Should we whitewash history on our layouts?

[PMP]

3 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

OWL's record of the N&W in its last days remains an outstanding historical artefact. Whatever beliefs he may have held, they were hardly radical.

 

Just to pick up on this there’s no evidence OWL had any specific beliefs.
 

In the context of this overall discussion surely it’s important to be accurate on such matters. To brand someone something they’re aren’t is worse than whitewashing, it’s distorting the truth. Eg calling you a nazi because there may be an image of you+armband out there. Without the true context of the image, it could be used for a very different ‘narrative’

[Phil Parker]

6 minutes ago, Chrisr40 said:

I saw Vicky Michelle (oh my dicky ticker) on GB news recently and it sounds like the PC zealots are after Allo Allo too now

 

Or is the right-wing "news" channel looking to create a story ?

[Morello Cherry]

@PMP- so represent segregation and poverty on the layout then. Frankly you are looking for an ever smaller and smaller pinhead to dance on here.

 

@PaulRhB - I really don't get what your argument here is and both your and PMPs posts are sliding into whataboutery.

 

I've made my point so to save it going round in circles I will state it one last time. I don't think the socio-political environment in which is railway model or recreation sits should be ignored and it should be represented, even if that is uncomfortable or challenging. Representing it is difficult. It is the modeller's model and they can model it as they wish but if they put it out there in public then their choices can and should be criticised. If you don't like my model of the PQR that makes reference to the Pennants slave ownership because it makes reference to it then that says more about you than it does about me. I am, however, sure that there is another more rosy eyed layout at the exhibition that is more your bag.

 

[Johann Marsbar]

Bit off topic, but frankly, " Allo, Allo" was one series I avoided totally when it first appeared on TV and have no interest in watching it to this day.  Amongst all the DVD's I inherited a few years back after my Father died were two boxed sets from the BBC - One for "Secret Army" and one "Allo Allo" .  Needless to say, I've since watched all from the first one, but the second, which took the p out of the serious subject delt with in the first set has been left untouched!

[AY Mod]

21 minutes ago, Morello Cherry said:

Frankly you are looking for an ever smaller and smaller pinhead to dance on here.

 

I'd have said that was your intent - which PMP was questioning further as you were taking the topic further into socio-economic cul-de-sacs.

 

Keep it relevant please.

[PaulRhB]

18 minutes ago, Morello Cherry said:

here.

 

@PaulRhB - I really don't get what your argument here is and both your and PMPs posts are sliding into whataboutery.

Because there are no limits to your argument as if you do then it should be applied across history not just the last 100 years and that in itself makes it an almost impossible to run a show as no one can hope to accurately disseminate all the influences and address them to everyone’s satisfaction on one 4ft long layout. 
I think you need to understand many of us have a good understanding of these issues and don’t need every thing we see to engage that discussion. Going back to slavery briefly in most cases including Roman and African slavery their peers and countrymen were just as involved in selling people into the system in many cases and it was a small minority in power who reaped the rewards not our average worker counterparts of any race or country of the time. 

[whart57]

42 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

 

Or is the right-wing "news" channel looking to create a story ?

 

Almost certainly.

 

That said, the British love of Allo Allo is as inexplicable as the German love of that 1962 Freddie Frinton and May Warden sketch Dinner for One.

[PMP]

43 minutes ago, Morello Cherry said:

@PMP- so represent segregation and poverty on the layout then.
 

If you don't like my model of the PQR that makes reference to the Pennants slave ownership because it makes reference to it then that says more about you than it does about me. I am, however, sure that there is another more rosy eyed layout at the exhibition that is more your bag.

 

https://norvenmunky.wordpress.com/2007/12/30/how-long/
 

 

#awkward
 

 

[6990WitherslackHall]

4 hours ago, steve1 said:

Off thread I know, but I’m pretty certain emergency vehicles didn’t have flashing lights in 1950s and unlikely in the earlier part of 1960s.

I think the Police did. 

[Nearholmer]

Flashing lights on top of the roof were preceded by alternating blue lamps on the front bumper/grill, sometimes not very obvious until flashing. Have a look at old films like The Blue Lamp for period police cars, although I don’t recall ‘bumper lamps’ in that, only the clanging bell.

[Phil Parker]

26 minutes ago, whart57 said:

 

Almost certainly.

 

That said, the British love of Allo Allo is as inexplicable as the German love of that 1962 Freddie Frinton and May Warden sketch Dinner for One.

