Modelling the Modern Image

[hmrspaul]

10 hours ago, Reorte said:

Huh? All I meant by "in you face" was "immediately obviously visible," a (relatively) sudden and noticeable change, rather than the overall just as big ones that were not, however, quite so immediately visible or rapid, at least to the average man on the street.

 

I'm not taking issue with your definition of Modern Image, all I'm saying is that it's not what the phrase conjours up in my mind, since what's modern has moved on since the term was coined.

You appear to be including "contemporary image". As has been explained "Modern Image" is that period when BR still had some  steam engines, lots of small wagons, Mark1 coaches began to be replaced by Mark II and that awful blue with chocolate frames became popular and widely to be seen. Some interesting architecture replaced important stations, and awful replaced many others. It is a period, quite short lived. Is modern even a phrase that would have been in common parlance after the early 1970s. 

 

Perhaps we should forget the concept, it is historical like the "swinging 60s" which were only late 60s and largely in the early 70s ( I was there!). 

Edited July 19, 2022 by hmrspaul

[Reorte]

9 hours ago, hmrspaul said:

You appear to be including "contemporary image". As has been explained "Modern Image" is that period when BR still had some  steam engines, lots of small wagons, Mark1 coaches began to be replaced by Mark II and that awful blue with chocolate frames became popular and widely to be seen. Some interesting architecture replaced important stations, and awful replaced many others. It is a period, quite short lived. Is modern even a phrase that would have been in common parlance after the early 1970s. 

 

Perhaps we should forget the concept, it is historical like the "swinging 60s" which were only late 60s and largely in the early 70s ( I was there!). 

That's what the term "modern image" was originally coined for but as I said that's not what it conjours up in my mind, which is more "contemporary image." The word "modern" implicitly means "contemporary" IMO (although there's contemporary stuff that isn't modern), so I don't regard it as a useful label for the period it was originally used for any more. It was quite some time before I realised that people were often talking about the scene from before I was even born when they said "modern image."

[Reorte]

10 hours ago, cypherman said:

Hi all,

For me modern image is anything that does not require a shovel to keep it going.

I was going to say "So, horse drawn?" but that really should have someone following it with a shovel :)

[Revolution Ben]

 

Hello all,

 

For me, ‘The Modern Image’ is a phrase coined to describe a particular period in railway history encapsulated by the introduction of the new corporate image of blue/grey locomotives and rolling stock, the BR double arrows and west coast electrification and remodelling.

 

A particular key part is that, unlike the early British Railways which tolerated a return to pre-BR green and chocolate/cream on the Southern and Western regions, the brand was applied uniformly across the entire network.

 

cheers

 

Ben A.

 

[Phil Parker]

21 hours ago, Clive Mortimore said:

So class 317s are no longer Modern Image, as they retired less than seven days ago.

 

So the person who it is claimed came up with the term Modern Image, Cyril Freezer, was wrong when he called my 1960s diesel depot Pig Lane , the real Modern Image?

 

Every day is a school day.

 

If "Modern image" is a moveable feast, then it's possible for Cyril to be right when he said it, but as time moves on the term is less appropriate for layouts set in the 1960s as they are a long way from modern so now he would be incorrect.

 

The other option is that "Modern image" equals anything with diesels on it, which means it's going to cover pretty much every layout.

[cypherman]

Hi all,

I suppose we should look at it as historical past. When it happened it was the face of modern railways. But like everything that is modern at its time of inception quickly becomes old and outdated by the newer modern image. I agree that we should change the way we say things and as has been mentioned we could use the decades we model in as a time stamp.

[BernardTPM]

13 minutes ago, Revolution Ben said:

Hello all,

For me, ‘The Modern Image’ is a phrase coined to describe a particular period in railway history encapsulated by the introduction of the new corporate image of blue/grey locomotives and rolling stock, the BR double arrows and west coast electrification and remodelling.

 

A particular key part is that, unlike the early British Railways which tolerated a return to pre-BR green and chocolate/cream on the Southern and Western regions, the brand was applied uniformly across the entire network.

Ironically though, that May 1964 issue (published 20-4-64) pre-dates the BR blue, even a couple of months ahead of XP64. Proper Rail Blue came with the launch of the Corporate Manual scheme late December 1964*.

 

The period 1959-64 actually saw quite a few new 'modern' colour schemes and new rolling stock that in some respects resembles the late BR  'Sector' period rather than the more regional 1956-60 period.

