Castle Aching

[Annie]

It wasn't for me.  I remember it as an awkward time of pain and upset and dreams being shattered for a variety of reasons which are not appropriate to mention here.

[Andy Hayter]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

weird as it may seem to think about a museum area devoted to the 1950s, if they don’t  start collecting sharpish then they will struggle to collate a meaningful picture for that decade. 

 

 

It is also quite sobering to think that the 50s were closer to pre-grouping than to today (by a stretch).

[Northroader]

1951. Before then, getting over wartime, everything rundown, dirty, food shortages, etc., the Festival of Britain introduced bright cheerful colourful design work. First outing to London, BR had been in being three years, and there was the first standard loco, a Brittania- wow! Maybe things were looking up??

[Nearholmer]

"Hopefully I'll be dead before there's a museum of the 1970s"

 

Thankfully, your hopes were not fulfilled.

 

Leeds City Museum already has a gallery dedicated to that disliked decade.

 

PS: Maybe that period is so much disliked for precisely the reason that I nominated it, because it was so much a time of change. My theory is(!), that between the afternoon of 30 July 1966 (yes, I know that the date of the verdict in the Lady Chatterley's Lover trial is often used, but I have my logic)  and the morning of 4 May 1979, a particular England passed away, and a new version of England arrived, and that a similar process is underway right now, having started on the morning of 23 June 2016.

Edited May 27, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Caley Jim]

35 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

...... a particular England passed away, and a new version of England arrived, ......

Excuse my mentioning it, but other parts of the United Kingdom were similarly affected, namely north of Hadrian's wall and west of Offa's dyke.

 

Jim

[webbcompound]

Of course a museum of the 50s would not have tower blocks and concrete since most of that took place in the 60s. Hence the reason we need a museum of it as people are clearly forgetting it. Much of the 50s was simply an extension of the 40s without war. We still had bomb sites, and rationing, (and the NHS and free orange juice and rose-hip syrop in medicine bottles for children) but there was a little bit of brightness on the horizon, which developed into the "white heat" of the 60s technological revolution.

 

The main Beamish town and colliery village dateline was c1913, the year of peak production in the North East coalfields, so unless there has been a massive turnover of exhibits it probably still is.

[Nearholmer]

Jim,

 

I typed Britain at first, then changed what I'd typed.

 

Why? Because the dates I specified relate to particularly English phenomena (although Mrs Thatcher was PM of the UK, I certainly regard her as "an English phenomenon"), and it struck me that one would need to choose different precise dates for the other nations of the UK, and I'm not confident enough to nominate them.

 

Of course, if we go back to my original "five years either side of 1970" formulation, it is defensible for the whole UK.

 

Kevin

[Hroth]

I was basing my vision of a 1950s "Britannia Resurgens" on the issue of Picture Post that was published in January 1941, discussing post war social, political and environmental redevelopment.  Towns were to be completely modernised, sweeping away all the inefficient detritus of the past.  If payment for the war, and the waste of money on international posturing hadn't got in the way, the early/mid 60s concrete townscape would have appeared much earlier.

 

Consider Stevenage, the first of the so-called "New Towns", designated as such in August 1946. Its pedestrianised town centre was opened in 1959.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenage

 

Having looked up the Beamish proposals, it all looks a bit twee, more like an Daily Mail Ideal Home model village...

 

Edited May 27, 2019 by Hroth

[Edwardian]

35 minutes ago, webbcompound said:

The main Beamish town and colliery village dateline was c1913, the year of peak production in the North East coalfields, so unless there has been a massive turnover of exhibits it probably still is.

 

It is forever 1913; the portraits are of George V and Queen Mary in the Pit Village school, and the town features a showroom with, IIRC, a 1912 Armstrong Whitworth and a 1913 Renault.

 

 

 

Edited May 27, 2019 by Edwardian
Pictures!

