Platelayers hut and coal train” by Phil_Parker is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

The last model train has departed, and in the attics and spare bedrooms of Britain, closure notices the size of thumbnails are being glued to cardboard stations. OO gauge track is being torn up; weeds made from lichen and flock shoot up where once there were busy miniature main lines. It’s Beeching all over again, just tiny. And in a desolate parade, once-cherished model locos trundle off to 4mm scale scrapyards, to stand lifeless and forgotten until, like their real-life forebears, they are broken up to be recycled as … oh, I don’t know. iPhones. Xboxes. Something modern, anyway. Something cool.

Well, I read it in the Telegraph, so it must be true. “Death of the Model Railway” proclaimed the headline last weekend, and the same story duly popped up all over the media, usually with some variant of “running out of steam”, or “going off the rails”. I was a bit late coming to the news because it was Saturday and I’d spent the afternoon building a model goods wagon from a plywood kit. I’d just added the lettering, and it came as a jolt to learn that the hobby no longer existed. Gingerly, I poked at the varnish I’d just applied — damn, still sticky, and now there was a socking great out-of-scale thumbprint spoiling the look of the thing. That seemed real enough.

But why did those headlines seem so familiar — and ring so false? True, 2024 has begun badly in the railway modelling world. Last week the organisers of the annual Warley National Model Railway Exhibition — a giant show held at the NEC in Birmingham, and a highlight of the hobby’s annual calendar — called it quits. A few days previously, the venerable model railway shop Hattons had announced that it was closing down after 78 years. Taken together, you can see why a journo from outside this particular subculture might link unrelated events into a bigger, juicier story. And let’s face it, a dig at railway enthusiasts is always good for a laugh, isn’t it?

I won’t deny that both events stung me. As a kid in the 80s I used to visit Hattons at its original Liverpool location. Even then, it felt old-school: a gloomy, musty terraced shop, piled to the ceiling with boxes and display cases. But a Saturday visit was like entering Aladdin’s cave and we’d always leave with some new treasure, wrapped in brown paper. Hattons has long since moved to newer, brighter premises and refocused on its mail-order business. I realise with a pang of shame that I’ve never used either.

As for the Warley Exhibition; well, I was there with my dad in November. It’s a regular father and son fixture a few weeks before Christmas, and if we’re honest we probably look forward to it rather more. It was rammed — 80-odd layouts (please, never “train sets”) from the UK, Europe and America, with crowds jostling four deep, and trade stands offering everything from antique clockwork models to the latest digital tech. My 12-year old eyes would have popped out of my head at the quantity and quality of products available. One stall was using airport-stye scanners to produce miniaturised replicas of its customers, so they could ride their model trains in person. If this is a hobby in decline, I’m not seeing it.

I’m going to stick my neck out here: correlation does not imply causation, and railway modelling is actually thriving. What the headlines describe is a collision of two familiar, but separate, 21st century trends the death of the high street, and the decline of old-style social clubs. Hattons never went bust: it read the runes and decided to get out in good order. As for Warley; well, if anything, the Exhibition seems to have been a victim of its own success. Like many leisure pursuits, railway modelling in the 20th century revolved around clubs, with all the paraphernalia of committees and tea rotas. People don’t do that quite so much nowadays.

February 24, 2023

You may call it “interest cycling”, but I call it “normality”

Filed under: Books, Personal, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Tom Knighton on what is apparently called “interest cycling” in hobbies and other leisure-time activities:

An article from a late 1950s issue of Model Railroader magazine showing a very small HO scale layout plan. The author later admitted that it’s really too small to do much with after it’s built — without some expansion — but the building can take more time than you might expect and you’d need to develop some new skills to do it properly.

Something many ADHD people do — and maybe others, I don’t know — is what I call “interest cycling”.

Basically, I get insanely hyperfocused on one thing, devoting almost all of my time to this One Thing for weeks at a time, then suddenly stop for whatever reason and then jump onto something else.

