Dewchurch

[lmsforever]

I create my town scenes from long memories (back to the fifties)   and find that I remember how drty and dusty everything was.Vehicles must be few and far  as you say most people went by bus  so they can be deployed on bridges !!!    I have orderded a couple of new buildings from the Greenwood to relace origonals that I am not happy with.The problem is that I am not running many trains to busy building .  You mentioned the translucent film over shop windows it seemed be the item that everyone had to have or were summers brighter then.Clothes shops seemed to have them as did wool ,toy ,and food ones.I like the look you have put in around the goods yard the ambience is definitely fiftis sixties keeep up the good work.

[MrWolf]

That's what I was waffling on about. Take a good look around that coaling stage for red colours. You have to look for them, even the signal arm isn't strident red, the brickwork is very subtle so it convinces you it could be real. We only really know its a model because the real thing is long gone.

 

Your thoughts about cars and other details I have to agree with. Mostly dark colours. Although companies like Vauxhall had been using metallic paint since the 1940s and Rootes brought out their "Gay look for 1955" (not sure how well that would sell now) for every Kingfisher blue or Lilac haze Cresta there were probably a dozen in Storm grey or Laurel green. Putting one or two on a layout that do stand out draws the eyes to the surrounding, so that needs to be good.

I know that there is something of an obsession with cameos nowadays, but they too need to be subtle and carefully selected. Some layouts look too "busy" . For every working fairground or burning building I have seen, I would prefer to see someone just leaning a bicycle against a wall or looking for his car keys. Others, like you say, might have prototypical operation, working signals, sound, bell codes and stock to die for. But then the station car park is awash with Ferarris, Corvettes and other shiny exotica.

[Gopher]

6 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

That's what I was waffling on about. Take a good look around that coaling stage for red colours. You have to look for them, even the signal arm isn't strident red, the brickwork is very subtle so it convinces you it could be real. We only really know its a model because the real thing is long gone.

 

Your thoughts about cars and other details I have to agree with. Mostly dark colours. Although companies like Vauxhall had been using metallic paint since the 1940s and Rootes brought out their "Gay look for 1955" (not sure how well that would sell now) for every Kingfisher blue or Lilac haze Cresta there were probably a dozen in Storm grey or Laurel green. Putting one or two on a layout that do stand out draws the eyes to the surrounding, so that needs to be good.

I know that there is something of an obsession with cameos nowadays, but they too need to be subtle and carefully selected. Some layouts look too "busy" . For every working fairground or burning building I have seen, I would prefer to see someone just leaning a bicycle against a wall or looking for his car keys. Others, like you say, might have prototypical operation, working signals, sound, bell codes and stock to die for. But then the station car park is awash with Ferarris, Corvettes and other shiny exotica.

Thanks Mr Wolf, and totally agree.  I am chuffed that someone with your clear artistic talent and eye for detail is complimentary about my own efforts on Dewchurch.   

[MrWolf]

Creations such as yours tend to inspire my imagined backgrounds for paintings just as much as period photography, they aren't black and white for a start. How often is there a discussion over an old photograph as to what colour something might have been? Is the photo over or under exposed? Is that works grey or improved engine green? I think I owe people like yourself a thankyou for creating a window into a plausible past.

[The Johnster]

Cars were a serious purchase, and therefore generally had serious colours; insurance companies charged higher premiums for vivid primary colours, especially red, and had the accident figures to back it up!  Sober colours meant sober-by-nature drivers who wanted 30,000 miles out of a set of tyres.  Clothes in general were dull, except perhaps women's summer dresses and frocks, and nearly everybody wore some sort of hat, cap, scarf, shawl or head covering because 'you'll catch your death of cold' otherwise.  Short trousers were compulsory for boys up to the age of 16, and sock for girls to that age as well; shorts on men other than tropical uniforms for military and merchant navy officers were strictly beachwear.

 

If you had a car, you had a tartan woollen blanket that lived on the back seat.  This was a multipurpose device; even those few cars that had heaters only heated the front seats, and it was used for draping over passengers' knees to keep them warm, picnics, drying the kids off if they got wet unexpectedly.  

 

Working class people were immediately identifiable by their clothes; work clothes or demob suit for men, apron and scarf for women (think Nora Batty).  They were mostly short and stooped from physical labour, often abysmal living conditions (so bad that people actually liked prefabs), though that was being addressed, and poor diet; ricketts was still a problem in the 50s.  Until the advent of 3D printing, Monty's, and Modelu, they have never been represented by the fit, imposing, tall and attractive specimens by the model trade, and don't forget a good few railway staff looked like this as well!  Nearly all working class women of middle age or over tended to fat, and so did some middle class ones; there was no trace of the modern obsession with obesity and diet and you had to eat up all your potatoes because they were good for you; all food bar sweets and sugar was good for you, some was good and more was better.

