Over thirty years since Model Railway Constructor passed

[Allegheny1600]

Hi All,

I knew this year marked thirty years since the beloved "Model Railway Constructor" ended and had it in mind to comment about it. Sadly, I missed the actual milestone itself (being a copy date of June 1987) but I thought I would just mark it now.

This was the very first magazine I ever bought, probably at around twelve years old and yes, I bought it not a relative. I only bought the very odd issue, being out of the country for most of the year in those days but at my first model railway exhibition, I bought a years worth of back issues. At the time, they were four or five years old but they seemed to contain so much ancient history to me!

By 1980, I took out a subscription that was delivered to France and in that year, the magazine celebrated the Silver Jubilee of the EM gauge society, which got me really hooked.

I returned to the UK in about 1983 and unfortunately, stopped collecting it religiously, only buying the occasional copy from local newsagents. My interests were becoming so diverse, music, cars, girls, not even MRC could cater for that! Although, it was well thought of for having diverse content, British, American, Continental, Standard, Narrow, New, Ancient and so forth.

So a few years later, my heart truly sank when I picked up the June 1987 edition and discovered it was the final issue.

 

RIP MRC!

[BG John]

Especially upsetting as it included Part 1 of a series on Colonel Stephens' Carriages, with some useful drawings of the K&ESR ex GER 4-wheel coaches. Did the rest of the series ever appear elsewhere?

[LBRJ]

I remember that copy.

There was a small layout loosely based on the Looe line, was it called Caradon Junction?

[Enterprisingwestern]

In my magazine clear out before I emigrated, this was the only one I kept in complete state.

Sadly missed.

 

Mike.

[locomad]

Gosh 30 years I have just forgotten, it was a good magazine for the period and sadly missed when it finished, I've still got all copies 67-87 apart from one ( postal strike?)

 

I really liked the independent reviews of new models and from about 70 to 87 there were not that many, however in the 70's it was the golden age of the white metal kits from wills, gem and k's and a fair number of reviews of them.

 

Looking back and I still do it's interesting how much was DIY hand built, articles on hand painted private wagons and road vechile construction

[Max Legroom]

I remember that copy.

There was a small layout loosely based on the Looe line, was it called Caradon Junction?

I remember that layout. Quite a clever design for a small space that managed to include two stations and a china clay works.

[Arthur]

 

Thirty years, that's incredible. I probably started buying it regularly, along with the others then available, around 1980, so for no more than 7 years, yet my recollection is of one of those established mags that I'd been buying for years and years before it's demise.

 

A great mag. in it's day.

 

.

[rovex]

May she rest in peace

[ian]

When Ian Allan did their market research before launching Hornby Magazine they considered calling it Model Railway Constructor.

 

What they found was that many people didn't know the name, having entered the hobby after its demise and those that did wanted it to be exactly as it was rather than the 'novice friendly' style and content that was envisioned, so the magazine became HM.

[dibber25]

Hi All,

I knew this year marked thirty years since the beloved "Model Railway Constructor" ended and had it in mind to comment about it. Sadly, I missed the actual milestone itself (being a copy date of June 1987) but I thought I would just mark it now.

This was the very first magazine I ever bought, probably at around twelve years old and yes, I bought it not a relative. I only bought the very odd issue, being out of the country for most of the year in those days but at my first model railway exhibition, I bought a years worth of back issues. At the time, they were four or five years old but they seemed to contain so much ancient history to me!

By 1980, I took out a subscription that was delivered to France and in that year, the magazine celebrated the Silver Jubilee of the EM gauge society, which got me really hooked.

I returned to the UK in about 1983 and unfortunately, stopped collecting it religiously, only buying the occasional copy from local newsagents. My interests were becoming so diverse, music, cars, girls, not even MRC could cater for that! Although, it was well thought of for having diverse content, British, American, Continental, Standard, Narrow, New, Ancient and so forth.

So a few years later, my heart truly sank when I picked up the June 1987 edition and discovered it was the final issue.

 

RIP MRC!

 

Thank you so much for reminding me of this anniversary. Having been immersed, recently, in the 20th anniversary issue of Model Rail, I had completely overlooked the 30th anniversary of the last MRC. I feel dreadful that I'd overlooked it. It was heart-breaking at the time. I remember that final issue very well. I was given less than a month's notice of the closure and I already had the June issue well under way. I had to scrap what I'd done and start again in order to round off as many serialised articles as possible. MRC had been the first model railway magazine I had bought. I was sold it by a vendor working the queue to get into the the Model Railway Club's Easter exhibition at Central Hall, Westminster. I guess it was Easter 1961. I became an avid reader and, when I left school in 1963 it co-incided with an advert in the magazine seeking a Junior Editorial Assistant. I applied for the job at Craven House, Hampton Court, and was interviewed by Geoffrey Kichenside and Ian Allan. During the interview a pair of Bushey Park stags had a noisy locking of horns right outside the window. 

