Being cheeky counts for a lot these days, it would seem, whilst copyright counts for precious little unless you're a large organisation with the financial clout to protect your interests. I'm well aware that making my copyright images available online for the benefit of fellow enthusiasts carries an inherent risk - a certain percentage will inevitably appear on other websites with some parasite claiming them to be all his own work.
More suprising, however, is the rapidly increasing number of established companies or multi-nationals who'll rip-off copyright images without so much as a by your leave. I've lost count of the times I've seen my photos staring back at me, especially in adverts where they're being used to make money for somebody else. There's one of mine in a well-known model railway retailer's long-running advert this month, in fact.
But the very latest copyright infringement is causing much mirth amongst acquaintances of mine, as the steam-centric product line is about as far removed from anything I'd wish to be associated with as you could possibly get. Hornby didn't ask for permission to use my copyright image, yet alone receive it, and my copyright notice has rather cheekily been removed from the photograph. You'd expect more ethical behaviour from a Public Limited Company, but I guess there's no such thing as bad publicity.
I'd like to apologise to fans of the prototype for the poor quality of the image - it was one of my earliest scans. Perhaps if it'd been bigger with fewer jpeg artefacts then Hornby would have realised that the bodyside should have a gentle curve to it. That the cab side windows should be quite deeply recessed. That the roof should curve down further. That there shouldn't be such a large amount of body-side above the grilles. That the grilles shouldn't be deeply recessed into the sides. That...
Currently On My Stereo: David Bowie - Hunky Dory
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Although I haven't had much time for modelling so far this year, I have managed to stockpile a few things for future ventures. These Graham Farish Class 170s are a prime example, destined for my N-Gauge project that's been at the planning stage for a couple of years now. Along with the forthcoming Class 158s, these colourful, modern units will form the basis for a layout.
The camera is never kind to N Gauge, as those ill-fitting roof panels will testify, yet at normal viewing distances these DMUs look excellent. In fact, I'd go as far as saying they look more convincing than their 4mm equivalents.
Having spent many happy hours with these things whizzing around an oval of Peco set-track on my desk (an executive toy that knows no equal) I thought it would be a good idea to upgrade to something a little more robust, so I ordered Kato's raised double-track pack (ref 20-840) from MG Sharp. An excellent quality product that I can highly recommend, the oval was unfortunately too large to fit on my desk - I'd forgotten that it's only the UK market that has to put up with impossibly tight curves.
It works well on the carpet, though, and keeps the cats entertained for hours...
Currently On My Stereo: Deep Purple - Made In Japan
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I can only apologise for the lack of updates on here of late, unfortunately I seem to be working 24/7 at the moment. This leaves precious little time for modelling, although I have managed to sort out a few prototype photos by way of compensation.
I really should return to the electronic coal-face now, but I can't crawl back into my office without at least a short comment about Bachmann's Class 66, which has been greeted with howls of dismay following it's debut at the toy fair recently. Crude, toy-like and with in-your-face errors that even some of the WeveNeverHadItSoGood luddites (or, at least, those without an advertising revenue stream to lubricate) will probably notice, this has not made a good impression.
Perhaps no worse in reality than Bachmann's own melted-looking attempt at a Class 40 or Heljan's half-Western, at a strategic level the Class 66 is a disaster of the highest magnitude. As many consumers (including your humble scribe) have noted, GM's Shed is the key to modelling a whole era in a way that no loco before has ever been. Without a decent Ying-Ying, discerning modellers can't really create a convincing replica of the modern scene. The absence of The Red Death spells, well, death for many a post-2000 layout scheme.
The implications of this shouldn't be under-estimated. Not only won't I be spending money on Class 66s, but I won't be buying rakes of HTAs or HHAs to go with them. Neither will I need any Hornby Class 60s, no matter how good they turn out to be. Without the leading role 66 I have no use for the supporting cast. The damage this kind of thing does to the hobby is immense, yet the spin-doctors and crevice-cleaners will be falling over themselves to report record sales of just one loco into just one sub-sector of the market. The same sycophants will, no doubt, be citing the small nature of the UK hobby as an excuse for something else the very next day, lacking the intelligence to see simple cause and effect at work.
Still, at least our tiny, insular market will soon have a choice of Gronks to move our Hull and Barnsley fish vans around our tiny, insular shunting planks...
Currently On My Stereo: Thunder - Live
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The latest DCC decoder fitting guide is for the Hornby Class 56, a set of photos that have sat on my PC for almost two years, I'm ashamed to say.
This Bachmann Class 24 has been added to my green-era shunting plank fleet by the simple expedient of fitting a Smiths coupling hook and a Lenz LE1024E decoder. Some Bachmann mechanisms can growl a tad when fitted with the 1024 or 1025, but this specimen is quiet and smooth.