As a result, I never become truly great at anything. What’s more, since many of these areas of hyperfocus — one article called them obsessions, and with plenty of cause — require money, I end up needing to spend large quantities of money that I really can’t afford to spend.

But, it’s a need.

And it’s a problem. For a lot of us.

See, I have obligations that surround some of my interests. I’m a group leader for the local chapter of an organization I’m part of, for example, that requires not just me to teach a class once per week, but also to advance my own knowledge.

I still teach the class because others are counting on me to do so, but I haven’t been devoting much time to the rest of it, and I should since there are some tangential benefits to what I’m trying to accomplish here at The Knighton Experiment. Sure, some of it isn’t, but that’s just part of the game, so to speak.

What’s worse is that, so far as I’ve been able to find, there aren’t a lot of ways to combat this.

Which suggests that I’m kind of doomed to go through this cycle for the rest of my life.

Now, there are upsides. I mean, there aren’t many people who could detail both how to build a chest of drawers and a 14th-century transitional plate harness, for example. While I can’t necessarily build either with a high degree of proficiency, I at least know what’s involved.

In my own case, those sound like perfectly normal interests — I share both of them — although since my income dropped precipitously several years ago, I don’t spend money as Tom still does. What I have done, however, is to accumulate future stocks of books on those topics I typically cycle through over time so that when the urge strikes I can at least ameliorate some of the need by reading about rather than actively engaging in the hobby/interest/activity. That might be the difference between Tom’s concern and my experience … I cycle among a number of interests, but not brand new ones all the time.

January 16, 2022

The world’s most useful model railway

Filed under: Germany, Railways — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tom Scott
Published 27 Sep 2021

In Darmstadt, Germany, there’s the Eisenbahnbetriebsfeld: a model railway connected to actual railway signalling equipment, so that controllers can learn without putting any real trains in danger. I got to learn the very basics.
■ More about the railway (in German): https://www.eisenbahnbetriebsfeld.de/

Camera: Moritz Janisch
Producer: Marcel Fenchel https://www.fenchel-janisch.de
Editor: Isla McTear

With thanks to Deutsche Bahn and DB Training, AKA Bahn, the Institut für Bahnsysteme und Bahntechnik at TU Darmstadt, and all the team at the Eisenbahnbetriebsfeld!

I’m at https://tomscott.com

on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tomscott

and on Instagram as tomscottgo

June 19, 2021

Airfix Catalogue 1962 Page by Page — The Very First Catalogue

Filed under: Britain, Railways — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

MOS6510 Models
Published 29 May 2020

Airfix Catalogue 1962 Page by Page — The Very First Catalogue

We turn back time and go through the very first Airfix Model kit Catalogue one page at a time. 1962 was the year of the first edition Catalogue of Airfix Constant Scale Construction Kits. Filled with 135 kits — planes, trains and automobiles the norm, with figures trackside OO/HO constant scale. There is lots in here to look at and enjoy.

As you flip through the pages of this Airfix Catalogue, you will see details of over 135 constant scale plastic construction kits. From the photographs and brief descriptions you will get an idea of the look and size of the finished models. Not until you begin to build them, however, will you feel the excitement and satisfaction of creating miniature exact scale models of famous fighter planes, tanks and ships. So put this video on HD 1080p and make it full screen … sit back and enjoy this catalogue page by page

If you liked the video you can buy me a coffee here
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Music credit : Music by @ikson -alive https://youtube.com/ikson

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Information on kits was researched using https://www.scalemates.com​ plus other websites and forums found on the internet

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May 20, 2021

Men Will Be Boys (1970)

Filed under: Britain, Gaming, History, Railways — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

British Pathé
Published 13 Apr 2014

Men will be boys. Various locations.

