Old film from Pendon on British Pathe

[norseman]

Following the article on Pendon in Railway Modeller this month I searched a bit on the internet and found this:1958 film from Pendon Museum Wonder if todays girls would have parted with their locks as easily as the girl in the movie?

[Allegheny1600]

Following the article on Pendon in Railway Modeller this month I searched a bit on the internet and found this:1958 film from Pendon Museum Wonder if todays girls would have parted with their locks as easily as the girl in the movie?

 

 

Hi there,

Fascinating film! I've seen photos of Mr Roye England before but never of Mr Guy Williams! Magnificent work they did, hard to believe that was 52 years ago (until you hear the music, that is!). I'm hoping to finally make the pilgrimage down there this year.

Cheers,

John E.

[Tim Chambers]

Very many thanks Norseman for a cracking piece of film-excellent start to the day!

[Pacific231G]

Very many thanks Norseman for a cracking piece of film-excellent start to the day!

 

It's great that some of these films that had been gathering dust for decades are starting to re-emerge and there's quite a lot on the earlier years of the hobby . I've just been looking at a British Pathe report on Bekonscott from 1950 when the council had apparently ordered the model village to be demolished within ten years as the number of visitors was causing parking problems and complaints from the neghbours.

[David_S.]

Well found, there are stills from the Pendon film in the book 'In Search of a Dream', a biography of Roye England available from the bookshop at Pendon (pages 110-113). Incidentally, the Pathe description is wrong, the girl is Wynne Morris, not Roye's daughter.

[edcayton]

Excellent! The narrator says that the scale is 1cm=1 ft, or 1:76 though!

 

Ed

[Burkitt]

Interesting to note that despite the light tone of the Pathe report there were none of the trainspotter/trainset/Hornby comments that today's media always include in anything mentioning model railways.

 

Paul

[Pacific231G]

Interesting to note that despite the light tone of the Pathe report there were none of the trainspotter/trainset/Hornby comments that today's media always include in anything mentioning model railways.

 

I've noticed that in the pre-war reports on exhibtions as well. The hobby was clearly regarded as a serious interest of perfectly sensible grown men that youngsters might well become hooked on too. I have a nasty feeling that the later rather dismissive attitude was very much a class thing in Britain. Before the war and immediately after railway modelling tended to be a hobby of the professional classes - ordinary people had far less leisure or resources for hobbies then and apart from the vicars several layouts of the month in RM etc. in the 1950s seemed to be the work of rear admirals and wing commanders. As it became a more widely available interest the traditional contempt for "rude mechanicals" kicked in and railway modelling along with a number of other hobbies was seen as rather infra dig. The association with train spotters may also have been a factor

I don't think I've ever detected this sort of attitude in other countries even though you couldn't parody some American train buffs and it seems thankfully to have diminished in recent years here as well.

 

In France of course, provided exhibitors and visitors stop for a three course lunch with wine as they generally do, they are regarded as completely normal but there they do regard "loisirs"- active leisure activities- of all sorts as a healthy aspect of a balanced life rather than an unnatural departure from the proper leisure pursuits of watching four hours of television a day and then at weekends going out to shopping centres to buy all the things the advertisers have told you you need