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John Ahern's Model Building Plans


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  • 3 months later...

The J Ahern drawings previously supplied by Percival Marshall and then Myhobby Store now appear to be available from Sarik Hobbies although at a price .

They appear on their web site www.sarikhobbies.com under the headings 'Model Engineer Builder' and then 'all engineering plans not yet categorized'

 

There are also some O Gauge vacuum formed buildings available in the section 'Model Railway Scenery and Accesories'

I haven't tried any of these I 'found' them whilst looking for something else.

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  • 1 year later...

When our internet went off for a few hours during thunder and lightening, I started looking through my collection of old model railway ‘cuttings’ and found this ‘Model Railways’ Plan Service advert from February 1981.  J.A. Ahern and E.F. Carter drawings 95p each or four for £2.85!

 

Also found some great ideas for micro layouts, maybe my next challenge?

 

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Edited by Marly51
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1 hour ago, Marly51 said:

When our internet went off for a few hours during thunder and lightening, I started looking through my collection of old model railway ‘cuttings’ and found this ‘Model Railways’ Plan Service advert from February 1981.  J.A. Ahern and E.F. Carter drawings 95p each or four for £2.85!

 

Also found some great ideas for micro layouts, maybe my next challenge?

 

3637A906-6EB2-4D16-B1EF-11AE1BC13C50.jpeg.72d285d46e9ab120d07ad1b2012f85f1.jpeg

 

I remember seeing those adverts in the early 80s. Never actually sent away for any of the plans , mind...

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The Ahearn book is being offered for silly prices on Abe, eBay, Amazon etc. I remember it being remaindered for $1.50 in Cambridge in 1982, I was poor at the time in my first job so bought the loco book instead!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just returned from a short holiday in Moray and found these two gems in the wonderful second hand bookshop at Logie Steading, south of Forres. I already had John Ahern’s books on buildings and scenery, so why not add his third book in the series? While I am not sure if I will ever scratch build a locomotive, I’ll enjoy reading about it. The other book is O.S. Nock’s ‘British Steam Locomotives’ (1966) which has some great illustrations!

 

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Edited by Marly51
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  • 8 months later...
On 03/08/2019 at 18:31, Ravenser said:

 

I remember seeing those adverts in the early 80s. Never actually sent away for any of the plans , mind...

 

I remember going to the office to buy model boat plans (they would print from the master copy while you waited, initially on a 302 bus from Oxhey to Hemel Hempstead.

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11 hours ago, SteveyDee68 said:

Just taken a look on eBay and Amazon for Mr Ahern's classic book - silly money + silly money postage from the USA on eBay, or paperback from Amazon for £56.

 

Guess I'll be giving it a miss! 

I've been having the same problem. I have the books on scenery and locomotives, and while some of the techniques may be dated, they're a great read and full of inspirational stuff. As I've recently got into making buildings, and as resources are very limited at the moment, I thought Mr Ahern would probably have some useful tips.

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20 hours ago, HonestTom said:

I've been having the same problem. I have the books on scenery and locomotives, and while some of the techniques may be dated, they're a great read and full of inspirational stuff. As I've recently got into making buildings, and as resources are very limited at the moment, I thought Mr Ahern would probably have some useful tips.

 

Model Buildings is probably the most useful of the three nowadays. And it was certainly written against a backdrop of severe material shortages

 

All I can suggest is keep looking

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5 hours ago, Ravenser said:

 

Model Buildings is probably the most useful of the three nowadays. And it was certainly written against a backdrop of severe material shortages

 

All I can suggest is keep looking

 

Just remember that an item is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

 

It's still perfectly possible to buy a copy at a sensible price. I think I paid about £6 or £7 delivered for my copy about a year ago (eBay).

 

Happy Hunting!

 

Andrew

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52 minutes ago, Cornholio said:

 

Just remember that an item is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

 

It's still perfectly possible to buy a copy at a sensible price. I think I paid about £6 or £7 delivered for my copy about a year ago (eBay).

 

Happy Hunting!

 

Andrew

 

I have found eBay on a number of occasions has been cheaper than Amazon. I do use Amazon from time to time but realise that often an item can be cheaper elsewhere, a cheap electrical item was half the price in Wicks, but with free postage the difference was easily made up on the saving of petrol.

 

Back to books the book sellers put on a premium (especially with popular rare items) which seems not to translate into eBay prices (presumably most folk never think of buying books from eBay). Having said this more common items on Amazon can be quite cheap, 

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5 minutes ago, hayfield said:

 

I have found eBay on a number of occasions has been cheaper than Amazon. I do use Amazon from time to time but realise that often an item can be cheaper elsewhere, a cheap electrical item was half the price in Wicks, but with free postage the difference was easily made up on the saving of petrol.