M/S men round lake with boats. C/U man in lake with waders with model boat. C/U another man with model boat. Man lighting boiler. C/U engine working. M/S as model of paddle boat moves through water. M/S paddle boat on water. In foreground a swan. C/U another model boat going through water. M/S pan scale model of Hitler’s yacht. M/S men playing with model cars on race track. C/U cars going round race track. C/U men’s hands on controls. C/U men looking at cars go past. L/S of cars going round race track.

L/S men playing war games with model soldiers. on large table. C/U as man moves soldiers out of line laying them on ground. M/S man moves horses forward. C/U hand placing cannon into position. C/U hand places horse troops in position. M/S lines of soldier. Hand places another in position. M/S of troops being moved.

M/S Mr Victor Martin and wife go through gate by railway crossing dressed up in their uniforms, carrying lamps etc. M/S as they make their way to their signal boxes. C/U railway notice ‘By Midland Railway’. Pa off notice to show Mr Martin approaching his signal box. M/S Martin going into signal box. M/S Mrs Martin going into signal box. C/U Mrs Martin going into signal box. C/U interior. Mr Martin hanging up his jacket inside signal box. He then sits at the controls. C/U signal controls working. C/U of Mr Martin operating signals. Camera zooms back and we see train going past him along track. C/U model train over track. C/U Mrs Martin working in her signal box.

M/S Mrs Martin working signal controls. C/U Mrs Martin. M/S showing trains going over track. C/U trains moving. Camera zooms out to show tracks . C/U trains moving. C/U looking along tunnel showing trains moving. C/U exterior. Signals working. Then camera pans to show where the trains run on an enclosed section out in the open. C/U goods train and passenger train moving. M/S Interior. Trains going over track and Mr Martin at controls.
FILM ID:2241.18

A VIDEO FROM BRITISH PATHÉ. EXPLORE OUR ONLINE CHANNEL, BRITISH PATHÉ TV. IT’S FULL OF GREAT DOCUMENTARIES, FASCINATING INTERVIEWS, AND CLASSIC MOVIES. http://www.britishpathe.tv/

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British Pathé also represents the Reuters historical collection, which includes more than 136,000 items from the news agencies Gaumont Graphic (1910-1932), Empire News Bulletin (1926-1930), British Paramount (1931-1957), and Gaumont British (1934-1959), as well as Visnews content from 1957 to the end of 1984. All footage can be viewed on the British Pathé website. https://www.britishpathe.com/

March 18, 2021

The Hornby Story

Filed under: Britain, Business, History, Railways — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Little Car
Published 27 Feb 2020

Hornby Railways is a British model railway brand. Its roots date back to 1901, when founder Frank Hornby received a patent for his Meccano construction toy. The first clockwork train was produced in 1920. In 1938, Hornby launched its first 00 gauge train. In 1964, Hornby and Meccano were bought by their competitor, Tri-ang, and sold on when Tri-ang went into receivership. Hornby Railways became independent again in the 1980s, and became listed on the London Stock Exchange, but due to recent financial troubles, reported in June 2017, is presently majority owned by turnaround specialist Phoenix Asset Management.

The script for this video comes from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornby_…
If you find issues with the content, I encourage you to update the Wikipedia article, so everyone can benefit from your knowledge.

To get early ad-free access to new videos, or your name at the end of my videos, please consider supporting me from just $1 or 80p a month at https://www.patreon.com/bigcar

#hornby #hornbyrailways

December 26, 2019

James May’s Toy Stories – Peter Snow’s Attic

Filed under: Britain, Railways — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Megan T
Published 26 Apr 2015

May 21, 2019

Four “youths” vandalize model railway show

Filed under: Britain, Law, Railways — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

There don’t appear to be any details online about the four “youths” who were arrested then released, so I assume their anonymity is protected by a British equivalent of the “Young Offenders Act”. The Market Deeping Model Railway Club describes the crime on their website:

We were all immensely upset to discover that overnight the school where our show was to be held had been broken into and almost everything totally ruined. This has devastated not only our own members but those of other clubs and the traders who had already set up shop. In the circumstances we felt we had no option other than to cancel the show.

