Where Worlds Collide

Christian Wolmar isn’t impressed with the government’s latest rail review.

Like the original privatisation Bill, the draft of the rail review has all the hallmarks of a document cobbled together in a rush by bright civil servants with little knowledge of the workings of the rail industry. The imperative this time round is to cut the soaring costs to the taxpayer rather than collect a lot of money and watch the industry slide into decline, although like all of the reviews since privatisation it tinkers at the edges rather than addressing the real issues.

The document highlights the extent to which the Labour government has been unable to get a grip on an industry whose privatisation ministers now accept was “botched” but which they steadfastly refuse to reverse in its entirety. Instead, the review will result in yet another attempt to impose new rules on a system that was, is and will remain unworkable.

I hope somebody’s going to nail the myth that all the problems of the railways will end if you just close a few unprofitable branch lines. To make a significant dent in the subsidy it’s not just a few remote rural lines that will go,. It would have to be wholesale closures cutting entire regions off the railway map.

The money lost by rural branch lines is peanuts compared with the money wasted by the cumbersome and unworkable fragmentation of the core parts of the network. Can someone explain why rail users in Cornwall should lose their rail services to pay for mismanagement of the West Coast Main Line modernisation?

Update: Patrick Crozier isn’t impressed either.

Some evocative photos of the Woodhead line, which closed in 1981. The Woodhead line, running across the Pennines from Sheffield to Manchester was one of those unique lines, with it’s non-standard electrification and distinctive captive fleet of locomotives.

I regret never seeing the line in operation; although I did have a couple of family holidays in the area in the mid 70s, I couldn’t persuade my parents to let me spend enough time next to the lineside to actually see a train! It never occurred to me that the line would close just a few years later.

Electric Nose certainly thinks so. And he has all of his marbles.

Today In Alternate History. This one is going straight onto the blogroll! Some examples:

in 1245, two devout young men of European descent honor Allah by creating a powered aircraft. They name it the Wings of Gabriel; the maiden flight lasts a mere 2 minutes, but is hailed as a great advance by scientists throughout Islam.

and…

in 1990, Fascists are swept from power in Italy, and Germany sends troops in. The overburdened Nazis, besieged on every front, will lose power by the fall, but not without hundreds of thousands of casualties.

Not only, but also…

in 1992, filmmaker Oliver Stone releases JBR, in which he attempts to give credence to People’s Attorney Presley’s arguments that Comrade President Rosenberg was killed by a conspiracy rather than a lone counter-revolutionary. The film is a huge success, prompting the Communist Party to call for its banning.

I’m thinking about layout ideas again.

I’ve decided I’m unlikely ever to build a American-style basement-busting permanent layout. My current lifestyle as an IT consultant looks like it’s likely to revolve around frequent relocations. Therefore the only kind of layout I can build that would have a decent life expectancy are portable sectional ones that I can take with me when I move.

My present 12′x 2′ layout is very much a temporary affair. I’m not totally happy about the quality of the benchwork, and the 2′ width means I’ve got both sharp curves (8½” on the inner circuit), and room for only six roads in the fiddle yard. Because of these limitations I’ve never developed much scenery apart from a few buildings which can be reused on future layouts.

So what next? So far I’ve got three schemes under consideration. One long-term plan might be to build all three, with one or possibly two set up at any one time. All three are based on real locations, but aren’t intended to be exact models. I don’t really have the time or commitment to build a scale model of a real location as a solo project. Such a layout would involve scratchbuilding all the structures, as well as taking up more space than is ever likely to be available to me, even in N!. So I plan to use the basic trackplan and prototype train formations, but to to use some ’selective compression’ in order to fit things into a suitable space, and to use or adapt commercially available structure kits for the buildings.

All three of these schemes are for double track mainlines, fed by enough storage roads for a representative selection of trains. I’m afraid ’shunting planks’ just don’t do it for me. Call it a glorified trainset if you want, but I want to capture the experience of standing by a busy main line. All are intended as home layouts, but will be built with exhibitions in mind, which means nicely ballasted Peco Code 55 trackwork rather than sectional Kato Unitrack!

