Watt? Do you need a license to be that dim? The first in an occasional series of light-hearted awards for, shall we say, particularly energy-efficient thinking in the world of model railways.
Today's 40 watt pearl of wisdom comes a well-known 'dark place' noted for it's Chinese-pandering to manufacturers, and concerns, predictably, "extreme modellers" such as myself who unreasonably persist in expecting their expensive Ready-To-Run toys to be roughly the same shape as the prototype they allegedly depict. What makes this particular example of such oft-parrotised dross worthy of a good bayonetting over and above the markedly stiff competition? Simply that this correspondent has managed to screw so many of the standard cliches into such a small space - a terrific effort and a deserving winner.
As well as not being able to "believe some of the criticism" from "some rather narrow minded quarters of the hobby" about the "marvellous" new toys with which he is "absolutely delighted" this chap is keen to point out that now "must surely be the best time to be an 00 gauge modeller!" - top stuff that must surely gladden the heart of any magazine editor hoping to receive the traditional box of freebies rather than an unwelcome letter from some legal representatives. Unfortunately his logic as to why D&E modellers are "narrow minded" for expecting products of at least similar quality to those available to steam modellers seems to have been mischievously edited out - but I'm sure it was water-tight.
The crowning glory of the winning entry, however, was the splendid assertion that the opinion of anyone begging to differ would be "largely unfounded and really quite ridiculous" simply because "the majority of us run the models on 16.5mm gauge track and on curves of considerably less than scale realistic radius." Did somebody mention narrow-minded?
You'd think that if you'd waited the best part of a fortnight for your turn with the family brain-cell, you'd try and put it to better use. It's probably politically unsound to suggest that such folk shouldn't be allowed to reproduce, but, in the interests of the gene-pool, it might be better if they were no longer allowed to do so with members of their own family...