VICTORS MODEL SHOP MEMORIES

[Huw Griffiths]

On 27/04/2019 at 12:34, Nearholmer said:

And, an occasion when a rather burly chap tried to sell Bernie ‘window insurance’. Whether he paid up or not, I don’t know.

 

Said like that, it sounds like such a "reasonable" offer - the sort that some people might not necessarily refuse ... .

[TEAMYAKIMA]

On 27/04/2019 at 12:34, Nearholmer said:

Soooo many memories.

 

I’ve still got a few Eggerbahn items with ‘Leading Records’ price labels on the boxes.

 

Many many funny stories, and exceedingly, shall we say, blue stories from, well, you know which member of the team.

 

once one of my pals came in with me, wearing the prominent badge of the 7.25” Society ..... no need to say more.

 

And, an occasion when a rather burly chap tried to sell Bernie ‘window insurance’. Whether he paid up or not, I don’t know.

 

One Oh One Nine, Victors!

 

LEADING RECORDS - that brings back memories

 

BLUE STORIES FROM YOU KNOW WHO - who might that be pray??

 

WINDOW INSURANCE - I'll ask Bernie about that when I see him!

[Dr Gerbil-Fritters]

I have a nicotine coloured ConCor box with an SP 5 unit well car in it.  The very last thing I bought from Real Victors.  Some dried up paints as well.   I suspect they were dried up when I bought them!

 

 

[TEAMYAKIMA]

I had a small TT layout at the SW Herts show yesterday ...............….

 

 

 

and met three ex-Victors customers ……………………..

 

 

 

Edited May 12, 2019 by TEAMYAKIMA

[dibber25]

I made one visit to the Chapel Market record store. The railway stuff was in something like the cupboard under the stairs in Harry Potter. I wanted to do something 'Wild West' based and I had a Tyco 'General' (don't recall now how I came to have that). I wanted rolling stock but was blissfully unaware that no one made anything that old. Bernie helped me out and I came away with some Athearn and MDC Roundhouse boxcars as the oldest styles that he could find. I think I may still have them. Anyway it hooked me on North American and following a holiday visit to my sister in British Columbia in 1976 I started modelling North American HO. By then, a visit to King's Cross could combine British modelling interests (with the London outpost of Eames, Reading shop in York Way, and Victors shop just a short walk up Pentonville Road. So sad that many of today's modellers don't have such luxury! (CJL)

 

[Northroader]

If the job took me up to Paddington and I could manage to swing a couple of hours, I keep on the Circle to KX and on up the PV Road. Have a good look in the window, then in and start rummaging round for cheap O gauge freight cars. It was a great shop, with a lovely variety of foreign goodies I never saw anywhere else.

[friscopete]

I notice Rails of Sheffield have a Walthers VICTORS  special run Silver Streak box car  kit on Ebay .A fine souvenir  of happy days .

[TEAMYAKIMA]

I have arranged a staff reunion with Bernie, Chris, Steve and Stefan on Thursday - I will pass these memories on to him.

 

Paul

[gelboy45]

Ah, 'Leading Lighting and Electrical' in Chapel Market and the Aladdin's Cave in the back cupboard and me persuading Bernie's parents to allow me in to find a magazine if Bernie wasn't there!  Eventually an area upstairs was opened and then the move to Pentonville Road. All my family and friends knew of me trying to visit Victors on a 73 late most Friday nights desperate to get there after work before closing to see if any US mags were in.  I couldn't afford anything else and was known as 'The magazine chap' .  Bernie was interested in the SP then and might remember my great interest in diesels.

 

Please let Bernie know that I remember him and Paul with great affection albeit they might not remember me! Those were the days and I do treasure the memories!

 

Gerry Baldwin

 

  

[roythebus]

My visits to the Chapel Market shop were usually to buy a stock of Floquil paint from Bernie for the MRAS Model shop in York Way when I worked there in 1968/69. As others have said, Bernie had the cupboard at the back of the shop. Some bits that interested me were the Hornby Acho USA tank and mineral water wagons.