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

PS: Maybe that period is so much disliked for precisely the reason that I nominated it, because it was so much a time of change. My theory is(!), that between the afternoon of 30 July 1966 (yes, I know that the date of the verdict in the Lady Chatterley's Lover trial is often used, but I have my logic)  and the morning of 4 May 1979, a particular England passed away, and a new version of England arrived, and that a similar process is underway right now, having started on the morning of 23 June 2016.

 

There's a lot in that. In was born in 1964; the ordinary furniture of my life for the first five decades has been consistent and "modern" - Warboys road signs, concrete curb stones, mass in English - things that were in fact very new but seemed to have been always there; it's only as I've entered into my sixth decade that the world around me has entered upon seriously disruptive change. But that's a very English view. If I were a Pole, my turning-points would be very different.

Edited May 27, 2019 by Compound2632

[Hroth]

9 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

It is forever 1913; the portraits are of George V and Queen Mary in the Pit Village school, and the town features a showroom with, IIRC, a 1912 Armstrong Whitworth and a 1913 Renault.

 

 

 

 

Traditional schoolrooms didn't change much between 1913 and the early/mid 60s.  Our local primary school still had those cast iron desks with the tip up seats to get in and out of them!  Of course, the inkwells had long gone, just leaving the holes.  The desktops are remarkably clean, by the 60s, there would have been extensive railway systems carved into the wood.... 

 

I bet Mr Toad had an Armstrong Whitworth!

(The bell of its horn appears to be consuming the bicycle handlebar )

 

[Compound2632]

7 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

I bet Mr Toad had an Armstrong Whitworth!

 

 

He certainly had a much wider choice of marques - one gets the impression that any firm building bicycles could turn its hand to motor cars. My favourite has to be Lea-Francis of Coventry; I'd never heard of them until I met one in a car park at Watersmeet, above Lynton a few years ago. There's the off-chance that, as with the famous Worcestershire sauce, there might be a family connection... 

 

I can't remember the marque but I do recall from a visit to the (old) Glasgow Museum of Transport that when one of the big Glasgow engineering firms set up to build motor cars, the factory employed only women and was managed by one of the proprietors' daughters. Far from being a breakthrough for women in the workplace, this illustrated the contempt in which such light engineering was held by the locomotive and ship-builders.

[drmditch]

14 hours ago, Annie said:

No-one wants to remember the 1970s.  It is a decade that needs to be removed from recorded history.

Look, there were some good bits, even if I was in my uncomfortable twenties. (I don't regard humans as properly 'grown-up' until they have reached the age of 26 or so.)

There was the long hot summer (in the UK) of 76, in which I spent a lot of time on the ECML, or driving on the A1 and/or diversionary routes.

Points to remember include:-

The sleeping car attendant who attempted to sing all night (or so it seemed).

Crossing the Humber on the paddle-wheeled ferry on a magical summer evening.

Setting up home in the NE.

Starting my first 'proper' railway.

 

And then there was the story of 'The (up) Flying Scotsman and the Soup'...…….

 

But that would take too long to write out this morning and on this tablet. 

[brack]

When Beamish started in the mid 70s, the 1913 era was 60 years in the past. A similar time difference to that between the proposed 50s town and the present.

Whilst there is an element of twee about the proposal, in the space available they'd struggle to fit more than one of everything - no big estates. It's rather like a layout in real life - the town consists of a row of photogenic shops and half a dozen terraced houses to hide where the railway goes after leaving the terminus station.

I assume the idea is that my parents can take my kids to the 50s town and remember the things they grew up with (as would have been possible with earlier generations 30 years ago).

[corneliuslundie]

It is a long time ago that I visited Amberley Chalk Museum but even then there was an exhibition of 1950s everyday objects such as radios. They were already history. A younger - ie mid-50s - friend recently asked me how a teleprinter worked. For the first decade at work I used a manual typewriter; they are both long gone.

The architects of the 1950s produced such things as the Clasp building system for schools which are still in use today - well lit, spacious and easy to build when new schools were needed, as many were. To my mind things began to go wrong a bit later. Flat roofs which leaked,  giving over town centres to the motor vehicle, tower blocks etc.

