If your layout is British and set before mid fifties you probably need more bicycles

[flockandroll]

Just read something that suggests for a British layout set before the mid fifties you probably need more  bicycles than private cars:

"In 1948, the modal share for cycling in Britain was 25%, or roughly the same as Dutch levels today, but cycling then went into a steep decline, bottoming out at 1% modal share by 1970. In a little over 22 years, cycling went from a mainstream form of transport to an ignored, denigrated one."

Quote from https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/03/21/historic-and-wonderful-cyclist-and-pedestrian-tunnel-under-river-tyne-re-opens-soon/#2490879d79d5

A bicycle and pedestrian tunnel they built under the Tyne from 1947 to 1951. More photos and info here:

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2019/apr/02/how-they-built-cycling-tunnels-under-the-tyne-by-hand-in-pictures?

Of course this fits in with all the recollections of railwaymen that mention travelling to work on their bicycle. For me, that's just a little extra piece of the picture I will need to make. 

[loickebros]

And if you want realism try this https://www.magnorail.com/en

Dave

 

[Compound2632]

14 minutes ago, loickebros said:

And if you want realism try this https://www.magnorail.com/en

Dave

 

 

I've seen that system in action - on a Dutch (surprise!) layout at Warley a few years ago. It really is rather good!

 

As to more bicycles for 50s or earlier layouts, yes indeed, but the elephant in the room for pre-second world war models is a working horse...

[The Johnster]

Hmm.  I'd say the 'modal share' was highest in urban and industrial areas, and a bit lower in rural environments, but there were a lot of bicycles around in those days for sure.  

[Devo63]

My father remembers that most of the various stations around Cardiff had bike racks when he rode his bike back in the mid 40's to early 50's. He said that at some stations there was never enough capacity and you could see large numbers of bikes chained to the station fences. He can't recall where he came across them but he mentions that some larger locations had lock-up sheds which the porter or booking office clerk controlled the access.

 

Dave R.

[Right Away]

A very pertinent posting, Flockandroll.

 

The selection of model motor vehicles is vast and caters quite well in general for the eras in which we strive to replicate. The humble bike and its rider might now be better represented in various guises to encapsulate the days when this mode of transport was often a necessity than a leisure pursuit. 

 

I did recall once, seeing a bike getting a "lift" on the back of a tender, doubtless the property of the driver or fireman of the goods working; another modelling consideration?

 

Passengers with bikes (and prams etc) not so many years past, could be accommodated by that much lamented vehicle, the guard's brake.

 

Bikes were seen in greater numbers in the '50s than we deem to remember. Aside from the placement of a few static, riderless examples against walls, fences and lamp posts, their utilisation in model form could perhaps be  better represented by manufacturers. Arguably, to realistically convey cycles in motion can prove somewhat difficult, but as modellers ... we can do anything if we try!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 4, 2019 by Right Away

[Joseph_Pestell]

Somewhere on YouTube there is film of workers leaving after a shift at a dockyard (Portsmouth?). Nearly all of them on bikes.

[Hroth]

I recall film of workers leaving car factories (Morris at Cowley?)  and aeroplane factories in numbers on bikes.

 

We need more black sit-up-and-beg bikes to decorate our layouts with!

 

And riders in overalls and cloth caps too...

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

As always with statistics, one must question the source and the sampling method, and be aware that 'numbers' such as 25% in the 1950s and 1% by 1970 are not terribly useful, because there is no hint of the variance they conceal.

 

I can supply a very specific data point in 1978 for my then employer, circa 2000 employed on a site with conveniently only one entrance, so fairly easy to monitor with the small team I organised. The estimate as I recall it (I don't have access to the original data and suspect it long destroyed) as the employees entered the site:

 70% arrived by motor vehicle.

11% arrived by bike.

19% walked in.

(The breakdown within that was 13% had used public transport (rail or bus) or a lift from family or friend as part of their journey, and the remaining 6% had walked all the way.)

 

I got this task in the usual way by shooting off at the mouth in an all-site communication session, telling the HR director that he was way under-estimating pedestrian and cycling activity. With the test plant I was currently working on disabled, my head of department volunteered me on the spot to collect the data. Lovely job in February.

[wenlock]

Southwark models make some rather nice etched brass Singer safety bicycles.  Lots of finger singeing fun!:-)

[Fat Controller]

You also need models of bikes being pushed, with all sorts of things over the cross-bar or handle-bars; sacks of coal or scrap, ladders, rolls of carpet etc. My Uncle Bill was still carrying his ladder and painting gear like that in the mid-1970s- he once said to me that, if I flunked college, he could do with a second pair of hands to push another bike for big jobs. There were some bikes that I never saw being ridden, only pushed.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Or even being wheeled through the gate with the frame tubing filled with stolen mercury. The perpetrator only caught when on an icy day he dropped the bike and couldn't then pick it up. My Pa still has 'somewhere' the company news sheet in which this heinous crime was reported, with the dreadful consequence for the ex-employee...

