1970s childhood layout in a caravan

[Harlequin]

Hi Everyone,

 

In the late 70's my Dad and I built a medium sized layout in a static caravan. It was the most ambitious of a string of layouts that had started back in the 60's with a classic tight oval on a board. I have just found some photos of that last layout and they provide a window into times past and what might have been.

 

Sadly, the layout was never finished, partly because of technical problems but also because we were both getting interested in other things: Computers were calling me! Dad and I agreed that the layout would never be finished and, with University looming for me, the rolling stock and trackwork was sold off. I used the proceeds to buy a BBC Model B computer. I learned to program and this led directly to my career because after University I joined the preeminent company writing software for the BBC Micro and I still work for the basically the same organisation today! A few years after the demise of the caravan layout Dad also bought a BBC Micro and he became obsessed with playing Snapper and then Lemmings. In the end we both had PCs and spent many happy hours playing Age of Empires with each other until his death in 2008. So the conversion from model railways to computers was a good thing for us.

 

Looking back now I can see that my Dad was the driving force behind all "my" railway modelling. He found the space and the time, he designed everything, he built the layouts and ultimately he paid for everything - being the source of my pocket money!. I merely "helped". So this topic is in tribute to my wonderful Dad, David Martin.

 

The layout in the caravan consisted of a terminus station on the top level and a smaller circuit with a minor through station on the lower level. A double track partial-helix connected them. I only have 14 photos of the layout, and they appear to have been taken in two batches. They are scans that my Dad made (yes, him again!) of 35mm transparencies. They were taken by a novice photographer (me!) using a not-very-good camera and this was before the dawn of digital photography so the cost and effort of each each photo was significant and had to be thought about.

 

I'm going to show you all the photos I have. As you will see, the quality is not good! I have processed them a bit but not too too much because I want to to retain the 1970s feel.

 

Here's the first establishing photo, from "Batch 1":

 

You can see the helix on the left curving up to the terminus station.

On the right is the small through station. On the platform of that station is my pride and joy - but more of that later...

The window curtains on the right are pure 1970s(!) and outside the far end window you can see buildings on the other side of the valley where we lived: Mawgan Porth in Cornwall.

At bottom right you can just see the corner of the main control panel and the "pen" stowed in the baseboard side profile that was used to touch brass screw heads to set points with an alarming blue spark + BUZZT-CLACK noise.

 

I can't remember whether the "Cornish Mint Humbugs" tin in the centre was significant!...

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Harlequin

[Guest JiLo]

Great memories to have, thanks for sharing.

 

My father was the driving force behind my modelling, he first took me to Model Rail Scotland (or its equivalent) in 1975 and took me every year until he passed a week before the 1986 show.  He put up with my clutter all over the carpet and never once told me to clear up.  Whilst he wasnt a modeller, without him taking me to the shows when I was a nipper, Im not sure I would have been involved at such a young age, and the passion has never left me, even through my beer/music/women/cars stages.

[Harlequin]

Here's the terminus station. It never got developed further than this.

To orient yourself we are now looking south-west where the first photo was due north. the engine shed appears in both photos.

 

I remember pouring over the trackplan with Dad and setting things out on green graph paper using pencils, protractor, compasses and rulers. The most important tool of all was, of course, an eraser.

 

That difficult planning process (by today's standards) paid off because the trackplan looks pretty good. You can see 4 platform faces, one of which is a bay, a goods depot with a number of sidings, turntable and shed area. The approaching double-track has crossovers to get incoming and outgoing traffic directly where it needs to go and seems to flanked by a carriage siding on the far side and a goods reception loop on the nearside. All very neat and efficient!

 

The turntable mechanism was a very clever idea, involving a big ring of perspex under the baseboard with a bar across the middle to support the deck. Unfortunately it was not a success because the rubber wheel that should have turned it couldn't get enough purchase on the perspex...

 

The water tower and the grounded container to the right of it both cover surface mounted points motors, I think.

 

Clearly some work was still going on because tools, track joiners, point motors and clutter litter the area around the control panel. Swan Vestas matchboxes and tobacco tins hold useful bits and pieces.

