Where Worlds Collide

The N Gauge Modern mailing list has yet another thread on wish lists. As one well-known member has pointed out, while this might be entertaining for some people, it’s of little use unless a sufficient number of people can persuade Dapol, Bachmann or anyone else that there really is a market for specific model.

As is entirely predicable, many people are still fixating on locomotives, despite the fact that most of the remaining gaps are relatively minor classes, either short-lived, limited to a small area, or both. While I would probably buy something like a class 58 if somebody did one, it doesn’t strike me as an essential item. Likewise I can’t see a Hymek, a favourite locomotive of mine, selling in anything like the quantities to justify a mass-market ready-to-run model.

So here’s my list of things that not only would I be prepared to buy, but think there’s a big enough potential market.

Class 220 or 221 Virgin Voyager.
This is a distinctive and instantly recognisable prototype with widespread geographical appeal. The real things run from Scotland to Cornwall to Wales to the south coast, so they’re applicable to just about any post-2002 layout that’s not a freight-only shunting plank. Bachmann already do an 00 version which could be scaled down to 2mm, and a 4-5 car set is a nice length train for N (2′ or 2′6″ long), which could be accommodated on a very modest-sized layout. Downside is that there’s only one livery, and it’s only applicable to post-privatisation era layouts. Anecdotal evidence alleges that the OO version has sold poorly, but this may not be a good guide to it’s prospects in the smaller scale. N has a higher proportion of main line layouts compared with shunting planks.

Class 121 or 122 “Bubble Car” single car DMU
They’re suitable for a very long time period, since the prototype dates from the late 50s, and a couple are still in service today. Even those GWR branch line terminus people might buy one or two; they beat Dr Beeching to those branch termini by a couple of years or so. Over their long lives, they’ve run in a great many liveries, especially if the model is designed so that both the 121 and 122 can be made from the same tooling. The chassis will also be useful for a lot of other 63′ DMUs.

Any Mk1-based 4-car Southern Region EMUs
Either a 4-VEP, 4-CIG or 4-CEP. Like the bubble car they lasted a very long time and ran in a great many liveries. Although they’re restricted to a limited geographical area, it’s still as large an area (in rail density if not square miles) as that of the classic Great Western branch terminus. I believe the Southern Region has only been overlooked by modellers because the stock isn’t available. It’s interesting to compare prototype numbers; there were a lot more 4-VEPs than there were 14XXs or 45XXs. Bachmann have proposed a model of the 4-CEP in 00, which could be scaled down to N.

Charlie Stross questions whether the 50000 jobs that Microsoft Vista will allegedly create is actually a good thing.

Of course, the usual analysis of employment trends we get in the press doesn’t usually go as deep as to question the need for jobs (that jobs are virtuous is taken for granted) so it shouldn’t be any surprise that ZDnet’s report that Microsoft Windows Vista could create 50,000 jobs in the EU alone is framed in tones of breathless approval.

Stop and think about it. The PC market is pretty much saturated in the developed world; we are no longer buying our first PC, we’re just upgrading regularly for the faster processor/new features. So what does this really mean?

Microsoft are predicting that this ravenous new operating system will demand the sacrifice of 50,000 extra human lifetimes to keep offices across the EU running. That fifty thousand people are going to be sucked into the thankless task of software support and system administration for no functional gain — not to bring the benefits of computing to new users, this is simply to keep the wheels turning. It’s money for digging holes in a field and then filling them in again: pointless make-work that should be automated out of existence rather than lauded.

The post is a bit of an anti-Microsoft pro-Linux rant, and the comments thread lapses into entirely predictable calls for everyone to join the Church of Scientology, sorry, use Apple Macs. But there’s a good point; are all ‘jobs’ really worth doing? How much human potential is wasted doing what are essentially unnecessary tasks?

I’ve often wondered about the overall efficiency of the IT industry; what proportion of time is actually spent of activities which directly advance the mission of the business? I suspect the figure is alarmingly low even in the best-run organisations; when it gets to the badly-run ones I wonder if it approaches zero. I’m talking about real horror stories such as some of those mentioned in The Daily WTF, or organisations where entire projects are routinely abandoned part-way through, or where backstabbing political types deliberately engineer the failure of projects in order to set up rivals as fall-guys.