After the subsequent move to Shepperton, one of my jobs was to build the dioramas for the cover photos. The ideas came from our chief designer, Colin Gifford, who also took the pictures. I still have several of them and am currently reprising one for possible future use.

There's a lot more I could say. Indeed, I've filled evening talks and slides shows on the subject but there's one final point. When, in 1996, I was asked by my boss at what was then EMAP, to come up with ideas for a model railway magazine, I incorporated many of the ideas I'd wanted to pursue in MRC, but never had the resources to do. MRC had entered a spiral of decline and was relentlessly mis-managed and starved of resources over many years. In the end, it closed with a circulation that several of today's magazines thrive on. But it closed mainly because the company wanted me to manage all their magazine titles as a glorified progress chaser. I did that for five years before EMAP threw me a lifeline and invited me to edit Steam World. If the closure of MRC was the low point in my career, being given a 96-page blank magazine and asked what railway modellers would like to see in it, was one of the high points. The result was Model Rail, in many ways the reborn MRC. 

CHRIS LEIGH

(Junior editorial assistant, Model Railway Constructor, 1963-68. Assistant Editor, Railway World/Model Railway Constructor 1977-83. Editor, Model Railway Constructor 1983-87, Editor, Model Rail 1997-2008. Consultant Editor, Model Rail, 2008-present)

[Stevelewis]

I was  an  Avid  MRC  reader really  missed it   when  it  ceased  publication,   I managed to  get  one  of  my 0 Gauge  locos  on  the  cover  of  Constructor  Annual  for  1986, 

Edited October 6, 2017 by Stevelewis

[chrisf]

I discovered the Constructor in 1958.  The August issue remained stubbornly on the counter of P T Tower's newsagents in Horn Lane, Acton.  The 10 year old Chris was captivated by it, particularly by the photograph of a Merit cow being placed in a cattle pen with tweezers.  I went into the shop to read it so often that Mr Tower gave it to me!  I then persuaded my parents to buy it for me every month instead of Meccano Magazine.  Constructor's Review was a lot more candid than the reviews of today and all the better for that.

 

Chris

[Ramblin Rich]

I also remember the shock of reading the editorial where the bad news was given. I never realised how little notice you were given (Chris L) it must have been very worrying for you personally. It did seem a shame that a number of serial articles and projects were cut short.

[peach james]

Somewhere I have the check returning the subscription to me- or at least, I had it when we moved here 17 years ago !.

My mum picked up copies from about mid 1983 for me, getting them from the University of Toronto book store.  I think in 1984, my grandmum picked up the cost of a subscription, and I remember getting _my_ own magazine from then until the bitter end.  Earlier this year, we rescued a collection from North Vancouver, some of them dating back into the 30's.  (I'd add- I was born in 76, so I was 8 when I got a subscription- and neither of my lads are as passionate as I was about trains to get a subscription to anything yet- one 7, one 11...).  

 

So yes, Chris, your editorial definitely made a difference for some !  I could have taken up some sensible hobby- instead I have Long Marton downstairs !.  (otherwise, it would have been Algoma Central in N)...

 

James

[dibber25]

Somewhere I have the check returning the subscription to me- or at least, I had it when we moved here 17 years ago !.

My mum picked up copies from about mid 1983 for me, getting them from the University of Toronto book store.  I think in 1984, my grandmum picked up the cost of a subscription, and I remember getting _my_ own magazine from then until the bitter end.  Earlier this year, we rescued a collection from North Vancouver, some of them dating back into the 30's.  (I'd add- I was born in 76, so I was 8 when I got a subscription- and neither of my lads are as passionate as I was about trains to get a subscription to anything yet- one 7, one 11...).  

 

So yes, Chris, your editorial definitely made a difference for some !  I could have taken up some sensible hobby- instead I have Long Marton downstairs !.  (otherwise, it would have been Algoma Central in N)...

 

James

 

Algoma Central would be fine. I have an 'HO' Algoma train. (CJL)

[hmrspaul]

I also remember the shock of reading the editorial where the bad news was given. I never realised how little notice you were given (Chris L) it must have been very worrying for you personally. It did seem a shame that a number of serial articles and projects were cut short.