Some of the models destroyed were irreplaceable and while we will of course be seeking to replace and rebuild wherever possible, this will take time and money. We have been overwhelmed by the many messages of support we have received together with offers of financial assistance. Please do help raise funds via our Just Giving page.

Click the image to go to their Just Giving fundraising page.

More on the incident from Deepings Nub News:

Bill Sowerby, Market Deeping Model Railway Club exhibition manager, told Deepings Nub News: “I arrived at 7.30am to be met by one of our members who told me the terrible news.

“Four of the layouts were completely trashed – two of our club’s, one privately owned and one from St Neots club.

“Four demonstrator stands and one for Bourne U3A stall, which would have raised funds for their organisation, was also smashed.

“Fortunately five other layouts in another room were undamaged and we had nine more left to install early this morning.

“It’s really hurtful for us all, not just because of the thousands of pounds we have lost in income – we were expecting between 400 and 500 visitors – and have paid out a lot of money to put on what is the club’s main fundraising event. Demonstrators and trade stands have also lost income.

“But it’s also the time and effort that members put into building the layouts. The St Neots layout took 25 years to construct and our Woodcroft layout took 26 years and involved more than 100 people over those years spending thousands of hours.

“Woodcroft will be repaired, but it’s so sad because a large number of the people who dedicated their time to build it are no longer with us. It has real sentimental importance to the club.

“Although our Knowl End – a children’s layout – was completely destroyed.”

February 14, 2019

Even train nerds don’t want “people who know absolutely nothing about rail, high-speed or otherwise, jumping on our bandwagon”

Filed under: Railways, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

John C. Wright shares a communication he received from a train enthusiast:

The comments on your blog post today about the Sickly-Green New Deal were coming thick and fast, so I didn’t really have an opportunity to say anything, but I did want to throw in my two cents.

Along with the other basic reason not to like this whole plan (namely, that it’s lunacy), I am personally frustrated by its emphasis on high-speed rail.

By now you know that I’m a train nerd (and I emphasize “nerd”: by my wife’s estimation, the attendees at a National Model Railroad Association convention are even more undateable than the folks at a typical Comic Con).

It’s precisely for that reason that I am so frustrated by these people: they give rail advocates a bad name.

The last thing we need are people who know absolutely nothing about rail, high-speed or otherwise, jumping on our bandwagon because “trains are neat-o!”

Among other things, this false enthusiasm on the part of the left leads to conservatives opposing trains qua trains, simply because they reason that anything liberals are so fond of must by definition be awful (a reasonable argument, I grant you). It’s a bit like having a crazy stalker woman being obsessed with you. Far from being flattered, you want to get a restraining order.

Now, of course, in MY utopia, railroads would dominate the travel scene, much like they did at the end of World War II, though not to the exclusion of other forms of travel.

(Envision the travel scene as it looked in 1945, but with current technology, and you pretty much have the picture.) People would simply use trains more and other modes less, and we would be able to manage without any more freeways or airports than we had in the late 1940s.

When I imagine this utopia, I run into the same problem anyone who tries to envision a utopia runs into: how does one make people like what you like? Since I would never want to force people to do things against their wishes, I can only overcome this by imagining a utopia where everyone just happens to agree with me about trains (along with anything else I consider important, like belief in God, or that bank tellers should still wear jackets and ties or dresses to work as appropriate).

Because this is obviously impossible, it serves to remind me that utopias can only exist in one’s mind and cannot be brought into reality – and that one should never attempt to do so.

June 24, 2018

Proper Model Making – a rant against the decline of good model shops

Filed under: Business, Gaming, Military, Railways — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Lindybeige
Published on 1 Jun 2018

A bit of a rant about how youngsters these days are making fewer models. The setting is Helsinki’s Mallikauppa.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Lindybeige

My source for the information about Charles Lutman were a newspaper article and word of mouth from his grandson.

Many thanks to the shop for letting me shoot this. Here is its website: https://www.mallikauppa.fi

Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.