Also in works at the moment are a rake of Roco coaches having Kadee #18 couplings fitted. It's worth noting that even though I bought these coaches way back in 1990, they have NEM coupler sockets at the correct height, making coupler swapping a breeze. Compare and contrast with most of Bachmann's more recent releases...
Currently On My Stereo: Primus - Miscellaneous Debris
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Every so often a product comes along that almost completely bowls me over. This is one. A radio (ie cordless) DCC throttle from ESU, more famous for manufacturing the Loksound range of DCC decoders that add the noise to many European models from the likes of Roco. It's an XpressNet device, which means it can be used alongside other handsets in any system that uses the Lenz XpressNet standard. A pleasant change, as most radio throttles manufactured to date don't use this standard, and operate on radio frequencies that aren't legal to use in the UK.
Whilst in principle I subscribe to the idea that a handset without a cord that wraps itself around my ankle on a regular basis is A Good Thing, I didn't expect to like this one. For my money, the Lenz LH100 handsets are the best out there at the moment, the elegant simplicity of the interface giving easy access to a range of features that is second to none. With everything lying under your thumb, it's a good one-handed controller, something that's vital if you do a lot of shunting. Although it could certainly be improved in many ways, most competing products fail to achieve this; falling into the hundreds of buttons trap, needing two hands to use or just simply being too basic for me. I was initially put off the ESU unit by the rotary thumbwheel, as I don't like the vague feel of old-fashioned control knobs - I'm either difficult to please or just plain set in my ways.
The ESU handset, whilst not having the full range of features found on a Lenz LH100, is a very intuitive drivers' throttle. It passes my 'one thumb' test with flying colours and within minutes it felt like I'd been using it all of my life. I soon forget the not insignificant price of the thing and went straight into 'I want' mode. I wouldn't say the thumbwheel had the accuracy of buttons (I found myself frequently looking at the display rather then the train) but it's a lot better than a knob. The display panel does a lot of nice things, too, (including giving you the ability to assign more meaningful names to locos) but it was the everyday operation of trains that impressed me most.
The controller comes with a black box, actually the radio receiver that plugs into the XpressNet bus and not, despite appearances, a charging cradle. The handset is battery powered, so keeping a spare set of rechargables topped up is a good idea.
The set is available from Modellers Mecca. It costs a whopping £185 and I don't mind in the slightest...
Currently On My Stereo: Dinosaur Jr - Without A Sound
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The latest online decoder fitting guide is for the old Mainline Class 03 shunter. I'm not a great fan of the split-frame chassis fitted to these models, if truth be told, but mine is running reasonably well now it's fitted with a DCC chip. It just needs a poke with my finger from time-to-time...
Currently On My Stereo: Status Quo - Hello
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Although an admirer of creations such as 'Canada Road' and 'Walker Marine', I've never really liked small, end-to-end layouts of my own. I've always built mainline examples for my main projects as they better represent the railways I've spent many hours observing. But I do still dabble with small shunting planks, on the basis that a change is as good as a rest. Plus I can still play trains when I'm too p*ss*d to get up the loft ladder...
These planks never last long, mainly because I always nick the board from Small Trainset to use on Big Trainset. So about a year ago I transferred my test track to a couple of old bookshelves, the theory being that the hideous green contiboard was of no use in the loft therefore I wouldn't transplant it within a fortnight. It worked! Not only is the test track a permanent fixture in the office, making decoder installs and other tasks that much more convenient, but I play 'shunting puzzles' more and more these days. Great fun. Small Trainset lives on top of some typically uneven cheap bookcases and almost never gets covered in books and magazines any more.
Having had so much fun with the plank in the last few months, I've been planning 'Son of Plank' over Christmas, a series of modules that can be arranged in a variety of ways and hopefully fit into a variety of rooms as the fancy takes me. Part of this will be a fully scenic fiddle yard, because a fiddle yard also makes a nice set of sidings when I'm in shunting mood, so that's some space saved from other modules. I tend to plan firstly in my head, then move directly to 3D, bypassing the paper stage - hence this mess in the corner of the room.
The chipboard offcut is too narrow (I'm going for about 20 inches here) but it's enough for me to judge line-of-sight and suchlike. I want to get the look of a much bigger area with careful structure placement. There'll be 3 exchange sidings in the foreground, curving quite sharply and vanishing under the bridge. It should look like just the end of a fan of sidings when I'm shunting it, and work as part of a 5 road fiddle yard (the other 2 lines representing the adjacent mainline) at other times.
It's traditional to agonise over whether to go for OO, EM or P4 in these cases, the procrastination process that has probably wasted more layout-building time in this hobby than anything else. One thing I've noticed in this particular instance is I can't really tell the difference between them at this eye-level viewpoint under normal room lighting. This doesn't, of course, help me make a decision - as a railway modeller I'm genetically pre-destined to ponder these things ad-infinitum.