 

Edited August 19, 2019 by Harlequin

[OhOh]

Although Dad and I never got as far as you seem to have done, and I've no photos to show, we did manage to create about the same amount of clutter 

 

From the thread title I was expecting to see a micro/boxfile type layout, but looks like you made good use of the space in the caravan. Have you ever been tempted to try and recreate the layout?

[Joseph_Pestell]

I don't think that Mrs P would give planning permission for such a layout location. But it's a good option with old ones available pretty cheaply.

[Harlequin]

21 hours ago, OhOh said:

Although Dad and I never got as far as you seem to have done, and I've no photos to show, we did manage to create about the same amount of clutter 

 

From the thread title I was expecting to see a micro/boxfile type layout, but looks like you made good use of the space in the caravan. Have you ever been tempted to try and recreate the layout?

Yes, we're not talking Father Ted here, it was a big caravan! About 8ft wide internally and the layout was maybe 12ft to 14ft long. The terminus buffers were in the alcove that used to house the fold-down double bed.

 

It would be difficult to recreate it now and it really did have some big flaws. There was some complex trackwork under the terminus, including storage loops, reversing loops and gradients - possibly in combination, I can't remember the exact layout. It was usually me who had to go under there and reach up through the access holes to poke stalled locos.

 

It might be interesting to draw up the plans again, though.

 

20 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

I don't think that Mrs P would give planning permission for such a layout location. But it's a good option with old ones available pretty cheaply.

Yes, these big caravans have some good points as a railway room:

• Ready to go - if you can get it on site.
• Water-tight and insulated - warm enough for a railway, anyway.
• Lots of windows and usually a skylight so lots of natural light.
• Large clear space when you have removed the built in furniture.
• You can attach stuff to the walls easily.
• Built in kitchen for tea and messy modelling tasks.

 

Edited August 20, 2019 by Harlequin

[Harlequin]

The rolling stock was a bit of a mish-mash inherited from previous layouts. Here are some of the "prize" locos:

(Click for larger images)

 

A Ks Small Prairie hauling a Triang/Hornby track cleaning car. I was never happy with the Ks Prairie but I can't remember why...

A Lima King, possibly with printed card names and numbers stuck on. Look at the size of the wheel flanges! Er, except on the centre drivers where there are none at all!

An Airfix Large Prairie with rubber traction tyres, I seem to remember.

A Hornby Hall.

 

They all look coarse and lumpy by today's standards.

 

Also on the layout were a Jinty chassis inside a Pannier tank body, an Adams 0-4-4, a Brush 47 (I think) and a 56XX, which I cobbled together somehow. There were also a couple of Airfix 0-4-0 saddle tanks made from plastic kits. I eventually installed the Brush 47's power bogie inside an old fish van so that the saddle tanks could be pushed around but since they had all plastic running parts and no proper bearings they were never a great success! I still have the motorised fish van.

 

(The old Jinty body can be seen in some of the upcoming photos, painted "Brunswick green" and with a brass steam dome... These were more innocent times!)

 

The loco we really wanted above all others was the Airfix 14XX, for its iconic GWR cuteness and for the step forward in quality it was supposed to bring. We asked in the model shop so many times for so many months that when the manager one day produced one from a hidden shelf it felt like stumbling across a mythical treasure! It will appear in some of the later photos.

 

Edited August 20, 2019 by Harlequin

[OhOh]

12 hours ago, Harlequin said:

It would be difficult to recreate it now and it really did have some big flaws. There was some complex trackwork under the terminus, including storage loops, reversing loops and gradients - possibly in combination, I can't remember the exact layout. It was usually me who had to go under there and reach up through the access holes to poke stalled locos.

 

It might be interesting to draw up the plans again, though.

Maybe it was the 1970's equivalent of sending small boys up chimneys … often was the time I had to crawl across the rafters of the loft to poke a stalled loco in the chicken-wire and plaster tunnel that we'd built not only in the most out-of-the-way place, but also way over-engineered so that it would probably have survived a nuclear attack 

 

A newly drawn plan along with your pics would be great. 