So better a museum of the 1950s than one of the 60s or 70s.

It is noticeable that many of the 1960s an 1970s station rebuildings by BR have been or are being replaced which the older ones live on - such as Newtown dating from 100 years before that.

Jonathan

[Compound2632]

32 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

It is noticeable that many of the 1960s an 1970s station rebuildings by BR have been or are being replaced which the older ones live on - such as Newtown dating from 100 years before that.

 

 

Cecil Torr, Small Talk at Wreyland*, has a comment that there was just as much jerry-building in the past as nowadays (c. 1920 in his case); it's only the better-built buildings that survive. 

 

*Recommended reading for CA parishioners.

[Nearholmer]

Jerry Building - when I was IC station engineering for London Underground for several years, I saw some quite incredible bits of historical Jerry-building, which cost millions of pounds to put right in order to allow structures to remain in use. Earls Court station 1920/30s work really sticks in my mind as very questionable indeed.

 

Museums - is the purpose to celebrate eras  that made people feel good (in retrospect), or chronicle important ‘hinge points’? The voluntary heritage trade does the former to death, so I’d say that the publicly-funded services need to be a bit ‘worthy’, and pick on the eras of change too.

[TheQ]

2 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

Traditional schoolrooms didn't change much between 1913 and the early/mid 60s.  Our local primary school still had those cast iron desks with the tip up seats to get in and out of them!  Of course, the inkwells had long gone, just leaving the holes.  The desktops are remarkably clean, by the 60s, there would have been extensive railway systems carved into the wood.... 

 

I bet Mr Toad had an Armstrong Whitworth!

(The bell of its horn appears to be consuming the bicycle handlebar )

 

Those Tip up seats and cast iron frames I was using up to 1975 (Inverness high school), and I can remember being Ink monitor in 1969 Ludgershall primary school (everyone took a turn for week at a time).

[Compound2632]

7 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Museums - is the purpose to celebrate eras  that made people feel good (in retrospect), or chronicle important ‘hinge points’? The voluntary heritage trade does the former to death, so I’d say that the publicly-funded services need to be a bit ‘worthy’, and pick on the eras of change too.

 

Where do or should model railways exhibited to the public sit? Or are they simply to be regarded as exercises in craftsmanship in themselves, without any obligation to represent historical reality?

[Edwardian]

Musings have been prompted .... 

 

Why model railway exhibitions?

 

Practically speaking, to raise funds.  Also to have a bit of a social, promote the hobby, trade etc.

 

The exhibits come from clubs and individuals who are saying "look what I/we built", meaning something that interests them, or which a club can build a consensus around.  

 

What a model railway exhibition isn't is a history lesson in railways through the ages.  I often think that they'd be a lot more varied and a lot more interesting if they were, but they're not, and that's not their purpose.  

 

They get by, therefore, with what seems at present to be 70% BR '50s and '60s, 20% Blue Diseasel and 10% Everything Else, because (a) the general public don't really care what it is, and, (b) a majority of enthusiasts actually prefer that sort of thing. 

 

I may be being unfair here, but perception is everything and my perception is that, to the extent that the Transition Period has loosened its stranglehold on the hobby in recent years, it's been to admit more '70s and '80s stuff.  

 

I like layouts that open one's eyes to the Seldom Seen. That might inspire more people. That's not really what the hobby is all about, however. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

My personal take on that one is that it depends upon context.

 

A model railway exhibited as part of an ‘inform, educate, and entertain’ facility, which means most publicly funded museums, ought to be ‘right’.

 

One wouldn’t tolerate a dodgy representation of, say, an iron-age village in a museum (orcs, Tudor knights, breeze-block huts etc).

 

Hobby stuff? Liberty Hall; it’s pure hobby. But, out of politeness, it might be a good idea not to claim veracity, unless it is present.

[RedGemAlchemist]

16 hours ago, Annie said:

No-one wants to remember the 1970s.