 

It also came as a considerable shock to the gang of us doing the BR wagons Datafiles. I knew Chris from the mid 1960s at Staines MRC and he was very generous giving us the space to do a lot of detail - the first article on PLATES took up about a quarter of the Annual! And finally 4mm modellers are getting RTR wagons based on them - 30 years on. We never got the promised book out of them (there were other Datafile books at the time based on MRC series).  I do think we and Chris were ahead of the time. I don't remember much praise coming for those articles at the time - and the drawings took Trev Mann and others hours and hours each. The articles have become much more popular in retrospect and I have no idea how many models - kits and RTR have been, and are being, influenced by them. But we still don't have a PLAICE!! This was one of the measuring / drawing jobs done very quickly for the series which also included the then brand new rebuilds of the Lamprey. I make it we published c55 drawings. The MRC link also gave us the opening for Motive Power Monthly - which included Roger Silsbury regularly discussing the new real wagons - again something I don't think anyone else had done before. The other development started by MRC but possibly used more in MPM was publishing coloured photos of wagons - unheard of  before and I suspect eye opening to many modellers. I remember showing the photo of the Bogie Bolster E to my clerk and she was very complimentary about the browns - a beautifully lit photo with various rusts, ballast colours etc!

 

We moved on to the then Model Rail (ex MRN) when Dave Lowery became the editor. It had the great advantage for me that I could pop down to his office in Hemel Hempstead in my lunch hour. But that folded just as we were getting into our stride - some of the bogie tank wagons for that series haven't been drawn yet! And also Modellers Backtrack which really gave Pete Fidczuk the opportunity to have very detailed articles on the steel mineral wagons and WW2 4 wheel tanks - and then David Jenkinson pulled the plug on that!

 

Yes Chris modern publishing methods (and I suspect the incredible levels of advertising) have permitted the development of a very different magazine scene - although there have been several other failures along the way.

 

Paul

[dibber25]

Here's a personal favourite cover picture - it still has the white crop marks, indicating that it was the actual print that was used for block-making. I liked it because, for me, it was a simple job - for a change! Most of Colin's cover ideas required a lot more modelling work and ingenuity. A Trix 'Western' ( I put a man in the cab and - if I recall correctly - reshaped the yellow panel to a more accurate outline), and Airfix canopies. The Temple Meads-style roof was white chalk on black card, drawn by our resident artist Vic Welch. The lovely reflective wet platform was glycerine.

With regard to Paul's comments above about the wagon drawings, I had inherited a magazine which had regularly featured drawings. There were many more scratch-builders in those days who relied on the availability of good drawings. The problem was that - as Paul says - drawings take hours and hours to do, and magazines simply couldn't afford to pay realistic fees for them. It was the generosity of Paul and his team which made the drawings in MRC possible - because they were willing to accept what I could afford to pay. Over time, I realised that the plan chest full of drawings in the MRC office was of diminishing use, for two reasons. Firstly, the subjects were real minority interest items such as Scottish pre-grouping open wagons or a North British yard crane. Secondly, those that were of greater interest ( I recall Liverpool Overhead Railway stock, for instance) were often peppered with obvious mistakes or from sources whose accuracy was suspect. Others, such as the Bulleid coaching stock (which did eventually appear as a book) needed remedial work because the film on which they were drawn was disintegrating.

The great thing about the drawings from Trevor Mann et al, was that they were new drawings, to a high standard, of subjects with a broader appeal - and they were affordable. (CJL)

Edited October 6, 2017 by dibber25

[Legend]

Model Railway Constructor was my very first model railway mag. Remember going into an old fashioned newsagents with magazines lying on a counter as opposed to up on a shelf? It was the October 1972 edition. To a 10 year old large parts of it went over my head. I remember being confused as to why a Japanese Crab was in the engine shed ! But I do remember staring at the pictures of layouts totally inspired. The main layout was Mid Gwent lovely scenes with a level crossing and tunnel, which of course was crudely emulated on my own 6*4 Trainset. Then there was an article on a fictional railway, The Stelwin Island Railway . The first time it occurred to me that you could create a fictional system. The station name "Manorbridge" I've used on most of my layouts since. Then there was a layout in the garden, I think mainly using Triang Big Big train. Again a revelation.....Trains in the garden. Unfortunately I still haven't got there! All black and white, of course, but still inspirational.