Wöminsee III
This one’s Swiss outline, based on a typical small passing station on the BLS main line. My plan is a cross between Blausee-Mitholz on the north ramp, and Ausserberg on the south ramp. A 10′4″ x 2′8″ board will just about fit in my living room, which will give me enough width to fit in ten storage roads at the back, and enough length to fit in nine coach trains of 85′ long coaches. Hopefully this will be the first to see the light of day.

Restormel
Back to British outline this time; I love the running qualities of Fleischmann and Kato locos, but British prototypes are in the blood. It’s based on Lostwithiel in Cornwall, although how much of it I can model depends on how much space I have to play with. I’ve sketched a plan to fit a drastically cut down version in a 6′x 9′ wedge-shaped layout that I could just about fit in my second bedroom. But I’m not sure I can cut things down so radically and still retain the flavour of the real life location. I may have to put this one on the back burner until I’ve got a little bit more space.

Marine Parade
Another British scheme. At about 9′x 3′ or thereabouts, this is the smallest scheme; but in terms of structures, the most ambitious. Based on the section of the sea wall at Dawlish, from the west end of the station to Kennaway tunnel. I’ve seen several models of the sea wall further along the coast, with the red cliffs and the tunnels, but never an attempt to model part of the town itself. I’ve been investigating the catalogues of various continental kit makers for suitable buildings.

The Kalyr PBeM has just about reached the end of the quest! 7 years into the game, and five years into this story arc, the survivors of the original party have finally made it back to the city. All that’s left is a debriefing scene, and I’ll have to start thinking of the next storyline.

At the climax of the adventure, I introduced two new players, playing characters warped in from present-day Earth. I’ve been running the current thread detailing the return journey as a travelogue. I’d be interested in what people make of my descriptions of the world.

I’ve made a couple of changes to my category archives. The categories listed in the sidebar were always intended to function like separate blogs, which show the last ten entries within the specific category. The idea was that someone who was only interested in railways or RPGs would not have to read my opinions on the latest prog-rock releases.

I’d originally put the archive index listing all posts in the sidebars of those category sub-blogs, but they’ve been getting more and more unwieldy as the number of blog entries grows. So I’ve split them off into separate archive indexes, which show both the blog title and the 20 word extract.

Next step, I suppose, will be for XML feeds for each category.

An excellent show! Demu Showcase is the annual exhibition put on by Diesel and Electric Modellers United, intended to showcase layouts and models built by those that believe the universe didn’t end with the end of steam in 1968.

It’s ironic that the first locomotive I saw when I walked through the door was a k*ttl*, in the shape of an O gauge model of a preserved rebuild Bullied pacific.

All the layouts were of excellent quality, ranging from tiny “shunting planks” to big multi-track main lines. They also represented a range of eras. We had a couple of layouts from the increasingly popular years immediately following the demise of steam traction, featuring those unsuccessful and short-lived locomotive classes that were soon to follow steam power into history; the Scottish class 17s and 29s, or the Western 14s and 22s. In contrast we had layouts representing the present-day post-privatisation scene.

My preferred scale, N gauge was represented by the soon-to-be-retired Acton Mainline, one of the best examples of modern day urban modelling I’ve seen in any scale, with intensive operation on the four track mainline out of London Paddington back in 1989 when a lot of commuter trains were still loco-hauled.

The other star layout was the magnificent Mostyn, just about the only big 4mm finescale layout on the exhibition circuit. Like Acton Mainline, it’s an accurate model of a real location, on the north Wales coast main line. This one goes further back, to 1977, the days of class 24s, 25s and 40s.

Pengwynn Crossing has always been a favourite of mine, based as it is on Cornish china clay operations in the 80s, with nice models of some of the distinctive and unique wagons used for this traffic. The N Gauge Society might even be releasing a kit of the Traffic Services Polybulk.

There were lots of familiar faces present, and it’s easy to spend as much time chatting as watching the layouts. Among others I chatted with Martyn Read, Alan Monk, Steve Grantham, Pete Shaw, Niggle Spate, Ben Ando, Bryn Davies and the infamous Roechard Wibb, some of them regular commenters on this weblog.

Finally, I have to remark that I got there and back on trains that ran on time, including two Virgin Voyagers that weren’t overcrowded for once. The only problem was the wretched Stockport blockade, which meant a rail replacement bus and a detour to Manchester Piccadilly, adding quite a bit to the overall journey time.