[Harlequin]

Here are the last two photos from "Batch 1". They both show the small through station on the lower level (on the right hand side of the photo in Post #1.)

(Click for larger versions)

 

You can see that the scenery was being worked on at this stage. The stonework of the retaining wall behind the station was all hand scribed and hand painted - it took days!

The polyfilla-covered hillside behind the wall lifted off and there were two hidden storage loops below.

 

The road and car park was made of roofing felt and I think it looked pretty good. But I'm not sure now that tarmacadam in the 1930s is quite right??? I painted the two lorries in what I thought were GWR colours. Not too far out!

 

Notice the puce green Colmans wagon (?) in the first photo. That always looked like an unnatural colour for a wagon to my eye!

 

The next batch of photos will show the layout in a more advanced state but their quality is even worse than this first batch...

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Harlequin

[OhOh]

That was a lot of scribing! Can you recall what medium you were using?

 

I remember doing something similar, although much smaller, using what I think was fire cement spread onto plasticard.

[Harlequin]

5 minutes ago, OhOh said:

That was a lot of scribing! Can you recall what medium you were using?

 

I remember doing something similar, although much smaller, using what I think was fire cement spread onto plasticard.

 

Yes, it was polyfilla on the rough side of hardboard. All the tunnel portals and bridges were done the same way.

 

[OhOh]

13 hours ago, Harlequin said:

 

Yes, it was polyfilla on the rough side of hardboard. All the tunnel portals and bridges were done the same way.

 

Not Cadbury's Smash then? I've just spotted the tin in the 1st pic 

[Harlequin]

8 hours ago, OhOh said:

Not Cadbury's Smash then? I've just spotted the tin in the 1st pic 

Wow! Your eyesight is better than mine. I had to spend five minutes looking for it in the photo - like a "Where's Wally" puzzle!

 

I still have that very Smash tin!

 

Some remnants of the old railway.

 

[OhOh]

The tin looks very well preserved!

 

If only my eyes WERE that good! I only saw it after having zoomed-in 

 

Some familiar looking bits and bobs there, some of them Airfix (lamps, platform barrows, crates) if I'm not mistaken.

 

Sadly all of my childhood railway items, with just a couple of exceptions, were long ago shunted up the line to nowhere. Thanks to your thread and pics, I set-off on a bit of a sentimental journey on ebay, where I purchased a Jouef/Playcraft Class 29 Diesel, the 2nd loco I ever had which was an addition to a Jouef/Playcraft Goods Train set with an 0-4-0 tank that I received at Xmas '64.

 

Looking forward to seeing more of your layout. Did it have a name?

[RobJC]

I'm loving this thread.  Reading about layouts of this type hold as much if not more interest for me than the current, highly detailed and accomplished layouts.  It's probably down to nostalgia in it's simplest form.  "I had one of those (enter locomotive, coach, wagon, building here)!"  In my case though it was just me as my Dad, although he did try, just wasn't into railways, preferring playing and watching sport with my younger brothers.  He still thinks my Triang EE Type 3 (latterly Class 37), bought as a present in 1967 and still going, is a Deltic!

[DLT]

Brilliant!  Looks like one of mine.

Cheers, Dave.

[Harlequin]

The next batch of photos are obviously taken some time later but they all have a yellow cast and were over-exposed again. I've done my best to improve them without going too far.

 

Here's the first shot from batch 2 taken from roughly the same position as the first photo in batch 1.

 

You can see that there has been a lot of scenic development and there's work going on at centre rear with a beautifully curving road in a valley.

The big cardboard church looks a bit out of place, plonked on one of the lift-off covers that would give access to the tracks below.

Matchsticks fence posts, Hydrangea flowerhead trees, polyfilla field boundary walls, yet to be scribed and painted.

 

When operating, we used to send bell codes to each other. The black box in the middle (hand made from timber and hardboard and painted gloss black by me) contains a bell with a modified solenoid hammer from a doorbell. The "Keys" beside the two control panels were lolly sticks pivoted to activate microswitches (also painted black by me for "authenticity").