 

* see Modern Railways, January 1965 issue

[Clive Mortimore]

41 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

 

If "Modern image" is a moveable feast, then it's possible for Cyril to be right when he said it, but as time moves on the term is less appropriate for layouts set in the 1960s as they are a long way from modern so now he would be incorrect.

 

The other option is that "Modern image" equals anything with diesels on it, which means it's going to cover pretty much every layout.

HI Phil

 

I don't like how the term has been misused to mean either today or all diesel and electric layouts. Like Modernism in art it relates to a time period of dramatic change and for modellers, Mike Cole comes to mind, who built diesels not steam locos, a revolution.

 

I have tried to distance my modelling from "Modern Image" despite my own belief of what the Modern Image is.  When exhibiting one of my depot layouts I wrote for the show guide "A diesel depot set in the dying days of steam, " only for the exhibition manager to edit to "A Modern Image diesel depot". When questioned why he changed my words, "It is a diesel layout so it is modern image".

 

As for Reorte saying there has been big recent changes, what I have witness is the unpleasant smell of MacDonalds as you try to find the trains buried under the shopping mall avoiding the spilt Costa as you go in many major train stations.

Edited July 20, 2022 by Clive Mortimore

[Flying Pig]

On 19/07/2022 at 11:58, Phil Parker said:

So, 1948 to today. That's only 74 years! And I'm being generous, I'm sure there are plenty of earlier diesels and electrics.

 

At least 50 years generous for electric traction in Britain, which began in 1883 with Volks' Electric Railway and took off from the 1890s onwards.

 

[Wolseley]

1 hour ago, Phil Parker said:

If "Modern image" is a moveable feast, then it's possible for Cyril to be right when he said it, but as time moves on the term is less appropriate for layouts set in the 1960s as they are a long way from modern so now he would be incorrect.

I agree.  I think that's the best way to look at it.  What was modern in the 1960s is hardly modern now.

 

1 hour ago, Phil Parker said:

The other option is that "Modern image" equals anything with diesels on it, which means it's going to cover pretty much every layout.

Which would be laughable.  As I type this, I have behind me a 3 rail Hornby Dublo layout on which there are two diesel shunters, one Bo-Bo diesel, and one "Deltic".  I also have a Co-Bo diesel, another "Deltic" and three Co-Co diesels, but they're not on the layout at the moment.  Using this definition, my 3 rail Hornby Dublo layout is "Modern Image"........

[Nearholmer]

I’m really enjoying watching this debate, and would love to see it continue, so I do hope that none of the angels fall off of the head of the pin.

 

My three penn’orth would be that, in every age, the latest thing is “modern”, so ‘Rocket’ was very definitely modern in 1829, cutting-edge in fact, and if ‘Modern Railways’ had existed at the time, it would have been on the front cover, so the word “modern” to define a fixed period in time is bound to lead to confusion. The art bods get over that by adding “ism” to define a movement, and architectural bods get over it by going faux-French with “moderne” to mean one thing, and using “modernist’ to mean another.
 

In BR terms, we probably ought to add “….isation Plan” to define the fixed period, perhaps followed by “Reshaping Plan” or “Beeching Plan” for the following few years.

 

(I know this proposal will go down like a lead balloon!)

 

 

[Flying Pig]

2 hours ago, Clive Mortimore said:

I don't like how the term has been misused to mean either today or all diesel and electric layouts. Like Modernism in art it relates to a time period of dramatic change

 

One thing that puzzles me is the obsessive use of the word "image".  Nobody modelling the period before 1964 ever uses it (ever seen a reference to "1930s Image"?) but modellers of more recent times seem unable describe their layouts without it.  Just call your layout "modern*" and leave "Modern Image" in its original context.

 

*there will still be folk who think you mean Art Deco

[Not Jeremy]

Quote

I agree.  I think that's the best way to look at it.  What was modern in the 1960s is hardly modern now.

 

Exactly - it's "Modern Image"(!)

 

The genius of dear CJF.

 

A term that both precisely conjures up an era, and yet covers pretty much everything else as well - that is simply pure and unadulterated genius.

 

No doubt whatsoever that it will both continue to mean exactly what it means, and serve British railway modellers well, forever.

 

I have to confess that it tickles me endlessly that some folk appear to get so worked up about it.