Except for it being a golden age for rock music. 

[Nearholmer]

My personal take on that one is that it depends upon context.

 

A model railway exhibited as part of an ‘inform, educate, and entertain’ facility, which means most publicly funded museums, ought to be ‘right’.

 

One wouldn’t tolerate a dodgy representation of, say, an iron-age village in a museum (orcs, Tudor knights, breeze-block huts etc).

 

Hobby stuff? Liberty Hall; it’s pure hobby. But, out of politeness, it might be a good idea not to claim veracity, unless it is present.

[Edwardian]

4 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

My personal take on that one is that it depends upon context.

 

A model railway exhibited as part of an ‘inform, educate, and entertain’ facility, which means most publicly funded museums, ought to be ‘right’.

 

One wouldn’t tolerate a dodgy representation of, say, an iron-age village in a museum (orcs, Tudor knights, breeze-block huts etc).

 

Hobby stuff? Liberty Hall; it’s pure hobby. But, out of politeness, it might be a good idea not to claim veracity, unless it is present.

 

I think that's fair.

 

If it is not a museum display, it's not necessary to be be strictly historical, however, it's still all about plausibility - willing suspension of disbelief.

 

That means that, if based on a prototype, the layout will be more successful at convincing the informed viewer if it is prototypical. 

 

If CA prompts willing suspension of disbelief, it's because what you will see will be appropriate to the setting and the period. More or less.  With a little whimsey, playfully to push the limits of willing suspension. You could easily have a convincing model of a freelance world (we'll see!) and an unconvincing representation of a prototype. 

 

Similarly, a model with a sci-fi  or steampunk setting, or something inspired by the works of Pratchett, Tolkien or Lovecraft, can be entirely convincing within the logic of its world, if well-modelled and appropriate and internally consistent choices are made. 

 

Whereas, every time I see a GWR 1930s layout with the usual solecisms - top feeds/out side steam pipes/fire iron tunnels etc when there shouldn't be, a GW 'bus, largely or only GW wagons in evidence etc, etc - some of the magic is lost.  The more obscure a subject, the more you can get away with.  Mind you, a year or so ago a wonderful 7mil layout of a GE station was presented by Model Rail as meticulously researched and Victorian.  Wagon liveries on display started from 1903 for a start. Was this the builder or simply the magazine thinking it was Victorian?  A great layout, but it does not take much to spoil the illusion if a claim is made that cannot be sustained.

 

A lesson for us all there.

 

   

 

[Regularity]

16 hours ago, Annie said:

No-one wants to remember the 1970s.  It is a decade that needs to be removed from recorded history.

I do.

 

I went from 5 to 15 during that period.

My life was simple and unencumbered (until the very end) with things like looming exams, adolescence, “relationships” etc.

My life revolved around model railways, Lego, Meccano, my push bike and usually all with my best friend who had similar interests.

During that era, we learned to replace moulded handrails with wire, fit 3-link and screw couplings, paint, letter and weather stock, put better (concentric, metal, slightly finer flanges) wheels onto stock, make buildings and bridges, make baseboards and scenery and to build pcb based track - my friend even built himself a transistorised controller with inertia simulation. A lot of this was due to a lack of money, limited RTR, and frequently that had a single moulding for the body. Buildings used discarded display mount-board, when schoolwork displays came down, clad in Prototype Models brick paper, with bow-pen drawn window frames and individual paper tiles, and whatever we could lay our hands on for everything else.

 

Nowadays, what pre-teen/early teen modeller has no choice other than to do all that? More income, better models. You can even buy baseboards as kits, and not have to learn how (not) to cut wood.

 

That said, much as I relate to the railway scene of the era - more variety of types than later, declining remnants of the old ways of working - I don’t want to see more than a couple such layouts at an exhibition (even DEMU!) and most that I have scene are sadly lacking in verisimilitude. Not unknown generally, but layouts like Portchullin and Mostyn aside (there are others) anachronisms seem to be the order of the day.