Johnathan Pierce wants nominations for the worst film you’ve ever seen.

How do you classify a ‘bad’ film? Some people in the comments thread even nominated Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey“, which seems totally ridiculous to me; perhaps they can’t get their heads round the concept of a cerebral science-fiction film, and think SF is solely for action movies with big explosions.

There are a lot of different criteria for badness. There’s the low-budget Z grade schlock like Manos, Hand of Fate, which I can’t nominate since I haven’t actually seen it. Then there are plenty of the ridiculously pretentious and incomprehensible ‘art’ films that used to be shown late at night on Channel 4.

Then there are the lame sequels and prequels marking the point where some franchises jumped the shark. Think of Star Trek V (the one where Captain Kirk meets God), or the dreadful Phantom Menace.

And what about the ‘entertainingly bad’ category, such as Ed Wood’s classic “Plan 9 From Outer Space“, where the director’s ambition far exceeded either his talent or budget. But “Plan 9″ is so bad it’s good. If you want really bad, try the same director’s “Glen or Glenda“. That’s just plain bad.

My nomination is the 1929 British melodrama “The Flying Scotsman”, which could fall in that category. If the synopsys wasn’t bad enough..

A young fireman on the famous Flying Scotsman locomotive falls in love with a beautiful young woman. What he doesn’t know is that the girl is the daughter of the man he replaced, who was fired for drinking on the job and has vowed to get his revenge on the railway for firing him.

This turkey started out as a silent film, but turns into a talkie half-way through. Because it was originally intended to be silent all the way through, there was no actual script. So the cast just improvised their own dialogue, which is so bad it makes George Lucas look like Shakespeare.

I saw this in the 1970s at a evening of railway-themed films presented by film historian and rail enthusiast John Huntley. To quote Huntley himself, “If he saw this film, the man who invented talkies would go out and shoot himself”.

The star of the film was the locomotive itself, only six years old at the time, making it the equivalent of a film made today set on board a Virgin Voyager.

Mark Rosenfelder questions some examples of Game Theory.

An economist sets up this game: He offers $10 to you and a stranger. The stranger is to propose a division of the money; you can either accept the division (in which case you each get the money according to the other guy’s proposal) or reject it (in which case neither of you get anything).

If the stranger decides to divide it up nine to him, and one to you, what do you do? Think about it for a moment.

You told him to get stuffed? According to game theory you were wrong.

Game theorists say that you should accept any positive offer you receive, even one as low as a dollar, or you will end up with nothing. But most people reject offers of less than three dollars, and some turn down anything less than five dollars.

According to Mark Rosenfelder, you did the right thing.

Read the rest of the article to see why Game Theory, at least for this example, is completely useless as a model for economic interactions in the real world.

Anathema are a difficult band to pidgeonhole. They’re often classified as “doom metal”, although that label only really applies to their very early albums. Later on they moved towards the mix of goth rock and Floydian atmospherics on albums like “Alternative 4″ and “Judgement”, or the Radiohead-lite of “A Fine Day to Exit”. Their zigzagging musical trajectory might account for their failure to really break through into the big time; after eight varied albums they now find themselves without a record deal. Record deal or not, they still managed to draw a healthy crowd for a midweek gig.

First support was a short set from Danny Cavanagh’s new acoustic project “Leafblade”, just three guys on acoustic guitars, no bass or drums. Danny’s acoustic playing was quite impressive; I’ve always thought the mark of a good guitarist is the ability to play a decent solo shorn of effects or distortion.

Second support was Sweden’s prog-metallers Wolverine. They opened with the one song of theirs I recognised, “House of Plague”, which appeared on the cover disk of this month’s “Classic Rock” magazine. While musically competant, their set suffered from a muddy sound mix, and came over as a bit of a poor man’s Dream Theater; it’s possible that their music improves on repeated listenings, but with mostly unfamiliar material they seemed to lack strong hooks or riffs.

I wasn’t sure quite what to expect from Anathema’s headline set. Four years ago I saw them perform a superb show in the same venue. But last year’s support set for Porcupine Tree in the larger Academy 2 was a bit of a disappointment, in which they didn’t play nearly enough of what I considered to be their strongest material.