 

I think as time went on I felt that Railway Modeller was more comfortable for me , being for the "average enthusiast" while I always thought Model Railway Constructor was a cut above that.

Edited October 6, 2017 by Legend

[john flann]

Interesting that about MRC, for fifty years ago in January 1967 I had published in it my first model railway article with photographs by Brian Monaghan, featuring my layout Dunnock Edge.

 

I then wrote more for MRC and in turn for MRN, MR, MT, SCT, IMT, if I recall correctly, and lastly CRM.RM, as well asfor American railway magazines, RM, GMR and MRP. In addition I've been published several times in Back Track.

 

So I'm gratetul to S.W. Stevens-Stratten, FRSA the then Editor, for publishing that article in the first place. I've lost count how many in all, but I think around sixty at least.

[caradoc]

I too was very sad to see the demise of MRC, having started taking it in September 1971; My Grandmother paid for my subscription, sadly she passed away a year later but my parents kept it going. In those days it wasn't delivered direct by post but to the local newsagent.

 

One of the stand-out layouts I recall from the early years was Coventry MRC's 'London to the West', featured in the January and February 1973 issues; A huge layout in which trains went a good distance from one place to another, unusual then (and still today).

[Pint of Adnams]

...Then there was an article on a fictional railway, The Stelwin Island Railway . The first time it occurred to me that you could create a fictional system. The station name "Manorbridge" I've used on most of my layouts since.

Created by John Phillips in Colchester and using names from the Anglo Saxon language. His EM terminus was of 'Gleod' ('coal from the sea' IIRC) and based on Kyle of Lochalsh. Most of his locomotives comprised scratch-built bodies on various mechanisms making much use of tinplate, based on a variety of prototypes. There was an accompanying history of the 'Stellwinische Iglande Overberende Gepheart' (approximation - it was over 50 years ago and contained special characters) with a glossary of the Anglo Saxon language and those special characters.

[Stevelewis]

Just  referring to  my  earlier  post  re  the  1986  Constructor  annual,  I have  often  wondered  how  many  annuals  were  actually  published,  was  the  '86 one  the  last  one? Perhaps  Chris could  answer this>?

 

I must  admit  I cannot  ever recall seeing  any on  sale except  for  the '86 one,  and  that  was  a  complete  fluke  as  we   were on  Holiday  at  Devon Cliffs  Holiday  park,  and I think it  was  Exmouth  WH Smiths we  wandered  into  and  I  found  the  book on  the  shelves,  at  first  I thought  the cover  pick  was  a 00 RTR loco at  a glance, but  was   very surprised  at  closer  examination to find  it  was my  0 gauge loco,  identifiable  by  the  unfinished  lining  and  the  unfinished  nameplate!  ( see post 11)

[Legend]

Created by John Phillips in Colchester and using names from the Anglo Saxon language. His EM terminus was of 'Gleod' ('coal from the sea' IIRC) and based on Kyle of Lochalsh. Most of his locomotives comprised scratch-built bodies on various mechanisms making much use of tinplate, based on a variety of prototypes. There was an accompanying history of the 'Stellwinische Iglande Overberende Gepheart' (approximation - it was over 50 years ago and contained special characters) with a glossary of the Anglo Saxon language and those special characters.

Yes I remember SIOG but didn't know what it meant. The article looked at several freelance locos he had built, all of which looked plausible 0-6-0 and 0-6-2T mainly.

[Dava]

It was the first mag I ever had an article published in, on the Macclesfield MRG TT Gauge 'North Rode' layout, about 1980. It was a good mag, especially with color on the cover. Brian Monaghan did the photos I recall. Chris is right that both it and 'Railway World' were run into the ground and lost readers as a result.

 

Dava

[Stevelewis]

It was the first mag I ever had an article published in, on the Macclesfield MRG TT Gauge 'North Rode' layout, about 1980. It was a good mag, especially with color on the cover. Brian Monaghan did the photos I recall. Chris is right that both it and 'Railway World' were run into the ground and lost readers as a result.

 

Dava

 

I think  I remember  that,  also  have  strong  memories  of  a 00 layout  in  a  boxroom?  Called  DONFORD  I think  featured  class 20s .

 

I  frequented several MACF  exhibitions,  that  where  I first  encountered  LGB  John Maxwell, ( the Grandfather in Heinz Soup TV  adverts) had  a large  layout,  the  next  weekend  I dismantled my 00  outdoor  line  and   bought  some  LGB!  At  that  time  we  lived in  Hazel Grove, Stockport.

Edited October 7, 2017 by Stevelewis