Where Worlds Collide

Meetup.com have revamped and reinvented themselves. There were previous GURPS and Fudge meetups scheduled for Manchester, but neither ever got enough members for any meetup to actually happen; they used to require a quorum of five. They appear to have nuked all the groups without a critical mass of members, so now there’s no GURPS group in Manchester, and no Fudge RPG groups in Britain at all. (I note that the one in Wichita, Kansas has just one member)

Mad fool that I am, I have started the Manchester Roleplayers Meetup Group, not dedicated to any one system. Whether anyone will join, I don’t know; but if you’re into tabletop RPGs and live somewhere near Manchester, sign up now!

The first date Meetup spat out was September 21, which is only four days away. I expect the first actual meetup won’t be until next month.

The new game proposed by Going Underground. I think I’ll stick to Mornington Crescent.

Spent yesterday at the N Gauge show held at a place called The Warwickshire Exibition Centre, near Leamington Spa. This venue turned out to be a converted cowshed in the middle of nowhere! Fortunately the organisers did organise a bus shuttle to and from the nearest railway station (without which I would not have attended). While you might not think a converted cowshed might make an ideal exhibition venue, the quality of the hall inside was a lot better than the impression you got from the outside.

The said cowshed contained a wide variety of layouts, British, German, American and Japanese. And of course, loads of traders, ranging from RtR box shifters to suppliers of specialised kits and bits.

Most people were drawn to the Bachmann stand near the front entrance with it’s display cabinet of preproduction samples of long-awaited new models. For fans of the post-privatisation scene there was 170 DMU in three liveries (SWT, Midland Mainline and Central Trains), for kettle fans there was the LNER V2. And for all diesel era modellers there was the HAA coal hopper, a much needed model; the long discontinued Minitrix model has been fetching silly prices on eBay for several years now. As well as the all-new models they had some reliveries on display too; most significant were the blue and grey Mk2s.

New entrant in British N, Dapol, didn’t have a stand. But Maurice of Osborns models did have some samples of the Great Western Autocoach, and very nice it looked. A bit early for my chosen period for British modelling, though.

Two layouts that impressed me the most were two of the smallest; Hedges Hill Cutting, just over five feet long representing a short length of third rail electrified line somewhere in South London, through which passed a variety of southern region EMUs and diesel-hauled freight trains. The focus was on high detail urban modelling.

The other small layout was a total contrast; Woodhead. Also electrified, it was an accurate model of the western Portal of the now closed Woodhead tunnel, set around 1970 just before passenger trains ceased on the route. Almost the entire locomotive fleet was made up from class 76 electrics.

There were plenty of other good post-kettle layouts; Drem, Stapleforth Mainline, Princes Street Gardens, Elgin, Hartshill Bank, and the massive six track Kings Park.

Of course, the traders did grevious harm to my credit card; there’s an Arnold Re4/4 in EBT (Emmental Burgdorf Thun) livery, plus a pair of the more modern Re460s in “SF” advertising livery. And, for a different country in a different era, a couple of Dapol BR gunpowder vans. All it needs is a decent class 24 and I can see a Cambrian Coast layout coming on.

Nasty level crossing accident in Sweden. BBC news are reporting two deaths; but it doesn’t say if those deaths were passengers or traincrew, or from the lorry.

The accident happened when a passenger train collided with a lorry on a railway crossing near the south-eastern coastal town of Kristianstad.

As is usual for this kind of accident, the cause seems to the recklessness of the road user.

Swedish radio quoted witnesses as saying the lorry appeared to make a late run for the crossing as the barrier descended.

If the lorry driver isn’t one of the two fatalities, then he needs the book thrown at him. Just like they threw the book at Gary Hart.

This Swedish news site (in Swedish) has quite a few pictures. It looks like the train was a 3-car DMU of the type used on many Scandinavian express services (I think the design originated in Denmark). The leading car appears to have spun though 180 degrees and is facing the way it came. There’s a lot of damage to the front end.

