PAL Posted May 26, 2012 Share Posted May 26, 2012 Many members following this forum will know John Ahern's Miniature Building Construction. He provides a lot of scale plans throughout the book. The actual scales are all to hell, varying from one example to another, presumably because the publisher got the printer to reduce the images to save space on the page. Even so, you can still work out the dimensions you need. However, at the end of the book Ahern has an appendix of several pages of his sketches, but sketches only, of more wonderful examples. You can sort of guess the dimensions from the sketches, but in a note Ahern says that the publisher, Percival Marshall, sold plans of all these items. All long gone of course, decades ago. I look on the net from time to time in vain hope that copies of these plans might turn up, but without success. Can any member help? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bertiedog Posted May 26, 2012 Share Posted May 26, 2012 I have some of these stored away, but they will take some finding. On plans of buildings a tip for everybody, door sizes are a good reference for re-scaling in a computer printer, they are nearly always consistent., except for medieval doorways. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
laurenceb Posted May 27, 2012 Share Posted May 27, 2012 Hi the successor to Percival Marshall is MyHobbyStore but a quick peruse of there websight showes no sign of the Ahern drawings. It would be a pitty if they are lost. Laurence Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl1962 Posted May 29, 2012 Share Posted May 29, 2012 http://www.myhobbystore.co.uk/product/17239/warehouse Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Campaman Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 Is it just me or do they seem very expensive Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl1962 Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 Is it just me or do they seem very expensive No its not just you! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bertiedog Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 The price for a single drawing is very high nowadays, the ones I had were separate to the book, and the available one was one of them. I will search when back at home, they are stored away somewhere. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chubber Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 Those are very expensive....... buy the book and build it from that, together with dozens of other things...... Copyright CV Russell and E Fells Reproduced with their kind permissions. You'll find a copy of JA's 'Miniature Building Construction' on the web for less than £10.....I'm interested in their copyright permissions and will be contacting the holders of the copyright. Doug 9 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl1962 Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 Yeah I recently bought mine on Amazon for the princely sum of £3 plus 2.80 postage. 1979 reprint in as new condition. And theres enough detail in the book drawings to work out the sizes etc. Well worth tracking down. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl1962 Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Miniature-building-construction-architectural-modellers/dp/0852426860/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1338458051&sr=1-1 £5.30 plus postage Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PAL Posted May 31, 2012 Author Share Posted May 31, 2012 Thanks to all contributors so far, particularly to Carl1962 for tracking down those Ahern plans at myhobbystore. What a wonderful resource this site is! Bertiedog and Chubber; I've sent you personal messages to which I very much hope you'll reply in due course if you come up with anything. I take Doug's point; you can work out out dimensions well enough from Ahern's sketches alone (magnificent Ahern warehouse, by the way). I should confess that my reasons for wanting to get hold of the plans themselves are as sentimental as they are practical. To my shame I confess I've never made the pilgrimage to Pendon to see Ahern's masterpiece before it falls to bits. But I like to think his spirit is in his sketches and plans too. If there are books on railway modelling that deserve the status of classics it is surely Ahern's three little volumes. The one on Buildings was published just as war broke out, and is just as up-to-date today as then in terms of creative imagination, ingenuity in the use of materials and a concern for accurate reproduction of the real world. To my mind Ahern's buildings are brilliantly chosen to give the absolutely authentic look of Britain in the middle decades of the 20th century, when visually it hardly changed at all due to the Depression and the war and its aftermath. And he writes so well. I think his achievement is all the greater because he had to make everything from chuckouts and odds and ends because of wartime shortages. The only item he seems to have actually bought was Merco brickpaper. Further contributions to this thread would be most welcome. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold 2mmMark Posted August 19, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted August 19, 2012 (edited) ...To my shame I confess I've never made the pilgrimage to Pendon to see Ahern's masterpiece before it falls to bits. . Thankfully, that's highly unlikely. Pendon are preserving the layout very well. It's been in their care for nearly 50 years and they are fully aware of its significance. From time to time, it's operated too. The Madder Valley is a beautfilly observed layout and it's a testimony to the longevity of well built card models. Very worthwhile visiting to see it in the flesh. Edited August 19, 2012 by 2mmMark 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chubber Posted August 19, 2012 Share Posted August 19, 2012 John H. Ahern John Henry Ahern, known as ‘Jack’, was a London insurance broker who in early 1939 began a regular series of articles published in the Model Railway News centred broadly around the construction of two successive small 4mm layouts each called the ‘Madder Valley Railway’ and the means of scratch-building small light railway locomotive models. With the advent of the Second World War in September of that year, severe restrictions on the manufacture of ‘toys’ meant that virtually everything had to be home-built from household materials or hoarded material. Contemporary modelling trends were to model mainline locomotives on large double-tracked layouts. These layouts were largely the preserve of the wealthy, the emphasis being firmly on the locomotives and rolling stock, with scenic modelling playing second fiddle. The Madder Valley railways were unusual for that period in that they were from the start ‘scenic’ railways, running through whimsical landscapes containing cardboard and wooden buildings built to a most exacting standard. Quite simply, no one had taken so much care or paid so much attention to structure modelling. His methods and drawings, brought together in ‘Miniature Building Construction: an Architectural Guide for Modellers’ ISBN-13: 978-0852421925 enabled many to follow his lead and encouraged what we think of today as ‘Railway Modelling’. Taking early retirement in 1944, he moved with his wife Gladys to a house in St John’s Wood situated behind Lord’s Cricket Ground and there set to work building the final Madder Valley Railway. An intellectual, a member of the Fabian Society and friend of H.G Wells he would probably be amused to think that his most lasting memorial is a 1930s themed model railway, now preserved at Pendon Museum. Doug Dickson Also By John H. Ahern Miniature Landscape Modelling ISBN-13: 978-0852426845 Miniature Locomotive Construction ISBN-13: 978-0853440758 [First published in Railway Modeller Magazine, 2010] 2 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
joppyuk1 Posted September 5, 2012 Share Posted September 5, 2012 Were some of these plans listed in the Skinley drawings catalogue of some years ago, or perhaps they were by Edward Beal. I know some sort of drawings were, as I had the 'row of shops' plan. I see Skinley still advertise in the Railway Modeller, though I think they've changed hands a couple of times. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
C&WR Posted September 5, 2012 Share Posted September 5, 2012 I'm a recent returnee to modelling thanks to my six-year-old's suspicion that there was a railway hidden about my parents' house & his delight when I revealed it. I'd started this renaissance with a few Scalescenes, Railway Scenics & Wordsworth card kits but had got to the stage of thinking of how to build models of real things near me. Thanks to this thread I bought a copy of Ahern's Buldings for £4.07 from eBay. As a young-(ish) fogey I love his prose as well as the instructions & look forward to some fun, although I'm going to run out of layout space! One noticeable thing is when I started on my scratchbuilt model of my local pub for things like chimneystacks I used the John Whiffen approach of building up solidity by layering thick card & wrapping it in brick paper. John Ahern's approach is, of course, to use wood for these parts. One thing I think JA's book might do for me is make me less lazy. When I built houses & so on for Wargaming figures in my teens (about when I put the railway away 25-odd years ago for lack of time) I used to scratchbuild absolutely everything including mixing up some kind of polyfilla concoction to do rendered walls, cutting & painting individual roof tiles or etching my own window frames into plasticard! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium t-b-g Posted September 5, 2012 RMweb Premium Share Posted September 5, 2012 By coincidence I was looking at some of the individual plans just the other day. When we were in Truro dismantling Buckingham, we came across a large box marked "building papers". In amongst a large number of full and part used printed papers, by people like MERCO, were a number of the Percival Marshall plans. Some of them will presumably be over 60 years old now as Peter Denny used them for some of his earliest buildings, in the late 1940s. Holding such items is like looking at he very dawn of the hobby. Fascinating stuff! 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chubber Posted September 7, 2012 Share Posted September 7, 2012 By coincidence I was looking at some of the individual plans just the other day. When we were in Truro dismantling Buckingham, we came across a large box marked "building papers". In amongst a large number of full and part used printed papers, by people like MERCO, were a number of the Percival Marshall plans. Some of them will presumably be over 60 years old now as Peter Denny used them for some of his earliest buildings, in the late 1940s. Holding such items is like looking at he very dawn of the hobby. Fascinating stuff! t-b-g, this is great news, I'm working towards an article on JA, currently in NW Spain, but would like to be in touch soon as I'm back, a week or two more depending on the weather and the wallet! Doug 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
