Kings Cross Model Shop

[Brian Kirby]

Hi Ivan (Horsetan),

Victors was always the American and Continental stockist, we at KX did all the British stuff. Much to Bernie Victor's annoyance, by the 1980s we doubled the size of the KX shop and we were also selling American and Continental lines, including the higher value Japanese and Korean brass. The best bit was when Victor's tried to fight back with a full page advert in the mags, which said "we are near King's Cross station", but they forgot to put their name and address at the top, and all the customers came to us instead ! Once we'd twigged this, Dave Morris went running up the hill to show Bernie and thank him ! Pure magic LOL.

 

The KX nameplate range was sold to someone in Bounds Green, i think it's the same aforementioned person last heard of in nearby Winchmore Hill, or else it has changed hands again? The plate range was requiring a re-vamp, since new competitors were using modern technology to etch right through the surrounds, with just little tabs to snip through. We were planning to change the format, but the KX range was so huge, it would have taken years to modify all the artwork. Bill Peto used to delight in telling us that many of our Bulldog and Star plates had the wrong letter spacing or radius arc, quite a few were altered thanks to him.

 

The present day Marno firm is a former W&H customer, who lives nearby, apart from that there is absolutely no connection.

 

Cheers, Brian.

[Jon020]

I could be wrong, but I think that this is where our "spotter" books came from... spent many enjoyable visits here with my brother and Father ... probably mid-late 70s. Sorely missed!

[Sir Visto]

Slightly surprised not to have seen a mention of ABC at London Bridge Station mentioned on here.

 

Roy

[Miss Prism]

The KX nameplate range was sold to someone in Bounds Green, i think it's the same aforementioned person last heard of in nearby Winchmore Hill, or else it has changed hands again?

 

Geoff Burton. His website's recently been discontinued/not-renewed, so I hope he still has the range and all is well. They're great plates, and it would be a shame to lose the range.

[sagaguy]

Is Marnos still trading,if they are,i believe that they are now the only company still selling JV catenary.I bought a trial pack from Hadley hobbies in the City many years ago (anyone remember them?).It was very similar to the early BR OLE.I used it on my HD 3R layout years ago & ran a Lima Cl.87? under it,Quite successfully i might add.

 

 

Ray.

 

PS,just looked in my railway room & the catenary is sitting on top of theCD player still in bags!!!.

Edited December 18, 2012 by sagaguy

[hmrspaul]

.

 

Tony Dyer was also an accomlished musician. Correct, he did run Mopok befor he started Kemilway. When I produced my Met Railway 0-6-2T kit, Tony was to make an etched chassis to go with it, but never got round to it, so the kit never sold very many.

 

 

Yes Tony was a drummer in a local band. He was an electrician by profession, working at one of the large hospitals near West Drayton. He liked the night shift, as there was only one planned job in the week, on a Thursday to replace every light bulb in the theatres. The rest of the time he was left alone to model and develop Mopok. One of the founders of the (Egham &) Staines Model Railway Society (with Chris Leigh, Keith Jaggers, me and later John Senior).

 

Unfortunately the George Allen set up went bust - they had just begun to wholesale and deliver models from a very fancily painted van when the recession of the early 1970s hit (3 day week, miners strike etc. etc.). So, no etched underframe for the loco (and ABS being left with rather a lot of whitemetal castings for forthcoming coaches etc, - I learnt quite recently Adrian has a long and unforgiving memory!)

 

One thing I do remember Tony mentioning was how poor sales were in the North East. I mention this because,now I live in the NE, railway modelling is very strong up here with the various scale societies tending to have their "northern" shows in the area as well as a good range of national shows.

 

Yes it was a shame that the Eurostar blighted Kings X, and it took a considerable fortune of our tax money before Eurostar finally realised that the KX area was the correct place to have their terminal - added a million passengers the first year St. P was used!

 

Paul Bartlett

Edited December 18, 2012 by hmrspaul

[roythebus]

Ah, George allen, I remember selling them bus kits when I moved to Northampton in 1973. They done a nice etched Siphon G and a few other bits, I think this was a development from the Mopok range.