 

That can be traced back to the classic British farce. However, if you'd pitched the show as a mickey take on Secret Army, which some people saw it as, then I wonder if it would have been as revered?

 

Dinner for One is just a mystery...

[Nearholmer]

This thread has got a sort of magnetic attraction towards discussion of modelling times and places where and when various forms of brutality, injustice, prejudice etc were very overt, easy to see in fact, even at 1:76 scale, whereas if you look at the vast majority of layouts, they are set in times and places where the very reverse is true, possibly because the average hobbyist gravitates towards vaguely comforting subjects.

 

The typical British rural-town or seaside, Big Four or Transition Era BLT probably ought only to show the most subtle signs of the unpleasant side of life, because subtlety was all: snobbery, racism, sexism, xenophobia, pronounced divides of prosperity etc existed (as they still do), and class division particularly was part of the fabric of every place (still is, although perhaps more purely money focused), but unless your layout has room for large villas, or the odd stately home and landed estate the divisions and prejudices  shouldn’t leap off the plywood and poke you in the eye, the signs should be subtle, a chauffeur waiting with a big fancy car from The Hall in the forecourt, a chap with one arm missing, some dowdy and rundown tenanted cottages in a back street, that sort of thing.

 

 

Edited August 19, 2022 by Nearholmer

[sir douglas]

3 hours ago, papagolfjuliet said:

 

On a related note I am somewhat surprised that a fuss has not been kicked up about the HLF awarding the Middleton Railway funding to conserve an engine named after a slave owner whose portrait in the National Museum of Wales was recently the subject of much controversy.

 

https://www.middletonrailway.org.uk/development-projects/conserving-picton/picton-shelter-preparation

 

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

 

Just goes to show that in life as in art there isn't a great deal of consistency in these things.

 

i think for that, its a case of people not knowing it even has a name since doesnt carry it and for those who do know it, they dont know what the name refers to. it is one of my favourite locos but have never gave any thought about the name, assuming it was just somebody related to the railway like it usually is.

 

now knowing what it means doesnt change my favourtism at all

Edited August 19, 2022 by sir douglas

[BlackFivesMatter]

Segregation happened in some parts of some states in the US in a specific timeline. How it is portrayed if a modeller wishes to, when signage to scale would be minuscule may only be explained in a blurb about the layout. Likewise any layout, particularly in the western US was likely on

land appropriated from Native Americans. Should an explanation be given? For west coast US the treatment of Chinese labourers? And here in the UK the treatment of particularly Irish labourers…… Then again, let’s just play trains.

[papagolfjuliet]

1 hour ago, whart57 said:

 

Almost certainly.

 

That said, the British love of Allo Allo is as inexplicable as the German love of that 1962 Freddie Frinton and May Warden sketch Dinner for One.

 

Allo Allo is of course hugely popular in France too, and by all accounts whenever the BBC offered to German TV execs they watched it, loved it, and sais that while they found it hilarious they didn't dare buy it.

 

Even stranger: Mind Your Language is popular in India. Like, Star Wars popular.

[Reorte]

7 minutes ago, papagolfjuliet said:

 

Allo Allo is of course hugely popular in France too, and by all accounts whenever the BBC offered to German TV execs they watched it, loved it, and sais that while they found it hilarious they didn't dare buy it.

 

Personally speaking I never found Allo Allo all that funny, but I'd like to think that it's quite an insult to the Nazis, them becoming the subject of comedy. They seemed to take themselves very seriously, so I imagine it would've gone down like a lead balloon with them. Which must be a point in its favour.

[Andy Hayter]

@Morello Cherry

 

It was not a complaint that the swastika was not represented.  It was an observation.  I thought I had made it abundantly clear that they were following the law and just how deep sensitivities lie - in support of @Bernard Lamb in his post.

[Bernard Lamb]

2 hours ago, whart57 said:

 

Almost certainly.

 

That said, the British love of Allo Allo is as inexplicable as the German love of that 1962 Freddie Frinton and May Warden sketch Dinner for One.

Inexplicable?

Dinner for One is the perfect illustration of the English class system combined with classic slap stick comedy. It seems to get away with stereotypes that if newly produced today would attract a few compliants. The effect of too much drink builds up to a climax. You know the next sequence but still scream when it happens. The tiger skin on the floor and the wally dogs on the mantlepiece are so evocative of a time and place that never actually existed. The guests who do not actually appear have a depth of character that is built up from minute fragments. The ending, a reversal of the class system, is so well done with the social comment overriding the comedy. DH Lawrence got there first, but not many Germans know that. As for Freddie and May, right up there with L & H and M & W.