 

Women carried shopping in shopping bags, not plastic carriers, with big handles; I don't remember trolleys until the mid 60s.  You could also use wicker picnic baskets.  Infants were in the big type prams (Triang Pedigree) on leaf springs, or all-metal pushchairs.  Buggies were a late 60s thing.  There was, until about 1962, very little plastic other than bakelite about, and 1962 was the year transistor radios appeared.  My father brought a small one back from a visit to the States in '59 and it was regarded as a miracle; people came from blocks away just to look upon it's wonder...

 

TV ariels on working class housing were rare until the very late 60s or early 70s, and not common at all outside the major conurbations until the Coronation in '53, a watershed for tv ownership.  Everyone had a radio from the 20s on, even if it was only a crystal set, and you could see wire ariels in gardens or hanging out of front windows to lamp posts.  Telephones did not penetrate the middle classes until the late 50s or early 60s, when high demand led to the infamous 'party lines', still a curse in the 80s.  Distribution poles were a part of the scene from as long as I can recall, which is the mid to late 50s.  The railway had it's own internal system of course and this is rarely modelled accurately.  But there were frequent public phone boxes, and even in the country you were never far away from a phone, something which probably hindered marketing of new home phones.  It is no coincidence that the 80s saw the beginning of BT's drive to reduce the number of boxes, at the same time as they began to aggressively market the 'trimphone' and others.  

 

I hated the trimphone; too light and had to be held down while you dialled, and that awful squeaky 'bell'.  If you had a phone at home, you only had one of course and it lived in the hallway, on a special telephone table with an integral seat, and perhaps an aspidistra...  

 

Everything, whatever colour, was monochrome until the Beatles invented colour with the Abbey Road album in 1967.  Seriously, colours in those days were mostly faded and dull, because a) dull colours were all that was available for many years following the war, b) this was the zeitgeist of the day, colours were to be manly and sober, c) a combination of brick dust from the bombings and atmospheric pollution meant that most of the outside world, especially in urban areas, was pretty dirty and run down.  Streets were littered as cigarettes, newspapers, sweet wrappers and the like were usually just chucked rather than binned; those few who 'knew' about the environment were dismissed as nutters if they said anything, and nobody else cared.  

 

If the 'good old days' sound a bit gloomy, there's a reason for that; they were, especially between the end of the war and about 1955.  Look at the posters; nobody dared any more than pastel shades, and this was reflected in culture and the arts.  The unicycling lion is a classic, a fine piece of 1930s art deco 20 years too late, but absolutely appropriate for the period leading up to the National Festival in 1951,  Art deco remained the default style until the 60s, by which time it was well past it's sell by.  We were losing the Empire, and the popularity of an idealised prewar world, ignoring it's darker sides and economic disaster, was attractive, but it held things back for too long.  

 

1950s British society was not comfortable with itself; it was congenitally racist, sexist, homphobic, militaristic, even more class obsessed than we are, psychologically and sexually repressed and mostly depressed, and the physical appearance of that world reflected this.  It is not to blame for this, the previous generations and the Empire had made it inevitable, but can be blamed for not doing more to relieve itself of the burdens; I am rather proud to be a member of the generation that set some of this in eventual motion!  

[MrWolf]

I suppose that it all depends upon where you were born, when you were born and how well off your family were. My father was born in the front room of a terraced house in the midlands during an air raid. He didn't have much growing up, never saw the sea until 1950. He had bicycles built out of bits off the tip until he got a paper round and other odd jobs to find the then massive sum of £27 for a Claude Butler racing bike. He passed the 11+ and cycled 8 miles each way to the grammar school in the next town. When he left school he got an apprenticeship as an engineering toolmaker. The five year stint meant that his national service was deferred and by 1961, no longer required. He had a string of motorcycles from 1957 onwards because passing your test was cheap and simple. In 1959 he bought a five year old Norton Dominator motorcycle because hire purchase was easy and insurance was cheap. He got sick of the job he was doing and a friend of his said that a bigger firm was hiring, so he rode over in his lunch hour, knocked on the door and got the job.

Now he was earning £10 a week he could afford to get married and buy a house, which shocked my grandmother. By 1964, he had passed his driving test and bought a 1946 Morris but didn't have to get rid of the Norton to do it.

