Garden Railway Forum

Due for release in mid January, AnDel Models has posted details of (another!) new kit to add to his range.

This time, it's an FR bug box:

http://andelmodels.co.uk/product_info.p ... kbglet0r86

Yes and I am reviewing it! Yay!

Does that mean that someone other than David Pinniger will do loco reviews

Looks nice... but I think there's too many manufacturers making these now.

well since mark thatcher the "sturctures columnist" took the review of the large bogie coach that I was going to do I thought I'd say I'd review these very pretty carriages before anyone else did, I have ordered one in victorian brown which should arriver soon!
Lots of places are making them so I will compare prises, pictures and speed of building.

Personally I think reviews should be done by a variety of readers, otherwise the reviews become boring and you get a very one sided opinion.

presisely what I thought!

Agreed as well, I certainly think Stuart Moon has been doing far too many Garden Rail reviews recently for new locos, he's done Countess, Atlantic, Taliesin, Criccieth Castle, Silver Lady etc etc as well as various bits of Accucraft rollong stock
Not sure about the ANDEL bug box, but like MHLR I think there are too many manaufacturers doing them, we've brought an IP one for uncle Keith so guess what I'll be building on christmas day...

Save up,  save up, save up, save up, save up, save up, save up, save up, save up, save up, save up, save up!!!!!!

Then buy one, buy one, buy one, buy one, buy one, buy one, buy one, buy one, buy one, buy one, buy one!!!!!

laalratty wrote:Agreed as well, I certainly think Stuart Moon has been doing far too many Garden Rail reviews recently for new locos, he's done Countess, Atlantic, Taliesin, Criccieth Castle, Silver Lady etc.......SNIP

OTOH, there is a case for a whole sequence of reviews done by the same individual, pulling the same stock on the same track, judged by the same standard. At least there's a fair basis for comparison then.

^ WHS. Seems a fairly decent and unbiased reviewer. I imagine he also happens to write reviews that arrive on time and which Tag can just plonk in the mag without masses of editing which must help! Writing to magazine standards of grammar and coherency is harder than people think.

My tree is at least 7/16" overscale, it's really depressing me. I wish nature would appreciate the fact that some of us are striving for 100% accuracy here. She's a cruel Mistress alright.

Sorry Will, I'll stop annoying the entire population of your forum and go to bed now...

If I spent that much time worrying about getting things right,I wouldn't have ever built my railway or any of my rolling stock, variety is one of life's most fantastic things. Wouldn't you be hacked off if you went to the pub and all the beers tasted the same and all the girls looked the same?

is that £36 for one, or a pair?

I can kinda' hear what your saying but there are some people like myself who just like to run trains and scale dosnt really come into it to the point of not buying a kit as its out of scale.. I run what i can afford and thats how I model..

if I wanted to do everything by the prototype and exact rivet Id go back to 00, Im pretty sure I have about 3 different scales going on with my locos, stock and figures but I dont care.
I dont care because its my own prototype so anything I do is prototypical, there was never a real Woodrow railway so why should I cater to a prototype that doesnt exist?

i think the only problem with having things exact to scale, is with locos.
you cant really get a resonable run out of them.
dont get me wrong, i have seen TME and finescale locos run fine, but gas doesnt last long, neither does water.
small cylinders arent going to cope well with un even track.
unless its somthing big, like a TME vor, but they cost mega bucks,
at least you can get a decent run out of a roundhouse, accucraft, that will cope with hills etc

My girlfriend had bright blue hair when I met her and my steam engines have wasp striped buffer beams- "Honesty will set you free but individuality is wonderland".

I can admire other people's skill in producing accurate models but me, I'm quite happy with the "three foot away with glasses if worn" test. I can think of a few cases where I've seen beautifully detailed scale locos and stock representing accurately a particular train at a particular time. Invariably running on a plain baseboard style track, or plonked on a bare display stand at an exhibition. While I can appreciate the work that's gone in to it, somehow Tag's weathered and detailed Carrie sat in Longlands station with a couple of wagons looks so much more real to me. No point having the detailed stock if you don't have somewhere to run it that's just as good. A generic loco and wagons in a vaguely realistic environment- 16mm ish buildings, figures, deep ballasted track, the odd "close enough" road vehicle and importantly, greenery that looks the right size is far more realistic to me.

But, each to their own; it'd be dull if we were all the same.

I think it is 36 pounds for the one carriage. I think these carriages are closer to scale than the IP ones but will measure when I get it. My railway has no prototype so I am blessed by being able to make up the dimensions of the real thing based on the model! For example the DVLR was built to 2 ft 9 and 3/4 inch gauge so using 45mm gauge I get 16mm scale. Yes it might be "bending the rules" but if every thing had to be 16mm scale everything would fall apart because you can not change the scale of physics and nature! Everything would be immensely fragile and impracticable. So long as the locos and stock are nicely proportioned an pleasing to the eye, their scale does not bother me.