(Not) Ready To Run

It wouldn't surprise me if Peco's PR people are a little frustrated this weekend.

(And if they're not, then they ought to be.)

For days my social media feeds have been full of excited narrow gauge modellers receiving their England engines, but as the week wore on the pictures changed from delighted owners posing their new pride and joys on their layouts, to disappointed customers posting images of their purchases arriving in various states of distress and disassembly.

And then our one turned up.

Our Princess had been ordered by a customer as a thank you for a model I'm making for them, and I opened the parcel fearing the worst when I saw how it had been dispatched in an over-size cardboard box with plenty of rattling-around room, even with the protection of bubble wrap.

As you can see, a certain amount of owner reassembly was required - which is putting it mildly!

The cab was detached (which seems to be the most common complaint) and the tender and engine had moved around so much they had become decoupled.

Lifting it from the - obviously inadequate - polystyrene tray I discovered the whistles had also fallen off.

Fortunately the pins securing the coupling rods remained in place - others have not been so lucky.

Perhaps because of decades handling white metal and etched brass locos it's alarming how flimsy and delicate these 009 RTR locos feel - not just this England - and there is genuine trepidation when attempting to re-fit the displaced parts that you're going to further damage the model while handling it.

Fitting the extra knobs which come in the pack, on the sand pots and the front of the tender, can be quite tricky too.

It's a clever design with the plastic sprues which break off once you've inserted the details, but as I found to my cost, if you don't push them in perfectly perpendicular then they can snap off in the wrong place.

I had two which did this and had to be very carefully drilled out,

It's lucky they provide spares.

Now all that's been done I can get on with trying it out on the test track before passing it over for Himself to have a play about with.

One last thought is about opinions I've seen on some social media groups that owners should now cease posting pictures or comments about the state that their models have arrived in, and that we should just be grateful that they've been produced in the first place.

I have to respectfully disagree.

It's not for the consumer to be grateful for any commercial product, let alone one in which a substantial number arrive severely damaged because of packaging which, on the face of it, is not up to the job.

Retailers are replacing them without any quibbles, as far as I can tell, which is as it should be and very good to see.

But there's no getting away from the fact it really shouldn't have happened in the first place.

Dropsy

Every so often at an exhibitions, if you're listening closely while watching Bron Hebog you'll hear the tell-tale sound of a hand held controller clattering to the floor,  swiftly followed by some imprecations from Himself, either directed at his own clumsiness or someone else's (usually mine...).

The Glasgow show last month was no exception, so he's returned home and decided to try yet another potential solution.

We already have velcro fixings on the back on the controllers, and on the fiddle yard edge, but that's not been successful enough at defeating gravity, so now he's knocked up these neat little shelves where the controllers can be rested.

Keep your ears open at the show in Perth in June to discover whether these have worked or not...

Other items on the post-show snagging list have also been attended to.

The buckled rail in the fiddle yard has been sorted.

We came to the conclusion this was caused not by the heat inside the hall but by the highly efficient ventilation drying out the wood in the baseboards, causing them to shrink slightly over the three days.

He's also replaced the point motors (plural) which failed over the weekend when the throwing pins sheared.

This is not the first time we've had this issue with the Seep / Gaugemaster points, although the salesperson on the Gaugemaster stand at the show swore blind it was the first time anyone had ever mentioned that.

Just us?

Warley, Baby!

I want to begin by thanking everyone who left supportive comments on our social media after the last post about Model Rail Scotland.

I appreciate your forbearance scrolling through while I let off some steam, but after effectively giving up five days (including some precious holiday allowance) and coming out of it feeling your efforts were unappreciated - by a few people you’d hoped would have paid more attention - I think a little strop can be forgiven.

Instead let’s move on with some more positive news, and we were all delighted when an offer that was intimated to us at the SEC was confirmed in writing: Bron Hebog will be going to Warley in 2023!

The Bron Hebog crew and FR volunteers at Warley 2004 with LT while exhibiting Ddaullt

This won’t be first visit to the NEC for Bron Hebog.

Back in 2009 we were asked by the FR to bring along the station boards which were still at a very early stage of development, to complement their display.

The start of the Cwm Cloch bend was there, and the northern entrance to Goat Tunnel was landscaped, but also  still just painted brown plaster.

At the time I recall lots of people commenting that they looked forward to seeing it when it’s finished.

14 years is a long time to wait...I hope they’re not disappointed.

Second Album Syndrome?

I've had a couple of days to digest our experience at Model Rail Scotland, which was the first time operating Bron Hebog at a show in over two years.

I very much enjoyed the camaraderie of our team over the three days, and it was lovely to receive so many appreciative comments from visitors, both for the layout and for this blog.

But ever since the doors closed, we packed up and came home, I've been left with the nagging feeling that for as many people who loved it - indeed told us it was their only reason for coming along - it seemed as if there were as many who were distinctly unmoved by it, some of them among the railway modelling fraternity.

It's not the first time I've noticed this since we began taking Bron Hebog out, and it's starting to feel like a band struggling to follow up on a chart-topping debut album. 

25 years ago it seemed like Dduallt was feted everywhere it went, but there was a big gap between it coming off the circuit and the follow up appearing.

And like that hit band who spent time locked away in the recording studio, we've gone back on the road and discovered it's just the hard core groupies who remain.

In the days since the SEC I've been chewing over why Bron Hebog doesn't seem to capture the imagination in the same way, and I've settled on a few theories.

It's too big

At 20ft across and 10ft deep it's pretty large for an exhibition layout, and a monster for 4mm narrow gauge, especially for what is, essentially, a single track line with a passing loop.

While the groupies might like looking at an unfolding Welsh upland landscape - and if you're reading this consider yourself part of the fan club! - I suspect many people seeing it afresh see just a dull, barren vastness before them.

Not enough action

This follows on from the previous point. 

Due to its size, the simplest of track layouts, and the tortoise-like nature of the narrow gauge, trains take a long time to traverse Bron Hebog.

It can take 2 minutes for a train to snake its way from the station into the upper fiddle yard, and as a long again for one to return, plus all the fiddle yard time.

In WHR terms we operate an absurdly intensive timetable on the layout, but compared others it must seem woefully pedestrian.

No USP

When it appeared Dduallt was quite a novelty, and it has one thing that make's it cute and memorable - the under / overbridge on the spiral.

Now, like me, you might rather like watching a Garratt and its prototypical long rake of carriages snaking through reverse curves and performing not one, but two, full 180s on a climb up a gradient, through a tunnel and disappearing into a deep cutting, but I'm starting to suspect many people don't share that simple pleasure.

The sound of silence

In the decades since we built Dduallt railway modelling has moved on, and digital tech is now mainstream, but we're still rooted in the silent dc past.

A layout which doesn't arouse your ears as well as your eyes is starting on the back foot.

A level playing field

Once upon a time it really stood out if you were operating a layout entirely stocked with kit built and scratch built stock, or if you'd worked on super-detailing ready to run stock.

Now even the most brilliant modellers - which we are not - will struggle to match what it is possible to buy in a box.

Location, location, location

And last, and by no means least, I suspect this is the effect of moving to the other end of the country.

I think it's fair to say there is much less interest in narrow gauge in Scotland.

We're probably going to have to get used to that feeling of leaving a lot of our audience underwhelmed.