 

Fast forward a decade or two and the country was going down the pan. I was brought up with power cuts, the three days week, strike after strike and rubbish piling up everywhere. There were riots, race riots, looting drugs and all the associated crime, vandalism and fly tipping. The motorcycle industry was dead, the hosiery industry was dying so nobody wanted new machines and the firm my dad did his apprenticeship with went to the wall along with countless others. The old machinery was crated up and sent to the third world. The railways were on their knees as was the car and bicycle industry as cheaper imports were allowed to flood in in the 70s. There was an open resentment against immigrants, even (often especially) amongst those who had come from the old empire in previous decades. I remember picking up a friend from his work and hearing that common threat - You'll work Saturday morning or I'll get a P*** to do it for half the money, there's three million other people would do your job sonny!

No spare time jobs for us, unless your dad owned the grocers shop or whatever and that paper round wasn't worth a light at 25p a day. When you left school, you had three options unless you were really lucky, go to college, join the forces or go on a youth training scheme shovelling s*** for £20 a week until they sacked you for next years school leavers. My college friends didn't laugh at me when I got a menial Saturday job in a breakers yard.£15 and any parts I needed. We had been constantly told get a degree and you'll walk into any job. There were no jobs at degree level, unless your old man played golf with the right people.

Myself and a lot of other teenagers didn't see much of a future, we looked at what had gone before and started driving around in old cars, listening to old music or new variants of. We rejected the 80s greed is good culture, we wanted no part in the beginning of the end. Now here we are three generations into dole culture, aimless, selfish, proud to be ignorant and talentless. Something has got to give.

If the fifties were bad, they certainly weren't great, the 70s and 80s were bloody awful if you were a working class kid in the West midlands.

[Gopher]

Dewchurch goods shed at dusk.  Not much going on in the yard.  

[MrWolf]

That's a great bit of subdued lighting. It's something that I have always fancied putting into my models but chickened out for fear of ending up with Blackpool illuminations rather than hinting that something is still going on after dark.

[Gopher]

15 hours ago, MrWolf said:

I suppose that it all depends upon where you were born, when you were born and how well off your family were. My father was born in the front room of a terraced house in the midlands during an air raid. He didn't have much growing up, never saw the sea until 1950. He had bicycles built out of bits off the tip until he got a paper round and other odd jobs to find the then massive sum of £27 for a Claude Butler racing bike. He passed the 11+ and cycled 8 miles each way to the grammar school in the next town. When he left school he got an apprenticeship as an engineering toolmaker. The five year stint meant that his national service was deferred and by 1961, no longer required. He had a string of motorcycles from 1957 onwards because passing your test was cheap and simple. In 1959 he bought a five year old Norton Dominator motorcycle because hire purchase was easy and insurance was cheap. He got sick of the job he was doing and a friend of his said that a bigger firm was hiring, so he rode over in his lunch hour, knocked on the door and got the job.

Now he was earning £10 a week he could afford to get married and buy a house, which shocked my grandmother. By 1964, he had passed his driving test and bought a 1946 Morris but didn't have to get rid of the Norton to do it.

 

Fast forward a decade or two and the country was going down the pan. I was brought up with power cuts, the three days week, strike after strike and rubbish piling up everywhere. There were riots, race riots, looting drugs and all the associated crime, vandalism and fly tipping. The motorcycle industry was dead, the hosiery industry was dying so nobody wanted new machines and the firm my dad did his apprenticeship with went to the wall along with countless others. The old machinery was crated up and sent to the third world. The railways were on their knees as was the car and bicycle industry as cheaper imports were allowed to flood in in the 70s. There was an open resentment against immigrants, even (often especially) amongst those who had come from the old empire in previous decades. I remember picking up a friend from his work and hearing that common threat - You'll work Saturday morning or I'll get a P*** to do it for half the money, there's three million other people would do your job sonny!

No spare time jobs for us, unless your dad owned the grocers shop or whatever and that paper round wasn't worth a light at 25p a day. When you left school, you had three options unless you were really lucky, go to college, join the forces or go on a youth training scheme shovelling s*** for £20 a week until they sacked you for next years school leavers. My college friends didn't laugh at me when I got a menial Saturday job in a breakers yard.£15 and any parts I needed. We had been constantly told get a degree and you'll walk into any job. There were no jobs at degree level, unless your old man played golf with the right people.

Myself and a lot of other teenagers didn't see much of a future, we looked at what had gone before and started driving around in old cars, listening to old music or new variants of. We rejected the 80s greed is good culture, we wanted no part in the beginning of the end. Now here we are three generations into dole culture, aimless, selfish, proud to be ignorant and talentless. Something has got to give.

