General Discussion (Model Railroader)

At least I hope it deals with scale model railroading (their segment titles can be a bit wonky - the 'Personal Transporter' segment was not Starfleet Chief Miles O'Brian discussing tachyon tunneling through supercool hydrogen in the Heisenberg Compensator, but was merely Mini-Vans). Anyway, Discovery Channel viewers, set your DVRs or VCRs to Mar 26, 7:00 pm.
For you unfamiliar with "How It's Made", it's a Canadian program (130+ episodes over 10 seasons) which shows the fabrication/assembly/production of various items in the workshop/factory/mill/plant/quarry etc - something like Modern Marvels, except interesting and informative.  Each episode has 4 segments (sometimes the last 2 are related), with funky, cheesy (and yet often catchy) syntherized music in the background, and narration of the process in the foreground (in the US, originally by the soporific Brooks Moore, currently by the equally soporific Zach Fine - the reason for overdubbing from English to...yes, English is so the US audience is not 'perplexed' by metric measurements.
You will learn something from each segment (OK, perhaps not the toy block one, when they simply ran of things to say about injection molding, and instead talked about the packaging), ranging from products you never heard of (like for me, Opalescent Glass and Orthoses), to processes you didn't know (like the ductile iron pipe one - didn't know they sprayed cement on the inside of the pipe...good railfan segment, as they showed unloading of scrap metal from bathtub gondolas via electromagnet crane, and also at the end the shiny (painted) black iron pipes leaving the mill neatly stacked on TTX flats) to just cool processes (like bending  straight wire into coiled springs - it's just cool to see) to the grotesque (the interior of the eyesocket of a middle-age caucasian man in otherwise good health is rather smooth & pink, much like nasal membranes, which makes sense if you think about it...'Artifical Eyes') - and yes guys, they did cover tampons 'Sanitary Napkins' and sliced up a cornea 'Laser Eye Surgery'.

Hey, Science Channel viewers - have you seen this episode yet (Discovery may be on a different schedule - this is episode 129 - did it stink or was it cool?  If cool, maybe we can get other facets of the hobby featured, although they have done foam board & paints already.  It should be photogenic, and I think they appreciate if you provide a contact at a manufacturer (and I don't think they featured any chinese plants yet, just Canadian, US, & British ones).

wyomingrailfan wrote:

I know that there is a 99.99% chance that it will be toy trains. It'll be probably MTH or Lionel, because every hear of Atlas trains running under the tree?

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if that's what it is - although they have done some model stuff before, it tended toward miniature houses and (just recently) miniature silver sets - however, they did do nice segments on Model Ships (season 6), and (also recently) Steam Powered Models (which were neat).  I was also trying to think Garden Railroad manufacturers in North America or the UK, as that might well be their focus - nice & big & photogenic - oh well, we'll see in March.

No, it is the retirees that sit on the porch that die.

The rest will live forever enjoying stuff like how it's made.

That show was rather good, you can even look it up on the internet and watch previous shows.

reklein wrote:

Gapplegg!!! Dude!!! No daytime TV!!!! You gotta get out man and enjoy life. You won't be able to enjoy your retirement if you start wastin the day watchin TV. Take a road trip. rake the yard, do the dishes. anything but daytime TV. That'll killyou quicker than anything. Don't forget to walk at least a mile a day or Bike 4-6 miles. Exercise the heart vigorously. Otherwise we'll end up writin you off dude. OK,rant over.

That's what VCRs or DVD recorders are for. Record it and watch it when it's convenient for you. 

miniwyo wrote:

Its a pretty cool show. According to thier website, That secment was at Weaver Models in Northumberland PA.

The Pennsylvania Cable Network did a nice, in-depth tour of the Weaver Model factory.  Injection molding, paintshop, lettering, the works.  Ran at least a 1/2 hour.  

Their factory tours are always fascinating.

Milepost 266.2 wrote:

miniwyo wrote: Its a pretty cool show. According to thier website, That secment was at Weaver Models in Northumberland PA.   The Pennsylvania Cable Network did a nice, in-depth tour of the Weaver Model factory.  Injection molding, paintshop, lettering, the works.  Ran at least a 1/2 hour.   Their factory tours are always fascinating.

I agree. When I was in the 6th grade, I got to go on a tour of the local coal fired power plant. That was really fun. But now I am in the business of building plants, so its not so fun anymore :P Although I would like to know what they do to our gas when they get it in the cryo plant at the next stop down the pipe...... 

I think it's an OK show but sometime a bit to simple. But the killer for me was when they started narrating it in Swedish. It really sucks since a lot of the thing get translated wrong and you can hear and understand what they where meant to be saying. It totally ruins the show for me. Same thing with "deadliest catch", excellent series and then they started narrating it in Swedish. That is plain terrible. So now I cancelled my discovery and got a history channel instead. I just can't stand listening to narrating that isn't in the original language.

Magnus

miniwyo wrote:

Its a pretty cool show. According to thier website, That secment was at Weaver Models in Northumberland PA.

There is another show on Discovery channel, its all about trains. The guy in it is English and a lot ofthe show shows Europeon stuff but they also show north American, last week it was on the transcontiental railways in the US. There was a long picture of a challenger running with a passenger train. It was a railfan trip but had some excellent shots. Also some narrow gauge.

Dave