Railways Blog

It doesn’t seem a whole year since the 2007 event.

The Manchester show always concentrates on high quality, and this year’s was no exception. It was very much into big layouts this year, and a good proportion weren’t kettle-based either. I’ve seen the excellent 4mm slice of south London “Vauxhall Road” before, with impressive architectural modelling and real urban atmosphere, with the frequent EMU services passing on the a high curving viaduct above the streets.

I’ve also seen the German HO layout “Ediger Eller” before; I thought the scenic modelling was excellent (And I travelled on that line in the summer) but it lost verisimilitude for me by running trains from widely-separated eras side-by side. 01 pacifics and Class 485 electrics just don’t mix I’m afraid.

“Stainmore Summit” was the best steam layout for me, representing the bleak and windswept summit of the now-closed trans-pennine line from Barnard Castle to Penrith, modelled as it was in it’s last years before closure.

Loscoe Yard in G scale was impressive, an simple ‘shunting plank’ featuring a locomotive servicing facility in an urban US setting. In a smaller scale it would have been very much ‘ho hum’, but scaled up to 1:29, it impressed.

But the highlight had to be another larger-scale layout, Apethorn Junction. 7mm scale, fully DCC, all locos equipped with sound, the thing just oozed atmosphere. It really gave the impression you were standing by the lineside in about 1971 watching the trains go past. To see a class 25 slowly rounding the curve with a rake of vanfits slowing to a signal stop looked more like the real thing than a model.  Made me kick myself for not taking my camera.

Although this show tends to be about layouts rather than traders, my credit card managed to get mugged by Mr Bachmann and Mr Dapol.

The trouble with model railway stuff is the secondhand value is always more if you keep the original box it came in. This means I’m reluctant to throw the boxes away, even though they’re decidedly sub-optimal for actually keeping the trains in when not in use (purpose-designed stock boxes capable of holding entire trains are better for that)

This means I’ve actually had to buy a couple of plastic storage boxes just to hold loads of empty Dapol, Bachmann and Minitrix boxes so I can stick them all up in the loft.

Something makes me think I really should be throwing them out instead.

It’s September, so the annual N gauge exhibition has come round again. Last year’s was the official N-gauge Society one in Kettering, this year it’s the turn of the ‘unofficial’ one. This is held at the grandly-titled Warwickshire Exhibition Centre, actually a converted cowshed in the middle of nowhere somewhere outside Leamington Spa.

As usual, it was showcase of the best of N gauge modelling, an opportunity for manufacturers large and small to demonstrate their wares, and an opportunity to meet up with friends who descended on the place from far and wide. In that respect it’s a bit like some prog gigs; although the only overlap was Andi Dell, manning the DEMU stand, who I’d met earlier in the year when he was doing the lighting for Mostly Autumn at Gloucester.

Star layout for me was Graeme Hedges’ magnificent slice of urban south London, “Stoney Lane Depot”. I’d seen it in bare baseboard form, and seen photos in two magazines, but it’s different seeing it ‘in the flesh’ in three dimensions. This is precisely the sort of thing where N-gauge excels; superb architectural modelling where the urban landscape dominates the trains.

The big manufacturers had their latest ‘in development’ models. Bachmann’s painted 108s looked superb, and their class 42 “Warships” looked good too, even if there was something not quite right about the full yellow end ones. The 150 looked superb; I can’t wait to see a fully painted versions. Over on the yellow and purple Dapol stand we had their sprinter, the 156, along with some new “Megafret” intermodal flats, and their Mk3 DVT. The InterCity DVT suffers from some livery errors, which I trust will be corrected in the production version.

As usual at this sort of show I ended up spending far too much money; I didn’t buy any locomotives this time, but still managed to emerge with a significantly lighter wallet. And there were no impulse buys are all – Everything I bought was on my shopping list, the most significant purchase being the Dapol dummy Voyager “Dr Who”, where I managed to get my hands on one of the last ones – they’re now completely sold out from Dapol.

It’s frustrating when you arrive at your destination two hours late because of missed train connections; it happened to me twice on holiday; contrary to popular belief, German trains don’t run on time (unlike those in Switzerland). But it’s nothing on planes.

Psycho Chicken has a real horror story of the sort of thing that happens to air travellers when things go pear-shaped. Imagine if Virgin Trains did something like that. You’d never hear the end of it.

…was the end of standard-gauge steam on Britain’s railways. It would probably have been bad taste to have worn my DEMU “No Kettles” t-shirt into work today. But this evening my N-gauge Restormel has witnessed “Clun Castle” on the St.Erth to West Ealing milk train. The rake of Chocolate and Cream Mk1s is stored somewhere upstairs, so the “Cornish Riviera” will have to await another day, probably when I get my hands on a Farish Warship diesel to pull it

The Guardian’s Andrew Martin wistfully wonders if a new generation of higher-efficiency steam trains could return to Britain’s rails – personally I think that’s sentimental nonsense; it’s perfectly possible to restore the ‘romance of railways’ with well-designed modern trains that don’t try to pretend to be aircraft or buses.

Cold Spring Shops notes that a great many steam locomotives have survived into preservation, but neglects to mention one reason for their survival is the huge number of locomotives purchased by Dai Woodhams of Barry, who lacked the resources to cut them up, his scrapmen spending the next decade breaking up goods wagons instead. Pictures from the early 70s show hundreds of rusting hulks of Bullied pacifics, 9F 2-10-0s and assorted GWR classes. Almost every single one was eventually bought for preservation.

I shall refrain from rising to the bait when it comes to the subject of GM Grey Squrrels.

Taking a holiday in the Euro zone, that is.

I’ve confirmed my booking for a holiday split between St.Goar-am-Rhein in Germany and Namur in the Belgian Ardennes. Both places I passed through on my way to Switzerland last year.

With the pound doing so badly that British model railway manufacturers can actually think about exporting stuff, going to a Euro country isn’t exactly the cheap option. But nothing in Britain really appeals to me this year (you can have scenery or trains, but not both), and going somewhere outside the Euro zone means going somewhere further away than can easily be reached by train. With the current levels of security theatre at airports I’m not willing to fly and have the airline lose my baggage.

Still, Germany and especially Belgium are renowned for good beer. Provided I can actually afford any…

On RMWeb, there’s a thread on 1923 Grouping. While the initial post was about the reasons behind the grouping (it was an alternative to nationalisation, which was seen as too radical a step in 1923), it’s spawned a side-discussion on alternatives.

For example, what if, rather than the government imposing the big four, they’d instead changed the law to make it much easier for railway companies to merge, and let the market decide which groups would form? We probably wouldn’t have seen the uncomfortable forced marriage between the LNWR and the Midland, for starters.

One scenario that sounds interesting would be a merger between the Midland and the LSWR, forming a network stretching from the Scottish border (and probably beyond, as a Midland-GSWR merger would be likely) to Cornwall. To counter that, the Great Western might merge with the Great Central to form a rival network with a very similar national footprint. This gives a couple of big company networks that will be very different from any of the historical ‘big four’. I wonder what they might have looked like? Would either of them have gone for large-scale electrification?