 

Mopok stood for Modern Prototype Kits OO.

 

I have signed copies of the first 2 AG Thomas books; the MRC library has signed copies of all 3.

[coachmann]

John Senior of Mopok sent along his new GS London green single deck bus for painting. The whitemetal castings were quite superb, which could not always be said for some of the buses that followed from other manufacturers jumping into the newly created model bus hobby. They were so innexpensive that I wonder if anyone actually made any money in bus kits.

[roythebus]

Mike sheppard of KX made the patterns for my GS/Scooter and Bluebird kits; the GS patterns were superb. He also done patterns for Sutherland and Westward kits. Adrian Swain done the casting for me. The Scooter patterns cost £25, quite a lot in those days, considering the full-size GS cost me £100!! Adrian later amended the Scooter patterns to add details that Mike omitted.

 

I suspect David Morris got out of the model retail hobby at about the right time. I remember talking to him in the shop in the late 1970's, that was when the hobby was reaching rock-bottom. It was only really the investment from Lima producing their Deltic that seemed to bring some sort of revival to the hobby.

 

Remember too the premises of The Model Railway Club were just a stone's throw up Pentonville Road from the model shop, and club members would gather at the shop between going from work to the club on Thursdays, usually going via Renzo's Restaurant which was a couple of doors away from the shop. The MRC survives, even if everything else hasn't.

[HEATH STATION]

Geoff Burton is currently archivist of the GCRS and you should be able to get to him via the yahoo group 'gcrsforum' if you want to contact him about Kings Cross plates.

 

I remember the 'Booking Hall' - think the owner was called Nigel Downend(?) - He commissioned Eric Bottomley to do a painting/print of Coronation/Duchess of Hamilton at Washington Union station next to a Baltimore & Ohio loco P7a 'The Royal Blue'. I was a long time B&O fan and had struck up a correspondence with Charles Brown, a raifan/ photographer who sent me some photos of the loco & train on tour in the US ( He also supplied NRM with the same prints for a display they were doing around the same time) Anyway Eric got in touch with me via a Uk member of the PRR history society, and it turned out he also knew artist Philip Hawkins, who lived near to me in the 1980's. We arranged to meet, photos and other information handed over and sometime later I was given a signed print.which I eventually donated, together with the photo material of the loco in America to the Midland Railway Centre, as it was on the way to my mother's home near Chesterfield.

Sorry - got a bit reminiscent there!!

Dave

[Brian Kirby]

The King's Cross shop was like a crossroads in the model railway hobby, it was a great meeting place for kit manufacturers to discuss and then collaborate on various ventures. Examples are the original East Coast Joint Models kits for the LNER L1 and V4(?), devised by Nick Campling, body castings by Adrian Swain (A.B.S.), chassis possibly involving Tony/Kemilway, later it sold under the ABS label. Another was the Kemilway 82xxx, Kemilway chassis and cast body by Dave Pearson (Craftsman Kits) who worked at the Reading shop, instructions drawing by Bob Heaton in the KX shop.

As Roy has mentioned, Adrian Swain did casting for lots of firms, especially bus kits, he would drive up from Poole in his Ford Granada estate (with the exhaust pipe nearly touching the road, because of the weight), with different box loads for different people, including Danny Pinnock of D&S Kits, before he cast his own. Adrian originally worked on the Concorde project and when paid off, used the money to start A.B.S. Models. We often teased him on "where on Concorde would they use whitemetal castings?" !

We would also see plenty of well-known railway authors in the shop, like Colin Walker, George Dow or David Jenkinson, they were all great sources of information. DJ was always popping in, on his way to or from York, lovely chap, very chatty, especially on pet subjects like Midland coaches or he'd give us all a quick mini-lecture on LMS Crimson Lake ! I also remember a rather upset Paul Bartlett (our own HMRSPaul here), when as co-author of OPC's "BR Wagons Part One", it had just been printed with one detail photo upside down (an axlebox and spring), it must have been very annoying and frustrating.

BTW, it was LNER coach expert and author (Major)Nick Campling who re-sprayed various Lima Deltics and others, however i think the prototype Deltic shown above, was converted and painted by Malcolm Stewart.