<Ding!>

                                                              <Ding!>

<DIng Ding Ding - Ding?>

                                                              <Ding Ding Ding - Ding>

I'm sure we never did it "properly" but it was fun, anyway!

 

Looking at the photo more closely I remembered that the mattress from the caravan's old bed was squashed under the baseboards for the comfort of urchins sent down there to poke dead trains...

 

 

Edited August 24, 2019 by Harlequin

[OhOh]

I was looking forward to another Spot-the-Tin session 

 

Looks like you'd created a good "railway in the landscape" feel. Good idea with the Hydrangea heads, I saw a video a while back of a layout with living succulent plants as ground-cover which seemed to work quite well.

 

Your ding-dinging sounds a lot more sophisticated than our often-heard "Have you turned it on? Give it a poke" 

[Harlequin]

I'm so sorry! Perhaps I should have said, "If you don't want to know the location of the Smash tin look away now."  (Is this the beginning of a new meme?)

 

It's a funny thing, but I can't remember either of the stations ever having a name. These days that would be high up on my priority list!

 

[Marly51]

Thanks for sharing your memories, Phil! Somewhere in a box of old photos in my attic, there is one photograph of the ‘boxroom’ layout I helped my brother construct in the 1960s. Ours was not quite so ambitious as yours, because we were both young teenagers with limited pocket money. Dad helped with the timberwork, but had no interest in the modelmaking side of things!

[Harlequin]

This photo is one of the most interesting to me:

 

The scenery has really progressed at the north end of the terminus where the main line rises up from the lower level on the helix. You can see it's still rising as it leaves the tunnel mouth.

 

The amazing rockface in the cutting was created by Dad by forming and carving polyfilla on a card or board backing - the same technique used to make various other surfaces on the layout. The angled strata in the rocks look very convincing. The trees on the hillside above are less convincing...  The hydrangea flowerheads were too regular and didn't divide enough.

 

Some ballasting has been done and you can see two home-made uncoupling ramps - strips of springy transparent plastic. The crossover from down main to goods loop is activated by surface mounted point motors, one of which you can see and the other is covered by the plate layers hut in an unconventional orientation.

 

Two coaches are standing on the carriage siding. The one on the left looks like an old Hornby Collett corridor. The one to the right is very intriguing - guard/brake compartment, panelled above the waist, seven compartments (3 large, 4 small) with flush doors, possibly 70ft long? I wonder what it is and who made it?

 

Spolier alert: There are no Smash tins in this photo.

 

Edited March 21, 2021 by Harlequin

[OhOh]

Even sans Smash tin, great pics 

 

The rockface outside the tunnel was the first thing that jumped out at me, very convincing indeed.

 

The trees …. maybe there'd been a storm recently?

 

How did you get on with the uncouplers? We tried, but most times they just derailed the wagons rather than uncouple them.

[PatB]

I agree. The rock face and the hillside in general are excellent.  Even the trees aren't too bad for that pre-Woodland Scenics era. 

Edited August 24, 2019 by PatB

[BernardTPM]

On 24/08/2019 at 23:00, Harlequin said:

Two coaches are standing on the carriage siding. The one on the left looks like an old Hornby Collett corridor. The one to the right is very intriguing - guard/brake compartment, panelled above the waist, seven compartments (3 large, 4 small) with flush doors, possibly 70ft long? I wonder what it is and who made it?

 

The right hand coach is the Tri-ang or Triang-Hornby Caledonian Brake Composite in GWR colours. Although Hornby did sell them painted like that (R027) during the 1970s the painting on the model is more convincing than the R-T-R version so it might have been a Caledonian liveried one originally.

[Harlequin]

7 hours ago, BernardTPM said:

The right hand coach is the Tri-ang or Triang-Hornby Caledonian Brake Composite in GWR colours. Although Hornby did sell them painted like that (R027) during the 1970s the painting on the model is more convincing than the R-T-R version so it might have been a Caledonian liveried one originally.

Brilliant, Thanks!

Maybe I knew what it was 40 years ago but in the here and now I had no idea such strange things existed.

 

Edited August 26, 2019 by Harlequin