Vague inspiration (and I do mean vague) comes from Wednesbury, where the LNWR (ex South Staffs) lines passed under the Greasy, Wet and Rusty's Birmingham to Wolverhampton artery. The best shot I actually hold copyright to doesn't really show the exchange sidings curving off behind the bridge (beyond the loading gauge on the right) and heading for the GWR. I'm pulling them forward a little, so they start this side of the bridge. I've already got rough plans drawn for this structure, scaled from the driving wheel diameter of a King. See - kettles do have their uses!
Currently On My Stereo: The Stranglers - Dreamtime
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I've spent a fair while rummaging around in the loft over the holidays, originally looking for some old Mainline GWR fruit vans I wanted to convert. Unfortunately I soon became side-tracked, opening boxes that hadn't seen the light of day since we last moved house and generally wallowing in nostalgia. Amongst all of the cr*p there were some good finds, including dozens of Gibson wheelsets of immediate use, some packs of Smiths couplers and a load of the excellent Replica sprung buffers. Most of it, though, was junk.
A typical example is the old Mainline Peak, a singularly awful model in it's time, and one that I've wasted a lot of effort on over the years, hacking around trying to correct the squashed nose and other, less than redeeming features. As well as various 'mint in box' examples, I uncovered five abandoned conversions in different stages of dismemberment - I'd given up because it simply isn't possible for any but the most highly-skilled to produce a convincing Peak from this sorry mess. Carving the compound curves of a dozen noses to a consistent and accurate standard isn't something I'm capable of. This is where the big guys are supposed to come in, wielding their expensive machines to mass-produce thousands of identical mouldings, preferrably of the correct shape.
Of course, Bachmann let us down very badly with the recent Peaks, offering something with different mistakes rather than a basically accurate bodyshell. Those of us who'd like a correctly shaped Peak are still waiting, and those who will always buy the latest release because it's 'better than nothing' are still buying them. Nothing seems to change.
The old Mainline Class 03 is an interesting comparison to the Peak, being substantially more accurate even though showing a few rough edges. Then, as now, the production of a model seemed to be a fairly random process, with what eventually pops out of the machine coming as more of a suprise than being something born of planning and professionalism. I find it no easier to explain how one company could produce both the 03 and the 45 back then, than I do to explain how Heljan could follow up the excellent Hymek with the botched Western recently. Again, nothing seems to change.
Curiously, the Mainline Fruit vans I was originally hunting for are a couple of millimetres overwidth, something I've just started to correct using the ends from a Ratio Mink kit. Once more, nothing seems to change - except that it does. Now, over 20 years down the line, I'm not willing to throw my money at any old rubbish that comes along, I've got enough to last me a lifetime. Something else that's changed is Heljan quite deliberately chose to make its new Class 57 models overwidth, just to save a few pounds by not re-manufacturing the cheap metal chassis block. With modellers' feelings about the TubbyDuff already being known, this shows a deliberate and premeditated contempt for its customers that seems difficult to explain, especially with Bachmann's alternative and cheaper product being just around the corner. I'm not much impressed with being offered a deformed Western and a Bodysnatcher that's no stranger to the sweet trolley. I know I'm not alone in deciding Heljan can keep its models. I'll wait and see what the Bachmann release is like.
Some things are actually changing...
Currently On My Stereo: The Stranglers - Raven
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This pair of Bachmann Type 2s (Class 25s as they were later known) have just been liberated from my donor bank - boxed and largely unrun models that were bought at a good price and stockpiled for future dismemberment. These particular specimens emerged from the strategic reserve purely because I fancied something a little different to run on my shunting plank, as a change from the 08s that I've become sick of the sight of after an overdose of yuletide marshalling.
Apart from the addition of decoders and Smiths coupling hooks, these are standard Bachmann models, right down to the bent lampposts suspended from the buffer-beams. I've fitted Lenz LE1025E decoders, cascaded from other stock now equipped with the new Gold series. Although not as quiet as more recent chips, the faithful 1025s give the excellent slow-speed control that a shunting plank demands.
Dabbling in green era stock on a smaller layout makes a colourful change from my normal blue leanings, and has the advantage that the lack of a full yellow end tends to de-emphasise some of the cab-related blunders beloved of our manufacturers. Although still plainly visible in the photos, I find the trademark flattened windows of the BachRats to be nowhere near as apparent in the flesh as they are on the blue versions. On the other hand, because the plank is operated from the side, I notice the prominent chassis rather more - I guess you can't have everything. Even with it's many errors, I much prefer the Bachmann Rat to the ancient Hornby release, which, apart from the better cab windows, is monumentally awful.
This is one loco I'd love to see produced to top-drawer standards. A great shame that Hornby chose to go head-to-head with Bachmann over the 08 when this could have been the candidate.
Currently On My Stereo: Utopia - Oops! Wrong Planet
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