According to Chris…
His grandchildren call him ‘Granddad Trains’ and he’s been a dedicated railway modeller since the 1960s but, despite popular legend, Chris Leigh doesn’t remember when dinosaurs roamed the Earth!
Chris airs his thoughts on Channel 5’s The Great Model Railway Challenge.
Back in early November I took the Cornish harbour layout, ‘Polwyddelan’, that I built for a series of Model Rail articles, to High Wycombe Model Railway Society’s Wycrail exhibition. The one-day show, in the atrium, hall and gymnasium of a large secondary school, included 30 layouts, as well as the customary trade support. ‘Polwyddelan’ was not intended as an exhibition layout and it has certain shortcomings in terms of shape, operational interest and presentation. So it was a real surprise – and immensely satisfying – to be placed third in the judging of layouts. I hadn’t even been aware there was to be a competition! Competitive modelling has enjoyed something of a revival recently, thanks to Channel 5’s The Great Model Railway Challenge, but for me it highlighted just how this facet of the hobby has declined. During my time on Model Railway Constructor in the 1980s, and a decade later on Model Rail, I was asked, from time to time, to judge modelling competitions. Sometimes it was scratchbuilt or kit-built items in showcases, other times it was layouts at shows. I recall enlisting my wife’s eagle eyes to help me judge layouts at Colchester one year, and it was a regular duty for Model Rail staff to judge modern image exhibits at Model Rail Scotland in Glasgow. In general, however, modelling competitions seem to have fallen out of favour. Perhaps ‘Challenge’, already contemplating a second series, will bring a revival. Hopefully, too, it will have attracted younger people into the hobby. It’s in the same mould as The Great British Bake Off, and that certainly has broad appeal. My granddaughter (aged 12) is an avid baker, and lists Mary Berry as one of her heroes! So what of the first series of ‘Challenge’? There was much that was good, and on the basis that any publicity is good publicity, a prime-time Friday evening slot has to be good. For me, Friday evening was not ideal. It meant that I missed an episode because I was setting up at Wycrail, and a Remembrance event on the evening of the finale. I’d seen enough, however, to convince me that, with a few tweaks for subsequent series, ‘Challenge’ will be good for the hobby. One always fears that popular TV will only serve to reinforce stereotypes and, sadly, that is true in some respects. There was an irritating ‘voice-off’ that told the teams how much time they had left, and two presenters whose sole purpose seems to be to reel off countless puerile puns. The judges, on the other hand, bring gravitas and understanding of the skills and problems involved. But the teams are not just competing against each other, they are also competing against the clock, and here the hurried nature of the modelling really shows. It was notable that time and again, the teams commented that they could have done a better job if they had more time. Nevertheless, they deserve credit for their willingness to put their efforts under public scrutiny. This is a hobby where the length of time taken to make something is one of its most significant strengths. At the top of the modelling scale we talk, with admiration, of how long a Pendon cottage took to build. In this hobby, ‘five years in the making’ is a seal of quality, not a criticism. Modelling against the clock in front of a TV camera turns the reason for being a railway modeller on its head. Now we have to get used to the idea that ‘it only took a couple of hours, it works and it just about looks OK’ is also a plaudit. If the show proves to be successful, perhaps we’ll see some more documentarystyle programmes looking at our hobby from that other perspective. If that happens, ‘Challenge’ might just have been the right programme at the right time.