Modern Image - is the phrase outdated?

[whart57]

To turn this around completely, I once had the idea that you could liven up a single track branch layout by operating it over a lifetime. Thus the start of the operating session would be the sort of train that was there when the line opened and then go through to modern day or closure. The layout in question was a Colonel Stephens inspired job and I had started building stock for it before I sold it. So I had planned to start with a train headed up by a model of Northiam (I still have the wheels and motor for this ....) pulling ex GE four wheelers, mid session would involve the sort of second hand engines the Stephens railways used (I actually built EKR No. 1) and passenger services with Ford railbuses (which I did build), and finally end with an ex SECR O1 and a birdcage brake (I have the chassis for the first but the rest and the coach are still flat pack). The goods yard would also be shunted so pre-Group wagons are in it first, then Big Four period ones and ending up with a couple of BR mineral wagons.

 

A mainline company branchline could be done the same - a Victorian outside frame 2-4-0 with four wheel coaches going onto passenger tank (0-4-4T or 2-4-2T) with early bogie coaches, then a push pull or a couple of coaches behind a BR standard 2MT and then finally a first generation DMU. Go later than that and you'd have to knock down the station building and rip up the goods yard tracks. Either that or hand it over to a preservation society.

 

This could work because over the 75 years from the 1890s to the late 1960s most stations didn't change much

[Clive Mortimore]

As far as I know there have only been a few real railway time periods

 

Pre historic pre Midland Railway pre 1844

Kirtley Green, Before 1873

Johnson Green 1873 until 1883

Johnson and Clayton splendor 1883 to 1908

Deeley and Bain classic 1908 to 1928

Oh goodness it is all now a hell of a mess! 1928 onwards

[Northmoor]

OK, stepping back from flippancy, aren't dates a little too rigid. As you say things didn't change overnight. I'm setting my layout period from 2006 to 2011. At the start of that period there were still coaches sporting the 1990s livery, though they were either being withdrawn or repainted. At the end a whole new livery was coming in, radically different. Most of my stock will be painted in the middle period livery but I'd like to have one or two items from either end.

 

I'm ambivalent about how someone wants to describe when their layout represents, although epochs baffle me.  I could never understand a word they say in Star Wars films.

 

I also find it baffling why some modellers are so fastidious about getting locos right for the date they model, then park completely unrealistic road vehicles outside shop fronts which are also completely the wrong style for the era.

[Fenman]

No need for rudeness.

 

Model railway exhibitions are open to all including families and non-enthusiasts who may be less clued up. Such vague descriptions in a guide book won't help explain what they are looking at.

 

G.

In replying to what I assumed was your humorously aggressive original post, I had hoped the winking smiley face would show I was mking a joke and would prevent you from taking offence, but my sincere apologies that you considered it rude.

 

But the sentiment behind the joke still stands. Anyone with enough knowledge to ask the questions you posed has enough knowledge to work it all out.

 

I'm not sure I agree with your new proposition - that labelling is primarily there to help the complete novice. I've seen no actual data on who visits shows but, to take one extreme, I'd be staggered if the overwhelming majority of visitors to Warley were not model railway enthusiasts. I'd guess to most of them "pre-TOPS Rail Blue" is just as immediately obvious as the meaning of "early Grouping".

 

As a group we do seem wildly obsessive about the precise classification of everything. Real railways, like real life, are messy places. As late as 1970 I remember travelling behind a dirty green 47 hauling a rake of pristine blue/grey coaches. On a model it would look like someone had mixed-up their time periods and not properly weathered their coaching stock to match the loco.

 

Paul

[Northmoor]

To turn this around completely, I once had the idea that you could liven up a single track branch layout by operating it over a lifetime.

 

I recall a "Plan of the Month" in the RM in perhaps the late 80s, doing just this. The track plan was shown in 1955, 1965, 1975 and 1985.  It starts as just a regular two track circuit with junction station for a short branch line; by 1975 it was a single line from one direction through to the branch terminus operated by a DMU. By 1985, the junction station had been partly relaid round the other half of the circuit, as a preserved railway.

[Mark Saunders]

I cut this out of another post on class 313's and it shows what many modellers and manufacturers call modern image!

 

 

"Oh dear. I had to look into this thread about 313's as they are too modern for me to know anything about. 

 

Vintage indeed. Allegedly.  Interesting to read about the 'forgotten tube' though, good thread.

 

Feeling rather old just now........"

 

Mark Saunders

[RandyWales]

Hi...

The Gauge 0 Guild has today added a Diesel and Electric Traction section to it's members forum.

This is a major shift in outlook for the Guild.

We rejected outright the term 'Modern Image'

Randall

Edited November 13, 2017 by RandyWales

[Steamport Southport]

Hi...

The Gauge 0 Guild has today added a Diesel and Electric Traction section to it's members forum.

This is a major shift in outlook for the Guild.

We rejected outright the term 'Modern Image'

Randall

 

Some people in the Guild probably think post 1923 is Modern Image.

 

 

 

 

Jason

[The Johnster]

To turn this around completely, I once had the idea that you could liven up a single track branch layout by operating it over a lifetime. Thus the start of the operating session would be the sort of train that was there when the line opened and then go through to modern day or closure. The layout in question was a Colonel Stephens inspired job and I had started building stock for it before I sold it. So I had planned to start with a train headed up by a model of Northiam (I still have the wheels and motor for this ....) pulling ex GE four wheelers, mid session would involve the sort of second hand engines the Stephens railways used (I actually built EKR No. 1) and passenger services with Ford railbuses (which I did build), and finally end with an ex SECR O1 and a birdcage brake (I have the chassis for the first but the rest and the coach are still flat pack). The goods yard would also be shunted so pre-Group wagons are in it first, then Big Four period ones and ending up with a couple of BR mineral wagons.

 

A mainline company branchline could be done the same - a Victorian outside frame 2-4-0 with four wheel coaches going onto passenger tank (0-4-4T or 2-4-2T) with early bogie coaches, then a push pull or a couple of coaches behind a BR standard 2MT and then finally a first generation DMU. Go later than that and you'd have to knock down the station building and rip up the goods yard tracks. Either that or hand it over to a preservation society.

 

This could work because over the 75 years from the 1890s to the late 1960s most stations didn't change much

 

 

The first Bristol model railway show I went to, in about 1972 or 3 I think, featured a model of Yatton which operated to a sequence from about 1900 until the blue diesel era that was modern image then.  As the station changed little in the overall time period, it was just a matter of introducing more recent trains in a sort of continuous overlap period operation, a very effective presentation which impressed me a lot.  It was a standard big exhibition roundyroundy with lots of fiddle yard storage in other respects; I assume some replacement of stock by hand took place behind the scenes but operation was very smooth and slickly presented from the viewing side!