 

So, to go back to the future and the "correct" modern image era -  "Nice one Cyril"...

[Reorte]

42 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

 

One thing that puzzles me is the obsessive use of the word "image".  Nobody modelling the period before 1964 ever uses it (ever seen a reference to "1930s Image"?) but modellers of more recent times seem unable describe their layouts without it.  Just call your layout "modern*" and leave "Modern Image" in its original context.

 

*there will still be folk who think you mean Art Deco

If we go back to the time when "Modern Image" was first used you could have a contemporary layout that concentrated almost or entirely on steam, or one which was diesel and / or electric, and they could look very different yet both be pretty modern, but only one modern image. It was not unreasonable to distinguish them, and arguably it's the image that did (at least as far as what matters for modelling is concerned). The BR standard class steam locomotives would've been fairly new at that time yet still not modern image.

 

I supposed the closest you'd get to that today would be a layout set now that features semaphore signalling and 37s or 20s or similar versus one where (almost) everything's new or nearly new.

[Il Grifone]

As I understood it (1960s is a long way back...), it was the prevalence of diesel/electric traction to define 'Modern Image'. I suppose it starts with the 'Beeching Report'.... (Sorry!)

 

Dangerously close to politics, but it is 'history' now!

I suppose £30,000 a year* for a 'hatchet man' is not a bad salary, but most of it would have gone to HMRC. This was way before the 'Trickle down economics' nonsense. (Wealth had never trickled down' before, so why should anything change in the 80s?)

I remember this as the figure reported (the press is of course always given to exaggeration), but Wikipedia gives £24,000 - Still a very generous sum for the time. It was also reported that his ICI salary was £40,000 and he had taken a paycut.

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

 

From Hansard 1962,

"That income tax for the year 1962–63 shall be charged at the standard rate of seven shillings and ninepence in the pound, and, in the case of an individual whose total income exceeds two thousand pounds, at such higher rates in respect of the excess as Parliament may hereafter determine." (The top rate was 80/90%.)

Edited July 20, 2022 by Il Grifone

[Flying Pig]

23 minutes ago, Il Grifone said:

As I understood it (1960s is a long way back...), it was the prevalence of diesel/electric traction to define 'Modern Image'. I suppose it starts with the 'Beeching Report'.... (Sorry!)

 

It was the complete package of modernisation not just the traction - look at the picture on the cover of RM reproduced up thread which shows "Britain's New Railway", the electric WCML.

[Il Grifone]

The only 'modern' thing in that photo is the locomotive

(and the catenary of course, but there was nothing new in that; it had been in use for decades).

Edited July 20, 2022 by Il Grifone

[Nearholmer]

BR at the period in question was, very overtly, trying to shake-off an image of inefficiency, Victorian-leftovers, grubbiness, and general outdatedness, and to project a modern image. Of course, it was rowing against the tide of a century plus of history, but that was what it was trying to do, because the real growth in car travel for the masses was now underway, and cars were modern and sexy in a way that trains mostly weren’t.

[BernardTPM]

1 hour ago, Il Grifone said:

The only 'modern' thing in that photo is the locomotive

(and the catenary of course, but there was nothing new in that; it had been in use for decades).

I would have to disagree. At the time the picture was taken that station (Runcorn) had only recently been rebuilt, including the platforms, the track is heavy flat-bottom (though not yet CWR), Mk.1s were still current, the loco was just a handful of years old (newer than a Class 68 would be now). The only old thing is that 5 plank unfitted wagon hiding in the background.

[TravisM]

I think the term ‘modern image’ is very subjective in the present sense. When you had the cross over period from steam to diesel and electric, then that era could be described as the first ‘modern image’ era. But where does it stop?

 

Could a different modern image be described as ‘Sectorisation’, then there was ‘Privatisation’ and it’s different TOC’s and freight companies, then 15 years ago, the merging of several larger TOC’s and open access.  The railways looked quite different then to as they are now regarding liveries and operating companies.

 

Then we come to the present day, which has to be the new ‘modern image’, with HST’s, Mk4’s, Pacers and other early modern EMU’s vanishing, even Voyager’s, Meridian’s and Class 180’s threatened, to be replaced by Class Class 800’s and new DMU’s and EMU’s coming off the production lines.

 

Like I say, it’s all subjective and no matter which way you look at it, your neither right or wrong.