 

This strange Caribbean music emanated from the record shop at the front. As a 17 year old at the time I was bemused by the lyrics of a song I later found out was Wet Dream by Max Romeo, a song Radio 1 couldn't play on the Pick of the Pops show for some reason.  I recently found a receipt from Victors Records for something or the other.

 

Remembering too the ermm, "gentlemens' evenings" organised by someone who shall remain nameless, mostly for railway staff and MRC members so it seems.

[TEAMYAKIMA]

I believe that back in Chapel Market days Bernie produced a catalogue - does anyone still have one? If so can you send me a scan please?

 

Also he had a duplicate  invoice  book for hand-writing invoices . He must have had hundreds printed because 20 years after he moved to Pentonville Road he was still using the original Chapel Market ones with the old address crossed out by hand and a rubber stamp with 166 PENTONVILLE ROAD on it used to update the invoice !  Does anyone still have a Victors invoice? 

[bécasse]

11 hours ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

I believe that back in Chapel Market days Bernie produced a catalogue - does anyone still have one? If so can you send me a scan please?

 

Bernie certainly produced a roneoed catalogue at Chapel Market. Sadly, I suspect that my copy got ditched when I moved to Belgium eight years ago, together with any receipts I might still have had.

[TEAMYAKIMA]

Well someone has a copy of the Victors catalogue - prices in pounds, shillings and pence!

 

 

And this ………………….

 

 

And here's the team …. Stefan, Paul, Bernie and Chris ……………….

 

[up north]

Thank you to all for the memories of Victors shop.I only made it once from Manchester.my memory at 81 isnt bad but am I right that the shop was inbetween two others and you went up some stairs to the *Holy Grail*/If you could, let me know some details of the shop

Everytime i bought Railway Modeler I would examine in detail what Victors had for sale that month-As American railway modeling *up north* wasnt  popular(understandable!) places like Victors and the other one I used to visit now and then was Millholm Models- Nottingham (wonderful place  set in a old school-now a listed building-good) were like gold dust.

[Nearholmer]

There was a very good US model shop in, IIRC, Clitheroe in Lancashire.

 

I only remember it because I decided to spend a whole Saturday travelling to and from it, as much to look at the countryside as anything else.

 

Anyway, I had a look round the town, and was clambering up the old castle mound, when I instantly recognised the shoes and trousers of the chap climbing in front of me.

 

Odd, you think, most people wouldn't recognise someones shoes, but the guy was a member of my team at work in London, and always wore an immaculately cared-for pair of sturdy brown brogues, equally sturdy olive-green cavalry-twill trousers, and the sort of tweed jacket that is razor-blade, let alone thorn, proof. The shoes were hand-made, already about thirty years old, and he had the cobbler near our office re-fettle them on an almost weekly basis to keep them in tip-top condition.

 

He was on a walking holiday with his wife, and our simultaneous arrival on the castle-mound was a total coincidence. 

[Legend]

On ‎23‎/‎04‎/‎2019 at 12:52, jjb1970 said:

Two things I can remember were the seeming chaos (More than once I asked about stuff to be told to see if I could find it on the shelves somewhere as they thought they had it but didn't know where) and the window display in which expensive models were seemingly abandoned to be washed out in the sun light. I shudder to think how much stock was rendered spare part fodder after being chosen for window display duty. Terrific shop, I miss it, the walk up Pentonville Road from Euston was the highlight of visiting London for a few years. Along with MacKay Models in Paisley and MG Sharpe in Sheffield Victors was the source of most of my models for quite a few years. He often had some very nice Overland brass diesels to tempt, I first got hooked on US HO brass after seeing a CN Draper taper in his shop.

 

Ahh MacKay Models in Paisley under Gilmour Street station . Much missed. 

[TEAMYAKIMA]

If anyone is interested I will be at warley this weekend with my new Chinese HO layout with luke who helped at shows and things back in the day. All ex-Victors customers very welcome to come and say 'hello'. Paul

[Oldddudders]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

There was a very good US model shop in, IIRC, Clitheroe in Lancashire. 

