Quote from: TimR on September 09, 2013, 05:20:29 PM
Here is one in the ouvert, er.....opened position.

http://cfcdn.chez.com/wagonRB.htm

Thank you. I'd never have guessed they slid down. I assumed they swung out but couldn't see where they hinged. 

Quote from: ebtnut on September 09, 2013, 11:06:29 AM
Re:  the "shovel handles" - I'm going to guess that they may be some kind of mechanism to open what I believe are windows where those small X-braces are located.  Those French box cars could be used to haul livestock (see the "forty and eight" cars) and ventilation would be important.  

I've found this pic of the real thing: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Couvert_Breton.jpg Haven't the foggiest how they work but I think ventilation is a good deduction.

Colin.

Quote from: GG1onFordsDTandI on September 09, 2013, 01:02:18 AM
You know Skarloey, I at least thought You might be able to take a stab at the ID of that 3d layout I posted on the layout thread. Its set in Merionthshire. 

Merionethshire? Is that the design with the balloon loops and umpteen wyes?

Hi GG

I'm Colin, BTW. Being called Skar makes me feel like a character in a fantasy novel.

Those links are to the best I've seen, allowing for my heavily skewed interest towards narrow-gauge and light/industrial railways. I tend not to remember the less interesting layouts, but I assure you there are plenty of them.

I have no idea what the shovel handle shaped framing on the box cars might be. The prototype is a French metre gauge line that vanished in the 1960s. Nor can I recall what the French call the cupolas on the wagons. Essentially they protected the brakes man. It reminds me that one difference between the UK and US is that while modelling overseas prototypes isn't common in the UK it is more common (so far as I can tell) than in the US. Common enough to support a magazine like Continental Modeller, a monthly UK publication specifically serving those who model non-British prototypes.
I agree with you about the gauge 1 layout. The movement and heft of a steam loco is best shown at large scale.
The other layout didn't come off well on the video. The clever aspect is that the way it is designed forces the viewer to look down the length of it so from either direction the train seems to disappear down/up the valley away from the viewer over a distance of some 12 feet. That's a very unusual, but very lifelike perspective. All other models I can think of have the trains passing across the viewer's field of vision left to right or right to left.

Sound is only just catching on over here and among those exhibiting there is some resistance to it as an entire weekend listening to someone's trains apparently gets a bit tiresome!

I'll see if I can ID that layout.

Fine, GG1onFordsDTandI has started a new thread on the subject.
http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/board/index.php/topic,24350.0.html

Aha! I just remarked on that other thread that there seemed some tetchiness and that the subject probably needed its own thread. And you made one. Many thanks.

In case anyone thinks that I am trying to say that UK modelling is better than the US in any way, can I point out that a lot of UK built layouts on the exhibition circuit are dull and lack imagination and that for a decade or so UK modelling of structures and scenery has lagged some way behind the best in the US.
That said, the best in the UK is very good indeed. This is just to give a flavour.
Pempoul - French narrow-gauge in 1:50 scale http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEuTB6Iuje8 everything except the rail and the wheels has been built from scratch. It's a ten year labour of love from a husband and wife team.
Crumley & Little Wickhill - North of England narrow-gauge in 4mm scale on N gauge track. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oxo-KbrNRYM a truly exceptional piece of work and very clever design to capture an entire valley. The product of a group of modellers.
World's End Quay - Light/industrial railway in 1 Gauge, 10mm to the foot on 45 mm gauge track. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/179/entry-393-worlds-end-quay/ beautiful work showing that even very large scale can be done in a small space. The work of one man.

Quote from: Yardmaster on September 08, 2013, 01:44:49 PM
The IHC covered hopper thread and this one have made my trigger finger rather itchy......

Genuinely, I would like to know why you feel that way.

There does seem to be a different approach between US and UK model rail enthusiasts and given that Bachmann supplies both countries it seems a worthwhile discussion. I accept it probably needs its own thread but your comment suggests any such discussion would not be welcome.

Quote from: Jerrys HO on September 08, 2013, 07:48:53 AM
GG1

QuoteNow hers to hoping page 25 of this fine thread can return to its original topic, showing layouts of all forms of trains.
Maybe a new thread devoted to scale vs toys is needed for all to have their further say in?

Jonathan

Quoteam not normally one who gets into the mix when things go awry...

However, the intention of this thread was to share photos and diagrams of members' layouts and/or plans for layouts.

How did this become an endless yack fest? We seem to have gone off the rails somehow.

More photos, less words, please.

Yes lets continue to enjoy what this thread was for. For those who wish to get off the topic please start another thread. Would really hate to see this thread get locked.