 

Poor old Nigel at The Booking Hall got stuck with those Bottomley B&O Coronation prints, years later he still had reams of them in his basement.

 

Cheers, Brian.

[RANGERS]

One reason the shop was such a magnet for me was the cabinet of kit-built buses, the coaches in particular always interested me as they were such a rarity in the days before EFE and OOC. A Harrington Grenadier (Cotswold kit I presume) in Southdown green, a Plaxton Supreme in NBC white and a Dominant 3 (Transport Replicas kit?) were three which stick in my mind.

 

The Dominant turned up for sale on a trade stand at an exhibition after the shop had closed, I presume they'd acquired the stock, and I was tempted at the time but resisted (not like me!). I can't remember who the trader was, it might have been Brian's Kits and Bits but I'm not certain.

 

The shop was also about the only stockist I knew of the TPC bus books (was John Senior of Mopok the same John Senior of TPC?) and I bought several from there, Blue Triangle, Plaxton, Duple and the Nottingham City Transport volumes to name a few.

Edited December 19, 2012 by RANGERS

[coachmann]

I wonder if those KX display buses were painted by Alan Brack and me. I was keen to get away from buses after only a couple of years but carried on painting for four of the model bus companies adverts and box lids, with me piggy in the middle as the only person in the universe knowing what each of them was doing next! So when Anbrico and Westward each sent the same kind of Bristol FLF bus for painting the same week, the fat really hit the North Wales fan when their adverts appeared. I think I still have some of the old KX nameplates....They must be quite unique.

Edited December 19, 2012 by coachmann

[glo41f]

Interesting nostalgic gallop here with many memories re-activated. Mention has been made of the East Coast Models range. These were a joint effort between Nick Campling (who did the instructions etc.) and Gerry Brown who was a very skilled modelmaker. He was the patternmaker behind many of the Nucast Kits and was a member of Ipswich MRA.He wanted to branch out on his own as he felt that working for Nu Cast was not very remunerative. His brass masters were a work of art. I recall the L1 being assembled in the raw brass and it all fitted perfectly. The original concept was a white metal cast chassis which Gerry trued up on his lathe and drilled the axle holes. He used to say that if full sized locos ran in white metal axleboxes, a 4mm model would not wear out! Interestingly, an L1 from the kit and Frank Dyer's scratch built one were bot running on the MRC test tracks and the scratch built one was a few millimetres longer.

ABC models under the arches at London Bridge, had a very knowledgeable lady working there. At the time their trackwork was the most realistic around. Hamblings never had much stock in the latter years unlike W&H which had stuff all over.

Hadley Hobbies was always good for some interesting things. I saw my first G1 stuff there. They opened on Sundays as they were in the area of Petticoat Lane Market.

Never bothered much with Victors as not moved by the Continental/US stuff they sold.

Sad that all has gone now and London is the loser.

 

Regards to all.

 

Martin Long

[hmrspaul]

 

 

The shop was also about the only stockist I knew of the TPC bus books (was John Senior of Mopok the same John Senior of TPC?)

 

Yes, John went to Stockport or nearby (IIRC) and set up the Transport Publishing Co. He was always interested in buses. His skills in Mopok was on the photo printing side that was needed for the pre-coloured sides they used (using a technique I believe was initiated by PC Models). I am struggling, but I think John was working for Polaroid when Mopok started.

 

Chris Leigh arranged for some of John's photos of NPCCS to be published in Model Rail a few years ago.

 

Paul Bartlett

[hmrspaul]

I also remember a rather upset Paul Bartlett (our own HMRSPaul here), when as co-author of OPC's "BR Wagons Part One", it had just been printed with one detail photo upside down (an axlebox and spring), it must have been very annoying and frustrating.

 

Cheers, Brian.

Umm, I was more annoyed with the poor reproduction of several of the drawings, which had line break up. I knew how much effort and care went into producing them. I have never really understood why there was so much criticism of the one photograph being upside down.

 

Paul Bartlett

[Horsetan]

Is Marnos still trading,if they are,i believe that they are now the only company still selling JV catenary.....