[Porkscratching]

A very good and relevant topic for sure, I certainly remember a lot of older blokes on bikes when I started my first proper 'mans' job in a a small engineering works in the early 70s

Don't forget a few motor bikes in there too, BSA bantams, various Villiers engined things, and the odd ubiquitous sidecar 'combination'..!

[Nearholmer]

If we are going to have bikes aplenty, it might be a good idea if commercial suppliers looked carefully at the frame of one, before making their etch, which Messrs Southwark seem not to have done.

 

Or, perhaps they decided to model a massively rare type of bike.

Edited April 4, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Porkscratching]

I looked again..hmmm...it kind of needs the upright tube from pedal bearing housing to under the saddle!..I reckon that one would collapse fairly shortly..!

[Fat Controller]

17 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

Or even being wheeled through the gate with the frame tubing filled with stolen mercury. The perpetrator only caught when on an icy day he dropped the bike and couldn't then pick it up. My Pa still has 'somewhere' the company news sheet in which this heinous crime was reported, with the dreadful consequence for the ex-employee...

This rings a bell from somewhere; someone I used to work with was driving a dropside lorry, and saw someone struggling to push his bke. The lorry-driver stopped, and offered the fellow a ride; he realised something was up when two of them could barely lift the bike. I suspect I heard this story when working in Avonmouth in the mid-1970s; where did you hear about the scam?

[Nearholmer]

I checked, and the frame is sort of right for an 1890 Singer, but the etch ‘hides’ a curved tube that performed the same function as the seat-tube on a more conventional frame, by combining it with the back mudguard.

 

there seem to have been a few makers using this rather odd design at the time, but it is obviously nothing like as naturally sound as the typical ‘diamond’, so it died-out pretty soon.

 

Diamonds, and ladies step-throughs, would be far more typical, although there were bikes in all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes in the 1880/90s.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

12 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

This rings a bell from somewhere; someone I used to work with was driving a dropside lorry, and saw someone struggling to push his bke. The lorry-driver stopped, and offered the fellow a ride; he realised something was up when two of them could barely lift the bike. I suspect I heard this story when working in Avonmouth in the mid-1970s; where did you hear about the scam?

Source is my Pa, the business being Philips Gloeilampen Fabrik in Eindhoven in 1947.

[petethemole]

Adrian Vaughan (I think) worked a signal box next to an Army stores depot, overlooking a shed where a man spent all day spraying bikes green (or Khaki?). At lunchtime he stopped and sprayed one black, then rode it out at the end of the day, having walked in in the morning. The gate guard had changed at mid-day so he wasn't sussed.

 

Trainspotters if modelled should have some bikes with them or parked nearby.

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

Or even being wheeled through the gate with the frame tubing filled with stolen mercury. The perpetrator only caught when on an icy day he dropped the bike and couldn't then pick it up. My Pa still has 'somewhere' the company news sheet in which this heinous crime was reported, with the dreadful consequence for the ex-employee...

The story I heard was that as the hapless employee pushed the bike over the kerb outside the "guardhouse", the front spokes collapsed...

[wenlock]

The Singer bicycle of 1890, entirely appropriate for a layout set circa 1905:-)

Edited April 4, 2019 by wenlock

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

15 minutes ago, Hroth said:

The story I heard was that as the hapless employee pushed the bike over the kerb outside the "guardhouse", the front spokes collapsed...

Sadly I cannot hope to get any information from my Pa as vascular dementia has robbed him of most of his past memory. (He has even lost his native Dutch.) The last of his one time Philips colleagues he was in contact with died a couple of years past, so I have no easy path of enquiry. My recollection of the article about the event was that the guard spotted the man unable to pick the fallen bike up, and went to investigate...

[Stoker]

You might also want more motorcycles. They were very common back then, probably more so than cars among poorer families.

[Fat Controller]

6 hours ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

Sadly I cannot hope to get any information from my Pa as vascular dementia has robbed him of most of his past memory. (He has even lost his native Dutch.) The last of his one time Philips colleagues he was in contact with died a couple of years past, so I have no easy path of enquiry. My recollection of the article about the event was that the guard spotted the man unable to pick the fallen bike up, and went to investigate...

Sorry to hear about your father; vascular dementia is a cruel complaint.

Mercury smuggling seems to have gone on in quite a few places; I think the origin of the story I heard was at Avonmouth or Liverpool docks.

[Porkscratching]

So where would the average Joe sell his 'liberated' mercury I wonder...?