Jerry

Nothing has been said to make this thread go awry and nothing has been said that would be cause to get the thread locked.

@Jward
Apologies. I knew the Penn RR had distinctive loco designs (those Belpaire fireboxes) but didn't appreciate other standard gauge roads did as well. Thanks for the correction. My comment was based on US 3' narrow-gauge where many lines in the 1870s and 1880s were equipped with 'off-the-shelf' Baldwin Americans, Moguls and Consolidations - hence why I'm so keen on Bachmann doing an early 3' gauge 4-4-0 in ON30! In the UK, for comparison, between 1863 and 1914 just about every narrow-gauge common carrier went to a different loco builder and got a one-off design, which is rather frustrating for the modeller wanting to equip his own railway.

I note that on Bachmann's current HO product list the Richmond 4-4-0 is only named for the Ma & Pa, presumably the only road it ran on, while the Baldwin 2-8-0 is named for a number of roads, including the Durango & Silverton which I'm pretty sure it couldn't run on even if it tried!

Quote from: rogertra on September 07, 2013, 03:57:29 PM
I agree with Skar.

UK magazines concentrate on prototype modelling even if the station is a "what if".

If you are modelling say British Railways, Southern Region, like I did until recently, then the architectural style of the station buildings, signalboxs, signals, fencing, lettering, colours and even the track layout are expected to follow Southern practice.  And of course, let's not forget locomotives and the Southern rolling stock as well.  Freight cars are all expected to be models of the real thing and not some generic "Athearn" type freight cars painted in various liveries.

Of course that's just the models that appear in the model press.

Freelance modelling, like mine, where the whole railway is made up, is almost unknown in the UK, except perhaps for the narrow gauge crowd.

Not saying one is better than the other, just showing how UK modellers differ from North American modellers.

phew   thought I was on my own there. It would be nice to have a discussion of differences without any side feeling they are under attack.

Yes, free-lancing of 'mainline' railroads is very rare in the UK. What tends to happen is people either follow a prototype location or they imagineer a might have been location operated by a real railway company, the archetypal Great Western Railway branch terminus being the classic example. Conversely, modelling in narrow-gauge, industrial, and what we call 'light' railways (standard gauge but in other respects similar to quirky narrow-gauge lines and maybe similar to US short-lines) tends to see as many, if not more, wholly freelance modelling as prototype modelling.  

At a guess the lack of freelance work in mainline railways is because few modellers work pre 1923 when most of the independent companies were amalgamated into the big four and post 1923 the very names of the companies, Southern Railway, Great Western Railway, London Midland and Scottish, and London and North-Eastern Railway, pretty much boxed the compass and didn't leave any actual geography in which to place a freelanced railway, though a rare few have tried. Post 1948, of course, we only had one railway, British Railways, and again there was no place left over in which the imagination could create anything plausible.
In narrow-gauge, industrial and 'light' railways there are dozens of prototypes the modeller can draw on and it's relatively easy to freelance and still be plausible.

Another reason UK modelling is different is each of our railway companies going right back into the nineteenth century tended to build or design their own locomotives, often with a distinctive style. Freelancing then becomes tricky because your line also needs its distinctive style and the degree of scratch-building involved is more than most modellers want. In the US, builders like Baldwin, Lima, Mason and the predecessors of Alco provided locos for mainline RRs so it's easier to freelance as you just need a few standard designs with the name of your RR on the tender and it looks perfectly plausible. Case in point being Bachmann's and other US manufacturers habit of releasing a loco in a variety of road names. I cannot stress enough that if Bachmann UK or Hornby did that (other than for a model intended for children, such as Hogwarts castle), they would be derided. In the UK a model loco intended for serious modellers will likely be released in some of the different liveries it carried during its life but never in a freelance livery or that of another company.

The downside to the above is, if exhibitions are anything to go by, British railway modelling can be very nicely done and 'true to life' but also rather dull and originality and imagination tends to be at a premium.  

Quote from: Doneldon on September 07, 2013, 01:48:13 PM
Skar-

Well, I don't know. I think the rabbit warren layouts have a certain appeal, kind of a tour-de-force of track work. I think a branch mining or logging run like this could be a lot of fun on a larger layout, introducing some meticulous animation while displaying the builder's equally meticulous commitment to quality construction standards. Such a thing would also capture the ad lib quality of many back woods and mountain short lines. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
                                    -- D

I can only give a UK perspective and here they were looked down on and made it hard for any modeller of narrow gauge to be taken seriously by the wider community of railway modellers.