If the fifties were bad, they certainly weren't great, the 70s and 80s were bloody awful if you were a working class kid in the West midlands.

The past is a foreign land (or something like that).  I have mixed memories of the late 60s and 70s, and my school years.  I remember frustration, quite harsh discipline (by today's standards), violence (skin heads), not having a clue what I was good (or bad) at, or wanted to do by way of a job (but knowing that my father would never let me just doss around).  Careers advice in school did not help, and was non existent.   Periods of chaos in the country (financial,  social and political).   I was a working class kid.  My parents were skint, and both had to work to keep the lights on, and food on the table.  (The lights did seem to go out quite often ).   We seemed more resilient, and expected less, (maybe I am mistaken, and my memory is playing tricks.) 

 

I was certainly brought up with the "you broke it, you fix it" mantra, and the importance of taking responsibility for your life, actions and future.   Both my parents had a really tough upbringing in the 1920s and 1930s - so compared to theirs mine was a doddle.            

 

I think as a society we have made progress since then on some fronts,  but seem to have gone rapidly backwards in other areas e.g.  more ignorance (almost a celebration of being ignorant), the celebrity culture of I want to be famous even though I am totally thick and talentless (but I take a nice selfie), the "its all about me" on some parts of social media.  Our material wealth, has increased dramatically (so has our individual debt to pay for it). 

 

Quite liked parts of the 80s (or at least my little bit of it).   We seem doomed to repeat some of the mistakes of the past (which is a bit worrying when you think there are so many more new mistakes we can make)             

[Gopher]

4 hours ago, MrWolf said:

That's a great bit of subdued lighting. It's something that I have always fancied putting into my models but chickened out for fear of ending up with Blackpool illuminations rather than hinting that something is still going on after dark.

Thanks.  I retro fitted lighting to parts of the layout as an after thought.  So some buildings (if i have replaced them) are lit, as are some of the newer street scenes.  The main station, and platforms are unlighted (Difficult job retro fit lighting here).  My under board wiring is a mess to be honest as I keep adding lights or signals to the layout.   I have an ample supply of yellow and blue wire which I have used for just about everything which needs an electrical feed.  At least if there is an electrical fault I can be certain it will definitely be in the yellow or blue wire somewhere in the spaghetti under the layout. 

 

The goods shed lighting is operated by my old 12v dc controller, and I used a couple of amber (I think led) lights.  I dial the voltage down on the controller to give a subdued effect.    

[MrWolf]

I have seen people use green lights for gas and amber for oil / early incandescent lamps with some kind of dimmer circuit /rheostat it's simple and effective. As these things in real life simple, why would we want to try and replicate them with a complex arrangement? I've seen a number of model goods yards and locomotive sheds lit up like they were holding the FA cup final. The real things were dingy with a lot of shadows. It's a lot more atmospheric too says my inner film noir fan.

[Gopher]

3 hours ago, MrWolf said:

I have seen people use green lights for gas and amber for oil / early incandescent lamps with some kind of dimmer circuit /rheostat it's simple and effective. As these things in real life simple, why would we want to try and replicate them with a complex arrangement? I've seen a number of model goods yards and locomotive sheds lit up like they were holding the FA cup final. The real things were dingy with a lot of shadows. It's a lot more atmospheric too says my inner film noir fan.

Yes some clever solutions out there to try and replicate lighting.   I am always in favour of simplicity, especially if I have to install it.  I agree  - my memories of the 60s is actually how poor some of the lighting was.    Our local station had old electric lamps on the approach road (possibly converted from gas), but the things must have had a 40w bulbs as the lighting was poor unless you stood right underneath.    Street lights were not much better even the orange ones    

[Gopher]

Another view of the little grey Fergie and Massey Harris dung spreader.  Both white metal kits.  Talking of which I have just had another rush of blood to the head and purchased a Langley white metal Massey Ferguson 735 combine harvester to possibly replace the larger Oxford model shown earlier in this thread.  I say possibly because I hate making white metal kits and this one has loads of little detail.  I'll add it to my to do list, and get my lexicon of swear words ready.      

[MrWolf]

I'm sure you will make a fine job of the combine. Just remember that it's not impatient, frustrated swearing. It's "Task appropriate profanity". You realise that if you have a combine you will also need an old wooden threshing machine rotting away behind the barn?

[MrWolf]

PS. I can only apologise for pointing out the prototypical issues with the Oxford combine!

[Gopher]

13 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

PS. I can only apologise for pointing out the prototypical issues with the Oxford combine!

