Opinion
According to Chris...
…the pandemic has changed the face of railway modelling forever – and the internet makes it hard to sort the wheat from the chaff when it comes to model ‘reviews’…
I’ve lost count of how much I’ve spent over the years buying models to review because the manufacturer hasn’t sent one
In the top corner of this page, you’ll find the description ‘Opinion’. ‘According to Chris’ was introduced as an opinion piece that comes from someone who is not in the Editor’s chair. Most of the time I write personal stuff that’s not opinion, not controversial and – always, I hope – readable and enjoyable.
This time, I’m writing in the run-up to the year end and a few days after my ‘three quarters of a century’ birthday. So perhaps it’s time for a ‘review’ of 2021, which began with a lockdown and didn’t quite end with one, in England, at least.
I don’t think that 2021 was the worst possible year for the hobby. It wasn’t good but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. There were bright spots, notably that club meetings could resume with a few reasonable precautions. Clubs had been badly hit by being forced to close for such a long time and by the loss of income from cancelled exhibitions. Some, no doubt, have only survived by members dipping deeper into their pockets to get bills paid.