When an album begins with the spoken words of none other than Christopher Lee reciting words like these, it can mean only one thing:

It was a good time for all creatures of the earth. But fate decreed that the Dark Prophecy of a Demonknight could bring a tragic end to this peace, scarring their lives forever. Only one person could cross the darklands surrounding Hargor and venture deep into the caves of Dar-Kunor

His is a name the world will never forget.

He is Dargor

Yes, it’s Rhapsody! Luca Turlulli’s prolific Italian five piece have the market cornered in Operatic Dungeons and Dragons Pomp Metal. “The Dark Secret” is another slab of the trademark sound, a hybrid of power metal and Hollywood film score, the shredding guitars accompanied with choirs and orchestras to make a huge epic wall of sound. It’s way over the top, and totally beyond parody; the sort of stuff which makes The Darkness look po-faced and serious. The sound alternates between speed metal, big operatic choruses, and atmospheric cinematic soundscapes. I guarantee you will either love this, or run screaming from the room in terror.

With just five tracks and a total running time of 29 minutes, this is a really a taster for their forthcoming full-length album.

Interesting The last track, “Non Ho Sonno” (sung in Italian) isn’t actually performed by Rhapsody themselves, but by a band called Goblin (of whom I know little), but with additional production by Rhapsody’s Luca Turilli and Alex Staropoli.

The Dark Secret is fully compatible with the d20 licence, but you could probably convert it to GURPS if you really wanted to

If you want real quality in British N, you have to be prepared to pay a premium price of it. This CJM model of EWS’s class 67 is a case in point. A hand finished model with a lot of fine etched detail parts, it more than five times as much as the Farish class 47 on the track behind it. Although it is, as Electric Nose would say, “The Dog’s Danglies”, at that price I had to reluctantly concede that I cannot justify more than one of these magnificent models.

The biggest problem is that is shows up most of the Farish stock it will be hauling as hopelessly crude and toy-like. The super-BG behind it is a conversion of a Farish BG with etched sides, made for my by Ian Stoate of Ian Stoate Models. At the moment I don’t have a whole train of the things, though; the rest of the set is the toylike and shiny Farish TPO vans.

The new Farish Mk2 Brake Second has arrived. I have mixed feelings about this one; on one side they’re to be commended in managing to reproduce the complex livery at all (I spoke to one of the major transfer (decal) manufacturers a couple of years back asking if they were going to make transfers for the lower bodysides; they replied that it wasn’t possible with the printing technology they had). The quality of the printing is good; they haven’t been able to reproduce the ‘fade’ of the prototype perfectly, but the way they’ve done it falls into the realm of acceptable compromise, at least in my opinion.

The down side that the model is still quite crude, and shows how far British outline modelling is behind the models available for continental European prototypes. All details, including the windows, are simply printed on to a clear plastic bodyshell. Since they’ve used a ‘one size fits all’ body, this one’s lacking the footsteps for the centre doors, which are just printed on. It would probably be possible to improve this by adding some microstrip for footsteps and handrails. The clear bodyshell also means there’s no relief in the windows at all; which can look wrong in certain lightings. It also lacks any kind of interior.

On the other hand, the price is a lot lower than you’d pay for recent products from Minitrix of Fleischmann.

The Gline reviews a “Sci-Fi Musical” called The Apple

The Apple had me laughing hysterically all the way through. It’s a love letter to the stylistic excess of that time, only it’s been penned by illiterates with terrible handwriting. It’s an awful movie, to be sure, but it’s never boring, if only because they find something absolutely stupefying to point the camera at in every second of film. And as bad as the movie is, it actually manages to point its satire in the right direction and even feels weirdly timely—that is, when it’s not burning your eyes out with some of the most horrific production design since the Star Wars Holiday Special. Shock Cinema described it as “Can’t Stop the Music meets Logan’s Run”, two other Seventies artifacts guaranteed to clear the room in seconds.

Sounds like it has all the makings of a cult classic.

Neil, guest blogger at Going Underground has discovered someone who should be working for Bachmann. Are there, I wonder, people who couldn’t tell a 2CV from a Morris Marina?