I have a feeling that in the UK there has been a greater focus on emulating the prototype, particularly in how the model looks, both in modelling a specific prototype or in creating a 'might-have-been' layout,  than there is in the US. Three possible reasons for this might be:
The content of model railway magazines in the UK has leant heavily towards the prototype.
The popularity of local model railway clubs means that joining in with (and therefore becoming influenced by) an established group of modellers leads to a collective standard of 'good modelling' to which most then aspire to.
The number of local model railway exhibitions means that anyone interested in model railways has a reasonably easy way of seeing a variety of layouts, scales, prototypes and so on, in the flesh.

Having observed US and UK model railways/railroads for a number of years now, they, and their creators, are, in my opinion, surprisingly different in aim and execution.

On the subject of regarding one type of modelling as better or superior to another, I was just reminded of the phenomenon of "rabbit-warren" layouts that had a, thankfully, brief spell of popularity in the UK back in the early days of OO9 - a scale equivalent to HOn3 using OO scale on N gauge track. Basically, a "rabbit-warren" layout used the small radii possible in OO9 (down to 6"), along with as many changes of level as possible, to cram a lot of track into a small amount of space, say 4' by 2'.

They are much less common now, but you still see them about: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fairlightworks/410062449/ is end-to-end and so not technically a rabbit-warren, which were continuous run, but which shows the general look of such layouts.

It's fair to say that the great majority of UK railway modellers despised them and their popularity pretty much stopped narrow-gauge modelling being taken seriously for well over a decade.

Quote from: rogertra on August 25, 2013, 06:16:15 PM
One of the problems on a board like this is we have a wide variety of opinions on what a model railroad is.

I think it's very simple. A model railroad is a model of a railroad. The railroad may be a particular place at a particular time or it may be some place that does not and has never existed. The modelling may be dead to scale or there may be a degree of compression so that things fit in whatever space the modeller has available, but the underlying assumption is that if you multiply by 87 then your HO model looks plausibly like the real thing.

If it doesn't look plausibly like the real thing then it ain't a model and people should call, it what it is. A toy train set.

Quote from: pacbelt on September 06, 2013, 04:56:59 PM
While I'm at it.....
How about some SCALEO scale buildings - even as kits??? Structures appropriate for a Narrow Gauge Layout!! 
What do you guys think???

There's quite a number of places already offering suitable structure kits. I'd be against offering structures ready made. This is meant to be railroad modelling after all and I don't call taking something out of a box actual modelling. Also, it's bad enough that so many ON30 layouts resemble each other because Bachmann dominate the supply of rtr engines and stock. If we start using ready made structures as well it'll be even worse.

Quote from: Yardmaster on September 06, 2013, 08:22:59 AM

Quote from: PadreCraig on September 05, 2013, 11:48:32 PM
Yard Master - How can the On30 demographic grow if Bachmann doesn't drive the demand?  Who else is producing On30 trains?  If Bachmann doesn't produce it, where does that leave the On30 community?  You guys started strong and created the "On30 phenomenon" for all intents and purposes.  And then you all but abandon us who converted to On30 and began buying your products.  So where does that leave us now?

When did Bachmann abandon the On30 market...did I miss something. Bachmann has produced many new On30 items over the last few years.There is plenty of product available out there for folks who are just starting out. All of the items that you guys consider old are brand new to the novice. Unfortunately the model railroad industry tends to be "New Product" driven. In other words we are not seeing new modelers just the demand for new items every year from a core group of enthusiasts that is getting smaller. We all need to make an effort to introduce the scale to new potential enthusiasts so that Bachmann can justify the investment in new items.

I agree with you and certainly do not feel that Bachmann are 'giving up' on ON30. Indeed, as we've recently had two mallets and are now being offered a NG diesel it seems silly to suggest that they are.
But ON30, along with all the narrow-gauge scales, has a problem reaching the new modeller that O, HO, and N do not have - namely that narrow-gauge isn't familiar to the average person. No one can be unfamiliar with railroads or railways, albeit what they'll see is almost always modern-era equipment and operations. It follows that if you have a RR operating in your town it might spur an interest in modelling but if you''re a young person you'll likely want to model whatever you see running now or if you're an older person you'll likely want to model what you saw when you were a child.

What you're rather less likely to do is leap from having an 'entry-level' interest in modelling railroads to choosing to follow an obscure prototype (and all NG railroads are obscure!) that had mostly disappeared before 1945. 

I suggest that On30 in particular needs to be marketed at existing RR modellers who wish to downsize to something that is potentially more compact than standard gauge in HO or N while up-scaling to accommodate ageing eyesight. I'd also see merit in focusing more on surviving NG engines and stock simply because an engine still operating or preserved intact must be familiar to a far greater number of people than something long gone for scrap.