autocoach Posted September 16, 2017 Share Posted September 16, 2017 (edited) I found this old topic while checking the spelling for Ahern in order to comment on Little Muddle. (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/120848-little-muddle/page-45&do=findComment&comment=2856306) A worthy successor and somewhat of the Ahern approach including using building papers for models when appropriate. Anyway I treasure the 1940's edition of Miniature Building Construction i found about 40 years ago in a collection of used books for sale. Edited September 16, 2017 by autocoach Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chubber Posted September 16, 2017 Share Posted September 16, 2017 I found this old topic while checking the spelling for Ahern in order to comment on Little Muddle. (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/120848-little-muddle/page-45&do=findComment&comment=2856306) A worthy successor and somewhat of the Ahern approach including using building papers for models when appropriate. Hi, Auto, I came very late to Little Muddle, and reading through from the beginning I immediately thought of the row of cottages [ http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/75260-cottages-after-john-ahern/ ] to go into the opened up space behind the station, would have fitted nicely! Why is it one sometimes completely misses out on a thread that you really like and appreciate, like L.M.??? Doug Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Hudson Posted December 4, 2017 Share Posted December 4, 2017 Sometimes feel like I am living in the Madder Valley. Perhaps we should start a thread of prototype lookalikes? 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
L49 Posted December 5, 2017 Share Posted December 5, 2017 Sometimes feel like I am living in the Madder Valley. Perhaps we should start a thread of prototype lookalikes? You should have seen Charlie Browns before it was tarted up and turned into flats: Fantastic building, and just one of many on that side of town. There was a gorgeous 7mm scale model of 'Farmers' in the high street which was on a layout on the exhibition circuit a while ago, although I haven't seen it for a while. You could also model the Siege house including all the red-ringed bullet holes! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Hudson Posted December 5, 2017 Share Posted December 5, 2017 Someone posted (Chubber I think) a model of bourne mill. Just by co incidence I took this on the same walk! 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marly51 Posted December 29, 2017 Share Posted December 29, 2017 John H. AhernJohn Henry Ahern, known as ‘Jack’, was a London insurance broker who in early 1939 began a regular series of articles published in the Model Railway News centred broadly around the construction of two successive small 4mm layouts each called the ‘Madder Valley Railway’ and the means of scratch-building small light railway locomotive models.With the advent of the Second World War in September of that year, severe restrictions on the manufacture of ‘toys’ meant that virtually everything had to be home-built from household materials or hoarded material. Contemporary modelling trends were to model mainline locomotives on large double-tracked layouts. These layouts were largely the preserve of the wealthy, the emphasis being firmly on the locomotives and rolling stock, with scenic modelling playing second fiddle.The Madder Valley railways were unusual for that period in that they were from the start ‘scenic’ railways, running through whimsical landscapes containing cardboard and wooden buildings built to a most exacting standard. Quite simply, no one had taken so much care or paid so much attention to structure modelling. His methods and drawings, brought together in ‘Miniature Building Construction: an Architectural Guide for Modellers’ ISBN-13: 978-0852421925 enabled many to follow his lead and encouraged what we think of today as ‘Railway Modelling’.Taking early retirement in 1944, he moved with his wife Gladys to a house in St John’s Wood situated behind Lord’s Cricket Ground and there set to work building the final Madder Valley Railway.An intellectual, a member of the Fabian Society and friend of H.G Wells he would probably be amused to think that his most lasting memorial is a 1930s themed model railway, now preserved at Pendon Museum.Doug DicksonAlso By John H. AhernMiniature Landscape Modelling ISBN-13: 978-0852426845 Miniature Locomotive Construction ISBN-13: 978-0853440758[First published in Railway Modeller Magazine, 2010] Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marly51 Posted December 29, 2017 Share Posted December 29, 2017 I bought John Ahern’s books from Pendon some years ago. The drawings in these older handbooks are beautiful and a lot of information is still relevant for scratch modelling today although we have much improved adhesives. I still find it amazing what it is possible to create using card made from laminating cereal boxes. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chubber Posted December 29, 2017 Share Posted December 29, 2017 (edited) Sometimes feel like I am living in the Madder Valley. Perhaps we should start a thread of prototype lookalikes? Must have missed this? Here's one for consideration, in Greywell, Hampshire. Edited December 29, 2017 by Chubber 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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