Edited July 20, 2022 by jools1959
Spelling

[Il Grifone]

On 20/07/2022 at 19:29, BernardTPM said:

I would have to disagree. At the time the picture was taken that station (Runcorn) had only recently been rebuilt, including the platforms, the track is heavy flat-bottom (though not yet CWR), Mk.1s were still current, the loco was just a handful of years old (newer than a Class 68 would be now). The only old thing is that 5 plank unfitted wagon hiding in the background.

 

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this.

BR Mk I s were merely an up-date of existing practice, the station was rebuilt 'as before' and flat bottomed rail dates back to the earliest days of railways. ('Bullhead' was merely a British aberration. - reversible rail seemed like a 'good idea', until it proved not to be,,,. Once you had all the chairs in place,,,,)

 

By the fifties, Britain had (more or less) recovered from WWII and cars were becoming affordable to the masses. One's own transport (50s (and 60s) cars were c**p*) is always going to be preferable to public. Government policy (the railways had to be profitable rather than a public service) didn't help**.

* Personal experience!

** I wouldn't dream of suggesting that a Minister of Transport with a private interest in road building had any influence at all!

Edited July 21, 2022 by Il Grifone

[CKPR]

My take on it is that 'Modern image' was essentially mid-1960s Tri-ang and Trix supplemented with Kitmaster coach conversions. 

[Nearholmer]

That RM cover photo does encapsulate fairly well “modern best practice”, and not massively different from MBP on other railways in Europe. The one question I have is about the Mk1 coach, because I think other administrations had already progressed to monocoque construction by 1963, although I’m not totally sure, because some European designs looked monocoque, but actually weren’t.

 

Writing off OLE as old-hat is to seriously misunderstand the importance of 25kV 50Hz, as compared with what had gone before, and Britain actually did very well to adopt and make practical that new technology using the meagre resources available for the task - the BR development programme was deeply underfunded compared with SNCF, but it delivered (with teething troubles in transformers).

 

The big push to modernisation had started well before Dr B, the WCML being the flagship had started well before his brief tenure, but it was not going tremendously well on some fronts, and the overall picture was that the railways were bleeding money, which is where Dr B came in, with very drastic, perhaps overly drastic, surgery to save the patient from slowly bleeding to death.

 

1960. Glasgow was a serious route modernisation, actually two routes, which often gets forgotten.

 

 

 

Edited July 22, 2022 by Nearholmer

[kevinlms]

39 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

That RM cover photo does encapsulate fairly well “modern best practice”, and not massively different from MBP on other railways in Europe. The one question I have is about the Mk1 coach, because I think other administrations had already progressed to monocoque construction by 1963, although I’m not totally sure, because some European designs looked monocoque, but actually weren’t.

 

Writing off OLE as old-hat is to seriously misunderstand the importance of 25kV 50Hz, as compared with what had gone before, and Britain actually did very well to adopt and make practical that new technology using the meagre resources available for the task - the BR development programme was deeply underfunded compared with SNCF, but it delivered (with teething troubles in transformers).

 

The big push to modernisation had started well before Dr B, the WCML being the flagship had started well before his brief tenure, but it was not going tremendously well on some fronts, and the overall picture was that the railways were bleeding money, which is where Dr B came in, with very drastic, perhaps overly drastic, surgery to save the patient from slowly bleeding to death.

 

1960. Glasgow was a serious route modernisation, actually two routes, which often gets forgotten.

 

 

 

Given the many things BR got wrong with aspects of the Modernisation Plan, it's kind of amazing that they came up with the correct decision of changing away from 1500 Volts DC overhead to 25KV AC as the standard for new construction.

What a disaster the WCML would have been under the old system.

It's also interesting to note, that within European railways, there is still a lot of non 1500V DC and non 25KV AC around, so on that basis, BR wouldn't have necessarily have upgraded either.

[Nearholmer]

It was well understood by all and sundry even before WW2 that 50Hz (more importantly than the exact voltage) electrification was the way to go, practical trials were underway in Alsace, with both French and German engineers involved, and BR knew from the outset that it would be the thing to do the moment the technology got far enough forward, which it just about did c1950 (the war probably impeded it by five or six years). The 1500V dc and the various 16.6Hz systems are historical legacies, in the same way that the SR 660/750V dc system is. Once a particular system is in place on a route, it can be a nightmare to change it, although in many places 1500V dc has been superseded by 50Hz.