 

Back to books the book sellers put on a premium (especially with popular rare items) which seems not to translate into eBay prices (presumably most folk never think of buying books from eBay). Having said this more common items on Amazon can be quite cheap, 

Amazon also uses, for some items, a fairly sophisticated alogarithim which pushes the price up if there is either high demand or low availability:angry:.

 

Simon

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What do folks think of Edward Beal's books on model railway design, buildings construction and railway operation? Not sure if they are as old as the Ahern books, or older, but they look pretty dated! Just found some amongst my dad's old magazines!  In particular, were his building designs any good?

 

Cheers

 

Steve S

 

PS

Forgot to name them - Before You Begin, Layout And Survey, Architecture, and Modelling The Old Time Railways

Edited by SteveyDee68
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'...Old time Railways. is a gem. Sheds, coaling, wagon repair shops, cranes, buildings, sand drier, tunnel and bridge engineering, almost all with usable scale drawings. I'm currently doing a goods shed based on the one on page 113. I have spent the odd spare hour for several years trying to find the current copyright holder with no luck. It took me two years before a lucky strike got me limited permissions for the Ahern books. Sometime comes in useful on another forum.

 

Doug

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Well, somebody scored the Ahern book on eBay earlier today at a good price! I spotted it a few days ago with a starting bid of approx £17, no bids and no interest!  So I put a reasonable price on it and left it alone...

 

An hour before the auction ended, nobody watching and no bids other than my own.

 

In the final seconds, somebody outbid me... by 30p! :angry:  Rude words were said!

 

Obviously they put in however much they were willing to pay (say £40) and eBay automatically bid the smallest amount above my maximum!  I did wonder, an hour before, whether to - say - double my maximum offer ... and quickly rejected that, as I calculated that I could buy a couple of up to date books by the likes of George Dent for that price!  So I stuck to my eBay bid policy of putting in the most I would be happy to pay and leaving it to fate!

 

In a way, I do hope it was Honest Tom of this parish who got it! :D

 

Steve S

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3 hours ago, 21C1 said:

Modelling the Old Time Railways by Ed Beal, is available as a paid PDF download.

I don't know how legal this is as I don't know who the copyright holder is, so I'm not saying where, but just use Google.

 

I bought the hardcover version last week from a Sth African bookseller for 7 pounds. Shipping bumped it up a bit though.

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On 30/04/2020 at 18:44, SteveyDee68 said:

What do folks think of Edward Beal's books on model railway design, buildings construction and railway operation? Not sure if they are as old as the Ahern books, or older, but they look pretty dated! Just found some amongst my dad's old magazines!  In particular, were his building designs any good?

 

Cheers

 

Steve S

 

PS

Forgot to name them - Before You Begin, Layout And Survey, Architecture, and Modelling The Old Time Railways

I do have most of the relevant books in Modelcraft's 'Edward Beal's Railway Modelling Series' which were published from about 1950-51 and the first two you mention are from that series. I also have Modelling the Old Time Railways and several of  his other books as well as John Ahern's Miniature Building Construction from 1950. 

With Beal's various works, you do sometimes feel that you're reading the

same book over and over again.  The books from the two authors are fairly contemporary with one another in their publishing dates but Ahern seems to be a generation ahead in his thinking .

Beal's track plans are very much of the 'fill the available area with track  and fit a few buildings in where you can' appoach whereas Ahern was very much into the railway in a world approach so non-railway buildings predominate.  To be fair though Beal's books do include photos of john Ahern's Madder Valley including the original track plan for Madderport.

 

Beal's building designs are fine. They tend to be sketches rather than detailed plans ,  though some of them are dimensioned and he's particularly good on industrial and railway buildings (albeit it rather generic ones) and docks .  I tend to use Beal's books as an insight into thinking about layout design before the scenic revolution but Ahern is still one of my modelling handbooks and if I want to know say how to represent guttering that's often the first place I look.

 

I'd say that Beal  had an engineering approach to layout design, despite being a Church of Scotland Minister, whereas Ahern was more artistic.If I could only save one from the fire it would have to be Ahern's

 

Edited by Pacific231G
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Peco must have a massive back catalogue of building plans from their early days (50's/60's) trouble is I doubt if they have a commercial value, perhaps putting them in a PDF format which could be downloaded for a fee might be a possibility

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