 

Marno are still going. I think they also sell Disque Rouge SNCF signals.

 

Details I have are: Marno Ltd. 24 New Cavendish Street, London W1G 8TX Tel: 020 7580 7699

 

Interestingly, I also found this about them

 

 

....I remember the 'Booking Hall' - think the owner was called Nigel Downend(?) - He commissioned Eric Bottomley to do a painting/print of Coronation/Duchess of Hamilton at Washington Union station next to a Baltimore & Ohio loco P7a 'The Royal Blue'.....

 

Nigel had a framed print on the wall of his shop.

 

 

The King's Cross shop was like a crossroads in the model railway hobby, it was a great meeting place for kit manufacturers to discuss and then collaborate on various ventures. Examples are the original East Coast Joint Models kits for the LNER L1 and V4(?), devised by Nick Campling, body castings by Adrian Swain (A.B.S.), chassis possibly involving Tony/Kemilway, later it sold under the ABS label. Another was the Kemilway 82xxx, Kemilway chassis and cast body by Dave Pearson (Craftsman Kits) who worked at the Reading shop, instructions drawing by Bob Heaton in the KX shop.

 

The Kemilway Std.3 castings could be a bit hit-and-miss; the sample I ended up with has distinctly irregularly-shaped smokebox castings which will be hell to file down. No complaints about the chassis, though - the detail on it is still up there with the best today, and needs only a little work to make it CSB-compatible.

 

Poor old Nigel at The Booking Hall got stuck with those Bottomley B&O Coronation prints, years later he still had reams of them in his basement.

 

Those weren't the only things down there, Brian. I remember boxes strewn about and various long-forgotten model components down there as well. Even when the shop finally closed, he was still stuck with an unbuilt MTK whitemetal kit of the BR "Western" Cl.52!

 

I think his was one of the few premises in "Fitzrovia" which still had an outside bog. And I remember you expended a lot of effort in repainting the interior to get rid of the cigarette stains (Nigel smoked a fair few every day, as well as being a diabetic); were you there when "Big John" came in one evening half-cut?

Edited December 20, 2012 by Horsetan

[roythebus]

Umm, I was more annoyed with the poor reproduction of several of the drawings, which had line break up. I knew how much effort and care went into producing them. I have never really understood why there was so much criticism of the one photograph being upside down.

 

Paul Bartlett

I don't know either. It would be most useful when making a model, as most are made upside down anyway....

[Brian Kirby]

 

I have never really understood why there was so much criticism of the one photograph being upside down.

 

Well it never bothered me, after 27 years my copy of "An Illustrated History Of BR Wagons - Volume One" is rather well-used, with oil and paint stains, plus crumbs of cheese sandwich held in place by soldering flux, although some people like to keep their books in mint condition, mine aren't, they work for their living. More common, but just as irritating to some, is when a photo is printed in reverse, with tell-tale semaphores pointing the wrong way. I keep having a recurring dream, i walk into a fantasy bookshop and there on the shelf is Volume Two, covering vans and hoppers, but when i reach the counter to pay, it's turned back into Volume One again ! On a serious note, please Paul, please do something about Vol.2, i know spare time is precious and you BRHSG boys have all gone your separate ways, perhaps a project for retirement?

 

Back to King's Cross, here's a quick Christmas story circa 1977, about the night i nearly accidently burnt down the KX shop. When the decorations went up, we always added a working layout to the shop window display, for the festive season. We used old secondhand stock, so as not to damage new stuff, the same usually applied for track and controls, all a bit of a lash-up. Off went the loco and train on it's 10,000 mile December run, there'd be a few derailments, but we could usually hear it, except when we were busy. Late one afternoon, we were very busy, couldn't hear the train, then we all went home.

In the morning Tony and i were the first to arrive, we looked in horror at the shop, it was full of grey smoke! We quickly let ourselves in and saw the smoke was eminating from under the window display, the plug was pulled out and we retreated outside. With the front door open, the smoke gradually subsided, so we went back in and opened every window in the building, before any directors arrived.

