Modelling as a Metaphor ... or Inside a BR Ventilated Van
Entry posted by Maurice Hopper
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Sometimes a simple, experience can assist in the clarification of thoughts and ideas. While on a recent visit to the northern edge of the Forest of Dean, I came across one of those fine examples of ‘Reuse’ (and indeed ‘Reversion’). The capital ‘Rs’ are a reflection of those increasingly important ‘R’ words: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle*. I made an unexpected discovery: the remains of a B.R. plywood van.
After a ridiculously short working lives, many of the B.R. fleet of short wheelbase fitted van bodies ended up being sold as agricultural buildings as the 1955 Modernisation Plan (which did little to modernise the railway, but a lot to take it back to 1945 or earlier, especially in the matter of wagons) was put out to grass with the arrival of the Beeching Report.
Some of these purchases from B.R. have been well cared for, still providing useful cover for farming activities. Others have not faired so well with the plywood delaminating and rotting or, in this case due to its hill top location, blown away. The characteristic pressed steel ends and the angle iron framework for the roof and sides remain. The growth of a tree - I think it is a elderberry - just adds a nice touch. Out of the useless comes forth fruit!
It is likely that at least some of these vehicles never earned the cost of building them. In the early 1970s, at the extreme end of their revenue earning service, about 70 such vehicles stood all year in the yard at Weymouth so they could to handle about eight weeks of revenue earning with the Channel Island potato and tomato traffic, although most the tomato traffic had already gone to the roads by then. The cost of building and maintaining these short vehicles was inflated by the need for a much higher ratio of the expensive bits - wheels, running gear, brakes and buffers - to the load space found in standard U.I.C.** designs found in Europe, where vans were at least twice if not three times the capacity.
Why were they so short? Because that was the size of British railway vans! It always had been. And that was what the infrastructure could carry. This head-in-the-sand view of changing design and technology did much to destroy rail freight in the UK. Even the ‘Palvans’ built to take pallets had a lower capacity than the largest contemporary road vehicle competition.
While the 16tons mineral wagon seldom survived like the vans, they illustrate well the point that infrastructure controlled the railway. Beeching wanted the railway to stop using its coal wagons being used as ‘bunkers’. Robens - the boss of the Nation Coal Board - did not wish to pay (c £10m @ 1965) for the improved railway operating efficiency by having to rebuild his pit-head loading areas. Beeching won with his Merry-Go-Round trains. Higher capacity, higher speeds, a hugely reduced wagon fleet and even reduced traction requirements. Excellent; but too late. The technology for MRG had been there in the 1950s but there was no will for it to be introduced.
To return to the van, standing floor-less in the field. It could be seen as a metaphor for the poor planning, poor investment and lack of imagination on the post-1945 railway. That the plan is to model this as a diorama rather than as some detail on the corner of large layout is also a metaphor for my changing approach to modelling. In a world of diminishing resources, questions need to be asked about the culture of over-production and over-consumption: and railway modelling should not escape such an interrogation. Better to build or small and meaningful diorama than some all consuming sprawling ‘empire’.
As one who has changed my behaviour on a number of occasions over the last 68 years, railway modelling is a residual pastime from a different age. As a non-car owning, vegetarian who lives in a house with solar panels (electricity generation) and a 33 year old heat pump (hot water production) and who has not flown since my work as an international human rights observer just nearly fifteen years ago, it seems odd that I have been tempted to return to the rather questionable and many ways unsustainable activity of ‘out-of-the-box’ railway modelling. For some years I have been increasingly concerned about the human fascination for injection moulded petroleum based plastic and the way this fascination, or perhaps I should say addiction, is passed on through contents of the average child’s brightly coloured toy box. (Although I hear that Lego are going over to bioplastic.) It is also a concerning to look at the environmental impact of modelling as with so many other products. This is not just about the materials used, but the whole pyramid that imports of finished models stand on, dodgy chemical industries, industrial pollution, international shipping (a very dirty industry), packaging, production energy, etc.
It seems, that modern ‘out-of-the-box’ modelling is, a long way from the days of Hornby tinplate, when there were few worries about the future of the environment or resources. When having a ‘consuming’ (both meanings) hobby was unquestioningly a good thing. However, my comments are based on an increasing feeling of cognitive dissonance (that is inconsistent thought, beliefs or attitudes) especially as relating to behavioural decisions and attitude change in relation my railway modelling.
To make such a diorama with freedom to use whatever scale, probably 12mm to 1foot, and the most appropriate materials, also make this a metaphor. That this model of a recycled van is expressing a challenge to working within a new set of criteria for an environment that must question waste and inappropriate use of resources, at all scales.
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This piece also reflects my reduction in the size of modelling projects. Over the last ten years most of my exhibition layouts were reduced to what could be carried by public transport. It also reflects my move towards the arts as a means of expression. Art has a much longer tradition of using metaphor than modelling. Perhaps we need to consider these things more carefully and move beyond playing trains and building ever bigger layouts.
In any modelling activity there is always an element of “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs”. However, waste can be kept to a minimum and care of finished products can make for a longer life expectancy. Sadly, some recent work of mine has, like this BR fitted van, has been scrapped too early in its life, not for want of good design and careful construction but for want a proper care and storage. And that in a project to recycle a layout… Ironic, or what!!
Although the resources wasted in a breaking up a model railway are small compared to the waste of a fleet of poorly conceived wagons, it’s the frame of mind that is important. So the experience of finding a van body in a field has helped me move on with my attitude to modelling. I doubt if others will follow… but that is not the point. One has to move when the time is right for you.
There is a wonderful poem by Dorothy Nimmo - ‘The Pottery Lesson’ (a Google search will find it) - about a potter who breaks their pots as soon as they have been made, which ends
“Why do you break your pots as soon as you have made them?
I can’t answer that question.
When you can answer that question
you will no longer be broken.”
If you have got this far well done!
*The three R's - reduce, reuse and recycle - all help to cut down on the amount of waste we throw away. They conserve natural resources, landfill space and energy. Plus, the three R's save land and money communities must use to dispose of waste in landfills.
**U.I.C. Union Internationle des Chemins de fer.
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