I think it was originally North Western Models, or similar? Run by Jeff and Barbara Hardaker, who were decent to deal with by mail-order. Things seemed to go wrong for them. I think they wanted a proper business premises, and found such locally, but it all went wrong at the last moment, by which time someone else was in their domestic shop. They were succeeded in Woone Lane by Porter Wynn models, although John Porter was deceased soon after takeover. I found Mike Wynn good news, and on a couple of visits discussed and then bought my initial Digitrax DCC system - he had Internet before I did, and had concluded after study that Digitrax was the best of the US systems.

[TEAMYAKIMA]

4 hours ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

If anyone is interested I will be at warley this weekend with my new Chinese HO layout with luke who helped at shows and things back in the day. All ex-Victors customers very welcome to come and say 'hello'. Paul

 

I would like to point out that for legal reasons all guarantee, exchange and refund enquiries are now (after 19 years) null and void!

[steve1]

On 23/04/2019 at 17:33, CloggyDog said:

I was a fairly regular punter in the Pentonville Road shop once I started working 'up the smoke' around 1990. And while it was the Penguin who flogged me my first few US H0 locos and stock, the rest of my early fleet all came from Victors. All those Athearn and Roundhouse freight cars for £2.50 or £1.50 respectively, blue-box locos for around £20 and running so much better than the Hornby/Lima UK equivalents.

 

Always enjoyed listening to the robust banter coming from behind the counter.

 

And while I didn't start my continental H0 modelling until long after Victors closed, a couple of ebay buys of Piko (old blue box, DDR/Wende-era production) stock have borne 'Victors' price labels.

 

 

 

+ 1 as I was with him most of the time.

 

I remember Paul handing me the phone once when a customer rang up asking about UK pantographs as he thought I knew more than him!

 

steve

[ianathompson]

Only just found this thread!

 

As an undergraduate at Birmingham University in the mid/late seventies I remember visiting the shop quite often when I was in London to watch football.

I used to use the "greasy spoon" next door as well.

Still used to use the latter when in London for football even after the Pentonville Road shop  had long gone, but, like everything that too has now gone.

 

Best memory, as an impoverished undergrad or postgrad, was finding a fairly hefty book on the East German narrow gauge and having the temerity to ask the price. 

I was gobsmacked when I actually found that I could afford to buy the thing. I still have it in my library and still refer to it as well.

 

I can also remember that I went to watch Fulham in the Second Division afterwards, but who they played and the result now elude me. 

I was chasing all 92 League grounds at the time, something that I and a friend achieved whilst researching for PhD theses.

 

Ian T

 

[TEAMYAKIMA]

3 hours ago, steve1 said:

 

 

I remember Paul handing me the phone once when a customer rang up asking about UK pantographs as he thought I knew more than him!

 

steve

You probably did!!!! 

[Cornish Nige]

Many hours spent in both shops.

 

Does anyone remember the North American prototype club that used to have meetings at some hall in Westminster ?

 

Called something like Capitol Railroad Modellers ?

[jasond]

Seem to remember Capitals (we) used to meet in Essex Road Library when I joined and hosted the NMRA National Convention - 1970?  Then we moved down to Westminster, by which time I'd been forced to put my hand in Bernie's O-scale biscuit tin (seriously!) and that was it.  First purchase was a US Hobbies Catalog, then an All-Nation NW2 diesel switcher kit ... I still have them both .  The US Hobbies UP 2-8-0 that followed got traded with another O-scaler for a USH SD45.  Yes, still got it, now in D&H livery and the 2-8-0 is back for resale! 

 

Next 6 or 7 paragraphs omitted you'll be pleased to hear, so quick finish ... coming up to 50 years in Nth Am O-scale, ALL due to Bernie.  Hi Paul, hi Dave....

Jason

[bécasse]

The NMRA National Convention was held in London (at a hotel just off Oxford Street, the Portman perhaps?) in the summer of 1971. We were invited to show Bembridge as an example of the latest (P4) in British modelling. It concluded with a very pleasant Saturday evening reception at the (then) Clapham Transport Museum - with every exhibit fully accessible!