Saturday 23 April 2016

Showtime in Springfield...

Today, as a guest of James Finnister, I went to the Spalding Model Engineering and Hobby Show.
I was thinking the Hobby bit might be a nose curler, but there was nothing of the kind there.

In fact there was a huge selection of model boats and a fair bit of model engineering.  Most of the boats were very good, with model lifeboats VERY good.  I just can't get wound up about model lifeboats!  Surprisingly few warships, fortunately.  Hovercraft, which is very unusual.
The Gauge 1 mob had their usual oval test track with beautifully built model locos, in steam.  But they don't chuff. In fact they make no noise at all, less than an electric, which begs the obvious question......

Equipment was a bit sparse, but I suppose one mini mill from China looks pretty much the same as another and has just as much backlash in the screws, rendering it useless for serious purposes.
The 3D pushers were there too. One of them had a laser cut wooden framed machine!  That's gonna be accurate, ain't it!?  It sat producing perfectly useless truncated pyramids.  His comment when I said about all the lined, stepped junk it inevitably produces was, "just put a load of filler on it", was so typical of the arrogance that these people have.  When their ghastly machines can do what Modelu's machines can do I'll treat the 3D printers with some respect.

The price of raw materials is frightening.  I bought some copper tube for a central flue and cross tubes for a boiler I want to build.  Damn all really. £4-80!!  I picked up a piece of nickel silver, 1mm, 3"x3"...£2-80. I put it back!  Ye Gods, all this game is just so ridiculously expensive these days.

Once again, model flyers were infinitely friendlier and more pleasant than model boaters.  Inviting me to far flung clubs I shall never see, but warmly encouraging.  I wish they were not so expensive to join.  Actually many model boat clubs are just as pricey, but I can put a model yacht on the river up the road and that's all it costs, nuttn, but to fly costs membership and insurance, as does model engineering.

Absent, from this model-fest, were model yachts, unfortunately as I was hoping to see how they're rigged, and slot racing.  I mention this last as there is a new part of the Springfields complex which has installed a huge King slot track and which is flogging Scalextric and a lot else besides.  Surely they should have been there with a stand.  But what WAS there of a car nature and you won't see these many places, was round the pole cars with diesel, glow and petrol engines.  I realised it was here in Linclonshire because a wee bit up the road is England's one and only tethered car track.  Once upon a time, the land was dotted with them, but we're down to just one and that's in somebody's private garden.  The guy had wanted a car, but couldn't afford the collectors' money asked for them now, so he made a furnace, made some casting boxes, melted some old car parts, made the patterns, made the moulds in foundry sand and cast the aluminium in the sand moulds of major model car parts.  Then sanded and polished them until they looked like those in my copies of Model Car News from the '40s.  A remarkable endeavour.

So, there we are.  A fair attempt at a general model show.  All old farts of course and like so many other hobbies it will all fall by the wayside when the current crop of practitioners die off or become incapable.

Thanks to James for a drive of his 7 1/4" gauge petrol/electric loco and to Issy for the ride to the show and back.

Day rounded off with tea and cake at the Fenland Aero Club nearby.

15 comments:

  1. Tethered cars, had to Google that one! And I'm glad that I did, thank you for introducing us to another fascinating hobby!!

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  2. You're very welcome, Paul. Also, may I recommend a website called ontheline.com That's where all the remaining knowledge and enthusiasm for tethered cars and boats resides. It is informative and knowledgeable and well written. Updated monthly, come what may.

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  3. It was good to see you Martin. As I said at the time the tethered cars took me back to the age of Meccano Magazine. Lack flash steam one of those niche aspects of model engineering that tend to get forgotten about. What struck me looking at the trade stands was the gulf between those selling stuff ready to go in a box and those selling raw materials.

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  4. The gulf seems to be between what raw materials used to cost and what they cost now! And don't even mention castings costs! Also, did I miss the workshop demo section that the programme spoke of?

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  5. That looked like an interesting show, and tethered cars were new to me, too.I am getting the hint here and there that you are dabbling again in live steam, that will be worth waiting for! I too am always disappointed in the gauge 1 and over steam locos, for me the noise is at least half the appeal! Love James' photo of the little Aveling...there was certainly lots to admire.

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    1. Iain, Maxitrack have built a limited run of 3 1/2" gauge Aveling locos, though based on their Allchin parts. Rather nice though.

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    2. Thanks, James...I am a sucker for Aveling machines, Allchins and Burrells too. I will do some foraging, but I suspect on a modelmaker's salary that may be just a dream :-) mind you, not much bigger than the 1/22 stuff I'm working on.

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  6. Yes, Iain, I seem to be gravitating toward steam. If I go to the trouble of buying all the copper for a boiler, I'm kinda committed.

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    1. Salary? Eeee, looxureh! When I were a lad........

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    2. I think they were quoting £2000. But then how would you build a railway around it? Brill Tramway?

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  7. "just put a load of filler on it" is just the sort of comment that enrages me from fans of 3D printers. I keep being shown lined things that I'm supposed to believe are nearly as good as injection moulded plastic. Then I'm told that the lines can be smoothed out (they can't) or covered with filler or "a thick coat of paint" - both of which will look awful AND cover all the detail the sellers are soooo proud of.

    3D printing is a useful technology, but not the only one. Even ModelU's figures don't have the facial detail that a master sculptor can add to a casting. On a layout I'll be happy with this as you don't see it in a context of a scene, and the perfect proportions more than compensates.

    The round the pole car thing, I first read of it in a 1980s Model Maker magazine in an article about fitting Co2 motors into cars. I suspect the full fat version is more like the boat version which seems to be teathered deadly missiles circling a pole at hundred of miles an hour. I prefer the lifeboats!

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  8. The best rapid prototyping I ever saw was called LOM and was layers of butchers' paper which didn't display any of the lines that 3D printing does and that was many years agao, where I also inspected the stereo lithography machine that had been shown on Tommorrow's World by the irreplaceable Raymond Baxter. It was far more like what Modelu use than the current 3D "print" nonsense. I have seen 3D printing at its best, but it was tiny and according to the poor guy who commissioned it, "ruinously expensive". And that was just one cylinder of a 1/32nd scale Kinner radial engine. So, from the junk we witnessed at the show, there's still a LONG way to go before it's remotely acceptable to discerning people.

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  9. Forgot to say....I have a wodge of Model Car News magazines from the War years and just after. They are all about RTP cars. Including some excellent scale drawings by none other than Dennis Jenkinson, the later famous motoring commentator. Model Engineer also ran articles and competition results for RTP cars and hydroplanes. Now, there is only one track left for cars and far fewer ponds with a legal pole in the middle and if you want to really read about it you need a website called ontheline.com. My Granddad was a co-founder of Victoria Model Steamboat Club, the world's oldest and so my memories of watching hydros there are very special, even though the poncy council have banned the bigger boats, God rot their scummy souls.

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  10. I'm trying to remember when I last came across a tethered car plan, I'd thought it was in the December 1970 ME, but apparently not. That actually suggests it might have been later."Tyro" comes to mind?

    Something neither of us have mentioned is the 100 year old flash steamer....

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  11. That was an amazing old thing, but had the look of a badly done mummy about it.
    These days if you wanted a plan of a tether car you'd have to go to one of the east European states as that's where all the tracks and the records are. They also do it a bit in the Antipodes.

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