February 8, 2018

A virtual tour of the Rensselaer Model Railroad Society’s NEB&W layout

Filed under: Railways — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

John McCluskey shared this link on one of my mailing lists, and it’s well worth the visit: https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=e6d8iA5vGQ5. I visited the New England, Berkshire & Western layout at Rensselaer Polytechnic about twenty years ago, and the society has been busy working on it, so that while I recognize a lot of the scenes, they’ve clearly added to or upgraded them from my visit.

December 21, 2017

Manufacturing model trains in China

Filed under: Business, Cancon, China, Railways — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Jason Shron (who glories in living the “hoser” stereotype) runs a small Canadian company that manufactures 1:87 scale model trains, doing the majority of the actual manufacturing in China. Even there, rising standards of living mean that small companies like Rapido Trains need to be on the lookout for ways to economize, as illustrated in this short video:

November 10, 2017

Model Railroad – 1950 Educational Documentary – WDTVLIVE42

Filed under: Railways — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

wdtvlive42 – Archive Footage
Published on 20 Oct 2017

An introduction to model railroads, featuring the O-Scale layout of the Westchester Model Railroad Club.

QotD: Dissing model railroaders

Filed under: Media, Quotations, Railways — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I hate it when nonmodelers talk about model trains.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3264325/My-favourite-tracks-ones-trains-says-Rod-Stewart-Singer-reveals-books-second-hotel-room-models-play-tour.html
http://www.therichest.com/expensive-lifestyle/money/rod-stewart-model-train-collection/

I’m not a lover of rock music so when Model Railroader did a writeup of Rod Stewart’s layout a few years back, I said who? Then I read the article and said wow, that’s great work. Especially when it was obvious that Mr. Stewart did the work himself. A great model railroad isn’t something you can just buy, no matter how rich you are. It’s a labor of love that involves developing real skills and tens of thousands of hours of painstaking work. Most model railroads are never finished and disappear when their builders pass on, making them more or less ephemeral works of art.

To call what Mr. Stewart does, “playing with trains” is a direct insult. Nobody says about even the crappiest painter or sculptor that they are just “playing with paint” or “playing with clay.” The same for all sorts of hobbies Yet the tone that you get when you admit to modeling trains is almost always the same. Somehow building model train is playing with toys and you are doing something childish. Somehow the idea that trains come in “sets” never seems to go beyond the train around the tree.

Which couldn’t be farther from the truth. Model railroading involves a great number of skills that most hobbies don’t have. For instance, you don’t get too far before you realize that your favorite prototype train is just not being made, or isn’t being made in your railroad’s paint scheme. So you get out the saw and cut up that train set locomotive and add other parts, ending by repainting the engine in your colors. Now you want a spur track on your railroad to service an industry. You might need to learn how to make your own track. That industry, well that might involve digging into historical archives to figure out what the building did before it became a shopping mall. As for how the railroad looks, those train set trees and vacuum formed tunnel get old fast, so you learn how to form hills and rocks, filling the hills with trees, that look like trees. You research that stuff too. In fact model railroading involves researching, photographing and studying far more than just the trains because the train need a reason to run and country to run through.

Almost no other hobby than model trains gets the kind of ridicule that model railroaders do. Some of that is, unfortunately, self-inflicted as model railroaders aren’t above poking a little at each other. Still, I’m not sure what causes the stigma that goes with small trains. Yet no other hobby requires the number of skills that model railroading, if done well does. You work with more kinds of tools, frequently through magnification than just about anything else. I’ve seen hobbyist machinists for instance talk about having to deal with “small parts” that were larger than a typical modeling project.

J.C. Carlton, “Rod Stewart And His Trains”, The Arts Mechanical, 2016-03-17.

November 1, 2017

James May’s Top Toys

Filed under: Britain, History, Railways — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

railwayman2013
Published on 2 Jan 2013

I love hornby trains !!!

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