 

Just to add a bit on Allo Allo. Some people will know that I have been a life long cyclist.  I first met a woman by the name of Evelyn Hamilton many years ago and heard some of her stories first hand. I always picture her in the cafe. 

 

Bernard

Edited August 19, 2022 by Bernard Lamb
more added

[Clive Mortimore]

Earlier on in this discussion someone mentioned BUF signs on Pendon, correct for the time period but very unlikely to be seen in rural areas. 

 

It could be argued Pendon itself is offensive to very poor farm workers who lived in those idyllic cottages. No running water, no sewage system just an outside loo and a very deep hole, no electricity or gas just a coal fired stove to heat the whole cottage. Homage to a time in this country when the rural poor knew their place.

 

Ah the good old days.  

[AY Mod]

2 minutes ago, Clive Mortimore said:

It could be argued Pendon itself is offensive to very poor farm workers who lived in those idyllic cottages. No running water, no sewage system just an outside loo and a very deep hole, no electricity or gas just a coal fired stove to heat the whole cottage. Homage to a time in this country when the rural poor knew their place.

 

It's a point that the guides make on tours (particularly to children); rural poverty and lack of amenities.

 

In nighttime mode the point is made about candlelight and moonlight.

[Nearholmer]

Pendon is a very good example of how much, or how little, can be told by looking at the world from a passing airship, and how our own pasts are somehow harder to see objectively than other people’s. Winter was different too.

Edited August 19, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Clive Mortimore]

45 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

 

It's a point that the guides make on tours (particularly to children); rural poverty and lack of amenities.

 

In nighttime mode the point is made about candlelight and moonlight.

Thanks Andy

 

I have only seen photos and rave reviews on Pendon and didn't know the guides explained the poverty etc. Well done Pendon.

 

I think with the Pendon gang having the ability to point out it was far from idyllic for those living in the cottages, we as modellers can happily model an historic scene (with moving trains) as along as we can explain the historical content and how as a society we have improved form overt racism, advertising substances more addictive than most class A drugs as being good for you etc. Should we chose to include fag and beer adverts*, model a part of the world where people were not allowed to mix and political symbols were part of every day life, we can always subtly leave them out and still be historic.

 

* Were Double Diamond or Red Barrel really beers?

[Chrisr40]

4 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

Or is the right-wing "news" channel looking to create a story ?

Because they can never be correct ?

Why make it about politics ?

[Chrisr40]

2 hours ago, papagolfjuliet said:

 

Allo Allo is of course hugely popular in France too, and by all accounts whenever the BBC offered to German TV execs they watched it, loved it, and sais that while they found it hilarious they didn't dare buy it.

 

Even stranger: Mind Your Language is popular in India. Like, Star Wars popular.

Because being able to laugh at yourself is far more intelligent and self aware than being morally outraged at everything which you don't agree with. Our humour in the UK was based upon self deprication (possibly the lavatory too)  and we got along fine until we started saying you can't laugh at this or that. The show The Last Leg is a good example with people who have disabilities taking the mickey out of each other because they like a laugh too. There is no malice just good natured ribbing.

[D9020 Nimbus]

This discussion reminds me of one that took place in the early issues of Continental Modeller with respect to Germany and the holocaust, where there was an insightful letter from a rabbi. If I remember correctly, his points were:

 

• It's OK to model a (say) Bavarian country station, where terrible things once happened (i.e. Jews being forcibly taken to death camps), but it would be wrong to show those events taking place;
• Is it OK to model a locomotive that was used to haul such trains—the specific example being a Dean Goods that might have been captured by the Germans? Of course it would be; it would be ridiculous to think otherwise,

This was at a time when many more survivors of the Holocaust were alive when now, so attitudes may have changed, but it seemed definitive at the time.

 

Context matters as well. A few years ago now Model Zone announced a limited edition of the Jubilee class locomotive Windward Islands, destroyed in the 1952 Harrow & Wealdstone crash, and the publicity made specific reference to this. There was an outcry; the model was cancelled. Yet other locomotives involved in serious accidents have been produced in model form; Dapol have produced the A3 class locomotive Grand Parade (involved in the accident at Castlecary — all one word, between Edinburgh and Glasgow, not GWR) without any seeming adverse reaction — but then, it wasn't advertised as having been in that accident.