Where Worlds Collide

News from 2026

Captain Electra has some predictions for model railway products from the year 2026.

Hornby were showing off their Lyddle End "Nano-Folk", 1:148 scale robotic folk who can be programmed to perform simple tasks such as getting in and off trains, waiting impatiently on the platforms and going shopping. We are assured that the problems encountered with earlier Chinese-built "Nano-Folk" will not be repeated and they will not form a Democratic Republic on your layout.

Will the range include nano-chavs?

Hot Axlebox!

While waiting for my train home tonight, I noticed a freight barrelling along on the other line; a long train of continuous welded rail headed by a Freightliner 66, doing something like sixty.

Alarmingly, I noticed a lot of black smoke coming from one of the bogies about halfway down the train, which looked worryingly like a hot axlebox. As the train receded into the distance, it seemed to be shrouded in smoke. The tail light, still visible through the smoke, took a long time to disappear round the curve a mile along the line. Was the train slowing?

After the train disappeared, the signals didn't clear. My own train, due on the other track any minute failed to appear. Disturbing thoughts started appearing in my head; had the train derailed and blocked both lines? Had my local train run into the wreckage? Should I have tried to warn someone?

Another waiting passenger rang the information helpline, to be told that services were delayed due to 'problems with a freight train'. As if we didn't already know that.

I eventually got home by getting a lift from a later-working colleague (the office is next door to the station). National Rail stated that 'the broken down train is now on the move' at 19:11, with residual delays of up to 85 minutes. Sounds like it didn't derail, but why did they close both lines?

Update: At least it wasn't a nuclear flask train.

As Others See Us

Matt Webb visited the Western Model Railway Club's show in Ruislip. Apart from some comments about the sadly typical poor running on some layouts, this quote struck me as interesting:

I was surprised not to see any futuristic trains. There was a small layout of Croydon Tramlink and a single layout which included diesel and electric era trains, but otherwise locomotives dominated. But where was the TGV, or a maglev? Perhaps this is simply because layouts with more points are more exciting, and futuristic, high speed trains don�t work like that.

So much for the 'public want to see kettles' attitude of some exhibition managers. This show did seem to have an excessive boiler bias, with just a single D&E layout mentioned.

It seems to me that the emphasis on historical modelling is very much a British thing. If the relative numbers of new models for different eras is anything to go by, German, Swiss and especially Japanese modellers emphasise the contemporary scene. Is it because those are countries where people still take pride in their railways, and see the present-day trains as something modern and exciting, rather than something mundane and boring?

Ouch!

We're used to reading reports of cars getting onto railway lines and being hit by trains. Perhaps this might be an example of a train getting it's own back.

I have no further information about the incident. I assume the train overran a siding and went through the stop blocks. I just hope the bits of twisted metal under the locomotive aren't the remains of a road vehicle that got in the way.

Manchester Show 2006

Yesterday was also the Manchester Model Railway Club's 70th exhibition.

Previous Manchester shows have suffered from too many kettle-era branch line termini, which I find get boring no matter how exquisitely modelled. But this year there were a lot of diesel and electric layouts. Star of the show was the club's own "Dewsbury Midland" running in 70s mode. Although kettle fans would call it a modern layout, it represents the world of a quarter of a century ago, with vacuum braked freights and steam-heated blue and grey Mk1 coaches, all hauled by long-vanished classes of locomotives. Another standout was "Farkham", a well-detailed slice of 80s urban modelling complete with half-sunken shopping trolleys in the polluted river. Other fine D&E layouts layouts were two 4mm finescale layouts, "Staverton" representing the post-privatisation era, and Saffron Street set back in 60s green era, and a couple of 7mm "plank" layouts, Ian Futers terminus on a pier "Loch Lochy", and the minimum space shunting layout "The Field". My only real criticism of the show was the lack of N, represented by a single layout, the small but excellent "Woodhead"

Woodhead (taken at an earlier show)

Despite the lack of N gauge traders, my wallet still took a battering from half-a-dozen of the new Bachmann 16 ton minerals, and some of Ten Commandments stonecast ballast loads to fit the Dapol Dogfish (I bought his entire stock; I'll need some more at the next show I see him)

Update: I left my camera at home yesterday, but Andy Y took a lot of photos.

Banger Blue on TV

BBC North did a very brief feature on tonight's local news on this weekend's Manchester Model Railway Club's exhibition.

What made it surprising is that it featured the MMRC's own layout, Dewsbury Midland, which is running in 70s diesel mode for this show. Usually if anything model railway related gets anywhere near the telly the TV producers always make a bee-line for the big kettle layouts. For the old Westminster Central Hall shows (remember them?) it was always the Gauge 1 live steam. But not this time. TV viewers were treated to blue liveried Peaks, 40s and HSTs.

Does this mean that D&E modelling has finally come of age?

Voyager Derailed

A Virgin Voyager has derailed at 100 mph after hitting a car, in a frightening echo of Selby and Ufton Nervet disasters.

Fortunately this time the train came to a stand with the derailed leading vehicle still upright and in line, and nobody on board was injured. Sadly the driver of the car was killed.

While it don't know the full details of the track layout in the area, both the Selby and Ufton Nervet crashes involved the derailed leading vehicle hitting a set of points at speed which precipitated the derailment of the whole train with multiple fatalities in both cases. Perhaps the only difference this time was that the collision happed on plain line.

At the moment it's not know how the car came to be on the track.

High Speed Rail

The French are celebrating 25 years of the TGV

It has woken sleepy provincial towns, shrunk the map of France and even promises to matchmake lonely passengers. France's high-speed train, the TGV, is 25 today.

The TGV is stylish in a way only the French can achieve; compare with the bulbous German ICE or the bland Italian Pendolino. It's an iconic train who's distinctive image is recognisable all over the world, a classic like the Japanese Series 0 Bullet Train or the EMD F-Units.

Sadly the news today from neighbouring Germany is much more tragic. The prototype for the next generation of high-speed rail travel, the Maglev, has suffered a 120 mph crash. The death toll is reported as high as 16, more than half the people on board.

N Gauge Wish Lists

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.

Dapol and their livery choices

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.