This time Anathema soon dispelled any lingering doubts I had as they launched into a powerful and enthusiastic set, buoyed up by an an appreciative crowd. They still played a lot from their most recent release, 2003’s A Natural Disaster, including a very impressive rendition of the title track, with Lee Douglas’ vocals far more impassioned than the studio version. This time the setlist also drew heavily from one of my favourite albums, 1998’s Alternative 4, with strong versions of ‘Empty’ (introduced as ‘a drinking song’) and ‘Lost Control’. The main set ended with Danny’s beautiful cascading solo at the end of ‘Flying’, merging seamlessly into a tape loop as he walked off stage with the guitar seemingly still playing.

They came back for no fewer than four encores including an excellent ‘Shroud of False/Fragile Dreams’ also from “Alternative 4″, ‘Sleepless’ right back from their 1993 debut, and finally a cover of Nine Inch Nails ‘Hurt’.

Good show, even though they overran the curfew which meant I had to get a taxi home. A band this good don’t deserve to languish without a record deal.

I’m doing evil experiments on the players of my PBeM and PBmB games.

Up to now I’ve largely be using the technique known as ‘Illusionism’, which is Forgeite moon-language for arbitrary GM fiat deciding the results, especially with social conflicts with NPCs. I’ve slowly become dissatisfied with this approach, wanting something a bit more structured mechanically. In particular, I’ve been getting bogged down trying to solve social conflicts by ‘just roleplaying it out’, and want some actual system support.

I’ve decided to use a form of Conflict Resolution. This takes an different approach from the traditional RPG of rolling success or failure against skills for a task. Instead, you determine what the PCs and opposing NPCs want to achieve, then roll for that. The winner of the contest gets what they want, within limits. Determining those limits is what setting stakes is all about.

For simple conflicts a single oppose dice roll will settle things. But for dramatic extended conflicts I’m using the Fudge Wound Track to record progress. When one party in the conflict reaches Incapacitated it means the conflict is over and they’ve lost. If it tips over into Near Death, then there’s going to be some longer-term fallout.

So far I’ve got the following three scenes running that I’m treating as extended conflicts:

• An actual combat scene, with Legionnaire Kanon and his men taking on an angry mob, supported by the former Legionnaire Rotemdol. The immediate objective (and thus one side of the stakes of the conflict) is to arrest two individuals who have been identified as the ringleaders of the mob. The result of the conflict going badly will be the miscreants getting away, with the possibility of Kanon getting wounded in the resulting battle
• An example of social conflict, starring another Legionnaire, Kolath, trying to persuade the security chief of the Academy of Knowledge to explain exactly why his men have been firing artillery weapons within city limits. The precise stakes are not available at your level of clearance, because that will be a spoiler. (This isn’t a ‘full disclosure metagame’ where the players have GM-omnisicent knowledge of the situation)
• Finally, a more abstract conflict where Zul is trying to lead a prison breakout, with the jail itself as the opponent. If Zul wins, she’ll escape. The precise stakes if she loses will be determined as the conflict develops.

We’ll have to see how this plays out. One thing I’ve found already; trying out a conflict resolution system has certainly renewed my enthusiasm for a game which had been flagging a bit.

George Smith of Dapol is complaining about poor sales of their Dogfish ballast hopper. I think this is a lovely model, which is marred by Dapol’s bizarre decisions on liveries, which in turn has depressed sales. The first release was in a dubious all-over grey which I think is supposed to represent faded olive green, but it’s with TOPS data panels which makes it inappropriate for 50s/60s era modellers. They’ve not done it in actual olive green, or in the later ‘Dutch’ grey/yellow colours. They’re claiming that the ‘body is wrong’ for the latter livery because it had an ‘extra panel’. I’m highly sceptical of this; all photographs of dutch liveried Dogfish look exactly like the Dapol wagon to me, and the wagon experts on the ModMod list all insist that there was only ever one body design, and none were rebodied when repainted into Dutch. Have Dapol done some dubious research?