What had happened, was the little train had derailed the afternoon before and was shorting out the track, the controller was one of those old Hornby-Dublo types, with the tram handle and big red light. That controller must have been cutting in and out all night long, eventually getting so hot, that the wax on the transformer was melting and creating the smoke.

After an hour the shop still stank of this horrible smoke, then David Morris arrived and said "What's that disgusting pong?", luckily nobody let on. It was all my fault, it was my responsibility and it could have been grounds for instant dismissal, so i've always been grateful to Tony and the crew for that. Ironically, our test-track controller was a H&M Safety Minor, they were transistorized, so no resistors and it never even got warm, that was left on all year round and through holidays, but it's still best to pull the plug out for safety at home.

 

Cheers, Brian.

[hmrspaul]

Well it never bothered me, after 27 years my copy of "An Illustrated History Of BR Wagons - Volume One" is rather well-used, with oil and paint stains, plus crumbs of cheese sandwich held in place by soldering flux, although some people like to keep their books in mint condition, mine aren't, they work for their living. More common, but just as irritating to some, is when a photo is printed in reverse, with tell-tale semaphores pointing the wrong way. I keep having a recurring dream, i walk into a fantasy bookshop and there on the shelf is Volume Two, covering vans and hoppers, but when i reach the counter to pay, it's turned back into Volume One again ! On a serious note, please Paul, please do something about Vol.2, i know spare time is precious and you BRHSG boys have all gone your separate ways, perhaps a project for retirement?

 

 

Cheers, Brian.

 

I am retired, so have less time! I also sleep badly about volume 2. Almost all of us "wagon measurers" are in frequent communication, but there is a belief that by continuing in the form of volume 1 it would be too niave for modern modellers, as they want more detail, as well as much more on why, where and when. I had the most unpleasant row with someone whom expected me to know whether one particular wagons was still in the same livery as on my site - not five or ten years on but just the following year.

 

David Monk-Steels HMRS published book on MGRs is the way forward that is favoured.

 

Yes, with the unpleasant misunderstandings I seem to have about the Zenfolio site I may just pull the plug on that and do more for volumes 2, 3..... I did make a major restart when I first retired, but the Zenfolio site (and some family problems related to elderly parents) have made me lazy.

 

Paul Bartlett

PS you should see the state of my working copy, broken backed and written all over. Fortunately I do have two pristine copies, one bought a few years ago when I generously paid £10 for one that appeared never to have been opened (they did ask £5 for it but it was a charity!).

Edited December 20, 2012 by hmrspaul

[andyman7]

What an interesting thread, as a youngster in the 70s/80s I came late to the London model shop scene but remember Victors, Kings Cross, W&H, Frederick Beck in Camden Passage and the Booking Hall near Goodge Street. Beatties' High Holborn store moved a few doors after the fire in the 1980s and is now Modelzone but the others are all gone. Others in the Greater London and surrounding area included Puffers of Kenton, the Harrow Model Shop, Braley Hobby Supplies of Northfields, Railmail of Watford.

[RANGERS]

Yes, John went to Stockport or nearby (IIRC) and set up the Transport Publishing Co. He was always interested in buses. His skills in Mopok was on the photo printing side that was needed for the pre-coloured sides they used (using a technique I believe was initiated by PC Models). I am struggling, but I think John was working for Polaroid when Mopok started.

 

Chris Leigh arranged for some of John's photos of NPCCS to be published in Model Rail a few years ago.

 

Paul Bartlett

 

Not seen John for a few years but he's he was (and still is I believe) in North Derbyshire and turning out books for his Venture Publications business. I think he runs it with his son Mark who also runs MDS Sales

[trisonic]

Anyone remember that store that sprang into being in, I think, Gt. Portland Street in the 70's selling only brass locomotives - including, if I remember correctly, a Gauge 3 "Big Boy" by Max Gray???

 

Best, Pete.

[sagaguy]

Yes,i remember that shop but for the life of me,I can`t remember either .I don`t think they were there very long.

 

Ray.

[trisonic]

It was more like a Jewelry Store than a model shop. Everything in glass/perspex cases.

 

Best, Pete.