Absolutely no need to apologise, I was never totally happy with the size of the cutting table on the Oxford combine, let alone the fixed position of the grain elevator chute.   I think the driver would probably be leaving a trail of damage behind him.   Plus there is more satisfaction in making/painting/weathering a vehicle kit rather than just  weathering a ready made die-cast model.    

 

17 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

I'm sure you will make a fine job of the combine. Just remember that it's not impatient, frustrated swearing. It's "Task appropriate profanity". You realise that if you have a combine you will also need an old wooden threshing machine rotting away behind the barn?

Thanks -  I suspect I will have to take regular breaks and count to 10, to avoid chucking the thing in the bin.  Good point about derelict farm machinery.  I can remember seeing an old grey Fergie tractor rotting in a hedge in the 1990s, until someone rescued it and restored it.    Most farms seemed to have old horse drawn, or early steam driven machinery quietly rotting away somewhere.  

[MrWolf]

I remember that sort of thing too. We tend to forget that until the 1980s when most of the small farms were turned into Des. Res, most had ramshackle buildings, muddy yards and at least one scrap heap. They never threw anything away as it might come in useful, plus there was neither the time or incentive to do so. Some farmers also had a sideline as agricultural or motor mechanics and accumulated mountains of rusting relics.

[Gopher]

4 hours ago, MrWolf said:

I remember that sort of thing too. We tend to forget that until the 1980s when most of the small farms were turned into Des. Res, most had ramshackle buildings, muddy yards and at least one scrap heap. They never threw anything away as it might come in useful, plus there was neither the time or incentive to do so. Some farmers also had a sideline as agricultural or motor mechanics and accumulated mountains of rusting relics.

Very true.  Funny to think that a small farm nowadays is probably 500 acres as opposed to 50 acres 60 years ago.  I find it quite sad that so many old farm buildings are either no longer used/derelict, or converted to Des. Res.   I guess most of them are far too small for modern industrial farming.  Also sad when hedgerows are removed to increase field size to accommodate the huge machinery in use nowadays.   

[MrWolf]

In most cases, it's progress. Even the big Victorian industrial farm buildings are no longer relevant or big enough, hence the proliferation of giant portal frame buildings seem nowadays. The mad thing about the size of modern machinery is that the roads in rural areas can't handle it, just like your problem with the combine. Also it actually pays for farmers to keep upgrading their equipment, through the common agricultural policy. Quite how things will be when / if actually leave the EU is anybody's guess. (Don't even go there!) On the upside, the realisation that we could well turn our arable land into a dustbowl has led to the reinstatement of hedges and headlands in fields, bringing back wildlife and natural predators of crop pests. Farmers are also torn between making a good few quid selling off old property and contributing to the gentrification of rural communities to the point where their offsprings and employees cannot afford to live there.

At least when we build a model of a railway at a certain point in history, we get to decide if time stands still as well as how the future turns out.

[Gopher]

12 hours ago, MrWolf said:

In most cases, it's progress. Even the big Victorian industrial farm buildings are no longer relevant or big enough, hence the proliferation of giant portal frame buildings seem nowadays. The mad thing about the size of modern machinery is that the roads in rural areas can't handle it, just like your problem with the combine. Also it actually pays for farmers to keep upgrading their equipment, through the common agricultural policy. Quite how things will be when / if actually leave the EU is anybody's guess. (Don't even go there!) On the upside, the realisation that we could well turn our arable land into a dustbowl has led to the reinstatement of hedges and headlands in fields, bringing back wildlife and natural predators of crop pests. Farmers are also torn between making a good few quid selling off old property and contributing to the gentrification of rural communities to the point where their offsprings and employees cannot afford to live there.

At least when we build a model of a railway at a certain point in history, we get to decide if time stands still as well as how the future turns out.

Yes I agree.  Narrow lanes where I live, far too small for modern kit.  

 

I am sure farming productivity and food standards have improved dramatically.  It is a tough life, especially if you farm livestock.  Last winters wet weather was soul destroying for so many farmers.      

 

I wish I had room on the layout for a bigger farm and fields.     

[Gopher]

Couple of views of Class 101 DMU standing at Platform 3 Dewchurch. 

[Gopher]

The canal bridge.  Second view with Dapol junction signal in fore-ground

[Gopher]

Another shot of the 7F on shed,  and at night.  

 

Not sure how it ended up in Dewchurch (maybe on its way for an overhaul), but always had a soft spot for these locos having watched Ivo Peter's S&D videos many times.

[Gopher]

Night falls at Harewood Halt, and the signalman waits for the end of his shift. 

[Gopher]

Now where is that Poacher