He’s also moaning yet again that modern modellers have ‘deep pockets and short arms’, and is (again) threatening to stop making modern models unless ‘we’ buy them. He’s citing the poor sales of the BR blue class 73 as an example. Personally I think one problem is that Dapol are releasing too many models in too short a period, and are forgetting people only have finite spare cash at any one time. Something like a blue 73 in a long-lived but historical livery is likely to be the sort of thing that sells slowly and steadily over a long period. It’s not a good fit for the limited edition ‘feeding frenzy’ approach which is more suited to short-lived contemporary liveries. BR blue really should have been one of the first liveries, not the last.

I want Dapol to succeed, and I want to encourage them to continue producing diesel and electric era models. But I also want them to learn from mistakes, and don’t want to be bullied into paying good money for flawed models, or things I don’t actually want.

I’m recovering today from the N gauge show in the Leamington ‘Cowshed’. Many excellent layouts; one of my favourites was the narrow gauge French one, using Z gauge track. Most of the best diesel era layouts I’ve seen before; the ever excellent Kings Park with it’s eight running lines where there’s always something moving, or the compact but atmospheric Shaweport set in 1990s potteries area. Morpeth is new to me, a big layout set in pre-electrification East Coast main line when the Deltics pulled the top expresses.

As well as being an show of layouts, it’s a major opportunity for the trade to show their wares; Bachmann and Dapol had big display stands, and most of the smaller cottage industry people were there too. I finally got to look at the finished version of Dave Jones’ class 121 bubble car (not terribly impressed, I’m afraid)

Over at the Bachmann stand the Metro-Cammell Pullman cars look magnificent, especially the blue/grey ones I remember seeing at Kings Cross in the 1970s. It’s really, really hard to justify them on a 70s/80s/90s/00s layout set in Cornwall. Early test shots of the TTA look good; the Peco model was good for it’s day, but is now rather long in the tooth.

Rather outside my era are the Dapol Gresley coaches, although they certainly look impressive. They’re the first British outline coaches that really come up to the standards of continental models by Fleischmann, Minitrix and Roco. They’ll also be selling at Fleischmann-level prices, so we’ll have to see if the allegedly price-sensitive British market is prepared to pay for quality.

Dapol actually had three new steam/early diesel era wagons on sale, a 21t hopper, a 12′wb 21t mineral, and the grain wagon. They look nice, especially the grain hopper. Not sure if I can justify any of these in Cornwall.

The preproduction sample of the Cargowaggon looks an impressive beast, although they’ve allegedly missed an umlaut from the tri-lingual lettering. I’m still not convinced that the shade of blue is quite correct, and might well need a bit of weathering to darken it.

“In a castle far away
A band beins to play
The medieval disco lights are shining”

Circulus are one of those bands who are almost impossible to categorise. Their music includes both ancient moogs, and really ancient instruments like crumhorns and rausch pfiffers. With their charity shop medieval garb they can’t avoid comparisons with Blackmores Night, but unlike BN, Americanised renfaire cheese is thankfully absent from their sound. Circulus certainly don’t do cheap pop records. What we get is instead is flute-driven psychedelic folk-prog, with some loopily surreal lyrics in places, featuring dragons, south London skip hire companies, and Trumpton. Songs like ‘To The Fields’ recall early Mostly Autumn at their most pastoral, and I hear faint echoes of Caravan in some of the moog wig-outs, but overall they’ve got a very distinctive musical identify of their own.

Electric Nose thinks EMUs.

Talking of multiple units, I travelled from London Waterloo to Woking the other day, and was reminded just how intense suburban operations can be. With other trains frequently passing mine on both sides, this fascinating experience is about as far removed from the typical model railway stereotype as it’s possible to get. Exactly why I use a computer and DCC to provide a more realistic traffic density around whatever train I happen to be running.

Clapham junction in the rush hour is something that has to be seen to be believed; twelve running lines with trains at something like three minute headways on each one. That works out at one train every 15 seconds, with up to five or six moving trains visible at any moment.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen that sort of really intensive suburban EMU operations modelled. This probably isn’t helped by the fact that EMUs have always been the poor relation to everything else when it comes to ready-to-run models. Yes, there are kits, but not everyone has the time or skill to build them all. The complex modern liveries aren’t always easy for the average modeller to paint convincingly, especially when you’re talking not about one or two units, but an extensive fleet.

Something like the approaches to Waterloo would take up an inordinate amount of space in 00, but might be feasible in N if only the stock was available.