Land of Hope and Glory - please phone, no cheques

So, anyway, as you may have noticed, British sites are proliferating on my blogrolls. I've been developing an interest in British Protofour modeling, and doing some fascinating research and reading on the topic.

The Brits have definitely caught on to the merits of Web advertising - but there's just one drawback: the practice of online ordering, which is nearly universal among American modelbuilders, does not seem to have caught on yet, requiring transatlantic calls, various means of payment, and all sort of gyrations to order models that are, in some cases, incomplete without gearboxes, motors and wheels that must in their turn be purchased from yet another set of vendors.

In some ways, the British kitbuilding industry is light-years ahead of us: the brass craftsman loco kit has essentially give up the ghost in the States, and soldering skills are periodically revisited as a "lost art" by Model Railroader. But it sometimes seems as if the biggest challenge of all is getting your hands on the model you want to build!

(And that photo is a link to London Road Models' beautiful North British Railway R-class tank engine)