“Who?”, I can here you ask. I know of about five people that have actually heard of this band. I believe they’re a major act in their native Poland, but little known in the wider world, largely because they sing entirely in Polish.

A few years back, my brother was working as an English teacher in Poland, and he asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I replies “what about some Polish prog-rock?”. Eastern Europe was (and still is) in something of a musical time-warp, where bands like Uriah Heep are still big. Since I don’t really care for much of the current British scene, dominated too much by boring and tuneless indie bands, I wondered if Poland could come up with something more interesting.

Since all my brother had to go on in choosing something was the cover artwork, what I actually got on Christmas afternoon was Closterkeller’s “Cyan”.

Closterkeller turned out to be goth-metal rather than prog-rock. However, when the opening guitar riff of Wladza led into Anja Orthodox’s powerful yet beautiful vocals, I was impressed by the album. It varied from some very punky songs though 80s-style commercial metal mixed with atmospheric gothy stuff. All sung in Polish.

Since I’m one of those people who’s more into the music than the lyrics, I don’t find non-English lyrics a turn-off. Indeed, the sounds of Polish seem to fit the music well, and I’m sure it sounds better than English in a comical accent (have you heard any Lacuna Coil?)

Closterkeller’s albums aren’t easy to find in Britain. I found Amazon listing just one, their latest album “Nero” (which I have on order). It’s possible some specialist importers might stock others.

Game WISH 99 asks:

Pick three to five genres and name the best RPG for that genre. Why do you think it’s the best? What makes it better than others? What are its downsides?

I find that things like power level, realism vs. Hollywood, and where you stand of the Gamist/Simulationist/Dramatist spectrum matters more in choice of system than whether your game is fantasy, SF or horror. Not only that, my favourite game systems are probably GURPS and Fudge, both of which are advertised as universal systems. The former is my preference for detailed, moderately realistic games, the latter for more freewheeling cinematic stuff. However…

Low Fantasy
I define low fantasy as something semi-realistic, where combat is dangerous, magic is subtle and low-key, there’s a lot of attention to detail, and campaigns revolve around the fate of the characters rather than the fate of the whole world. This is one that a detailed system like GURPS handles very well. The other good system for low fantasy is of course that old warhorse RuneQuest, now long out of print, but a game that still stands the test of time.

Hard SF
GURPS, with it’s emphasis on realism, was made for this genre. It’s not surprising that one of the most successful incarnations of Traveller is the GURPS version. Saying that, classic Traveller, although dated, is still a good game. I haven’t looked at the d20 version (”Where’s the Zhodani Lair? I need the eps to get my Marine up to 6th level!”)

High Fantasy
My definition of high fantasy is where the heroes and villains are much more powerful that ordinary folks, magic or it’s equivalent is overt and flashy, and plots are epic in scope. One system I’d recommend if you have a Dramatist bias is Hero Quest, a very free-flowing system explicitly designed for epic narratives. I wonder if anyone’s tried using HQ for space opera games (which I consider to be closer to high fantasy with different props than it is to hard SF).

Horror
I know it’s an old game, and some aspects of it are looking dated, but Call of Cthulhu is still the definitive horror game. Meet Things Man Was Not Meant To Know! Go horribly insane! Wibble! I’ve played some other genuinely scary horror games, most notably Unknown Armies, which has a very neat and simple system. I found the concept of Whispering Vault was a little too weird to get my head round, and I didn’t like their dice pool mechanic.

Time Travel and Dimension Hopping
Two closely-related genres, both of which are ideal for multi-genre systems such as GURPS or Fudge. The choice between the two should depend on the level of detail or realism you want. Fudge works well for a freewheeling cinematic game where the player characters include an intelligent 2″ long insect and a telepathic horse, and technological items are plot devices. GURPS works better for a semi-realistic game where the player characters are all close to human, and adventures focus on preventing bad guys from meddling with history, or on exploring strange and dangerous alternate timelines. I’ve heard people rave about the highly cinematic TORG for these sorts of games, but I’ve only played that system for high fantasy, and wasn’t terribly impressed.