Jenny announced on MVRP that Kathy Millat is going to be featured on future videos. Kathy is from the UK and has her own youtube channel.
Kathy talks about UK model railroading below. Of course she is not going to show the mediocre stuff, but what she does show is quite on par with the best we see in this forum. The double decker turntable is cool.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Kathy has been featured on the MRH forums for the past few years. With regard to this US/UK video, it's probably useful for many MR readers as we Americans tend to be rather landlocked in our knowledge and awareness. Not all of course but quite a few.
I am married to a Brit and have been to Europe a number of times and England several and the contrasts are interesting. British see more trains and as it turns out there is a much higher per capita rate of rail fans and modelers there. I was in a shop in a small northeast town of South Shields and counted 36 different train related publications on the wall of magazines. Wow. Here you'd be lucky to find a fraction of that in a large magazine seller.
As I happened to find out by visiting a club in Sunderland and a model RRers house, US modeling is very popular there. In fact a number of the club members had made trips to the US to rail fan, especially out west.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
Kathy pretty much summarizes my own experience with British railway modelling. British hobby enthusiasts are much more into scratchbuilding and kitbashing and the local industry caters perfectly to them, with a vast number of cottage businesses offering kits, detailing parts and other "raw materials", not only for structures and buildings, but engines and stock as well. There are uncounted numbers of private and commercial organisations putting up train shows, and if you want to exhibit your layout, you just register with them.
The layouts you will see are really top-notch show quality - unlike some of the layouts I see in my own country, which are nicely made, but somehow have a uniform look due to too many Faller/Kibri or Vollmer buildings on them! The curse of having too much avalable in either kit form or RTR!
Henry - thanks for sharing the vid!
Yes, great video and the first time I've heard Kathy speak (guess I don't get out much.) Kathy's reputation precedes her, though, as she is the Atlantic Director of the NMRA. She's a reminder that the NMRA and the hobby, like the rest of society no matter where you live, is becoming increasingly diverse.
Kathy's video does a great job at depicting the richness and extent of British modeling. It depends on a remarkable heritage in relation to the country's long romance with trains as the birthplace of rail technology. But I think they and their counterparts on the Continent have a lot of ideas that can be readily adapted to US-style modelling. The whole idea of the exhibition layout is particualrly well-suited to engaging with the public and persuading new hobbiests that they can build something to completion that is satisfying without necessarily having a basement available.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Great video, very interesting, and clearly some great modeling.
I was quickly struck by the contrast with my own modeling interests, but did find some interesting similarities.
While I will openly admit that the idea of building what I consider a small diorama holds amost zero interest for me personally, the one theme that is consistant with my approach to the hobby is the idea of NOT trying to model a "whole" railroad or show both ends of the line with multiple "towns" along the way.
Long ago I signed onto the idea of only modeling each feature of interest one time - one freight yard, one sizeable passenger terminal, one engine terminal, one "industrial area", one city, etc.
And then using stagging to simulate trains coming and going from this one place, even if it is a multi featured model of a big place.
One of my modeler friends is filling a basement with just the PRR in Baltimore City circa 1947 - He has a full length model of Baltimore's Penn Station......
Another aspect of this is the idea of "large but simple" getting closer to scale radius curves, scale sized structures, prototype train lengths, etc, which is also part of my latest layout plan.
Additionally, while I like operation, I am very much into modeling the "non railroad" elements of the scene.
So, while very different in many ways, my modeling goals share a lot with our UK friends.
Sheldon
Some of you may recall a Brit you used to post his work here regularly - Jon Grant. He has done some fantastic work on his Sweet Home layouts as well as displayed his show displays.
My wife and visited Jon when we were across the pond in Dec 2014 and had a nice time. He actually had several layouts in his basement, including the Virginian layout featured in MR magazine, a steam era Sweet Home Chicago layout, which I got to operate and switch some cars, and of course his southern rural layout he has featured photo's here with is cat sometimes.
I did get around a bit in England and the vast majority of houses did not have basements, so Jon Grant was lucky in that regard. His was not at all big by American standards but he made good use of what he had. Full of trains and not a lot of unused space!
AFAIK, Jon is still active in modeling but mostly uses FB and also has a lady in his life too which may distract him as well!
Attics and sheds are popular for model railway layouts over there