Should we whitewash history on our layouts?

[The Johnster]

18 hours ago, rob D2 said:

TBH , you'd have to gloss over " murderous horror " to make a comedy about war otherwise we'd just sit and handwring all day .

 

 

I'd say M.A.S.H., both the movie and tv series but especially the movie, managed to avoid glossing over the horror and brutality, a magnificent portrayal of men and women using black, and bleak, humour to cope with a black and bleak situation, and was still very funny.  They all wanted to go home as well.  It was set in the Korean war but we all knew it was about Vietnam.

[Jim Martin]

On 18/08/2022 at 13:30, Steven B said:

Thinking of the newspaper headline adverts you used to see outside shops, "Titanic Sinks", "Mail Train Robbed" or "Elvis Found Dead" would instantly set the period being modelled as much as the rolling stock.

 

And that's why I plan to have all three on my layout!

 

Jim

[Ravenser]

On 18/08/2022 at 02:04, The Johnster said:

I’m old enough to recall letters to the Constructor in the 60s claiming that the inherently preferable 3-rail/studcontact 00 was the future and that 2-rail was a fad.  There were serious clockwork layouts still on the go. 

 

Not quite as daft as it seems to us. In its discreet stud-contact form 3-rail AC is still big business in Germany , so it isn't a hopeless dead duck.

 

That said, when we move  in Britain we tend to move hard and all the way. In the 1940s we tended to see outselves as terribly backward in the matter of adopting 2-rail compared to the USA where 2-rail had been flourishing since the early 1930s. 

 

But the USA still sees considerable amounts of "hi-rail" semi-tinplate 3 rail in S and O. Germany has the whole "Maerklinist" stud-contact AC ecosystem . In Britain , 3 rail has been one with Nineveh and Tyre since Hornby Dublo folded in 1964

[The Johnster]

15 hours ago, dagrizz said:

 

Pedant alert!  He was Arthur Bostrom.

 

Graham

 

So he was; yet more senior moments from the mortal remains of The Johnster.  Rostrom was the captain of RMS Carpathia, the first rescue ship at the position of Titanic's sinking.  His handling of the situation is a textbook for rescue of this sort; on recieving Titanic's distress signal, he turned the ship and ordered best possible speed from the engines, all stokers on duty, and ordered the ship's laundry, bakery, and kitchen into action to provide hot food and bedding for survivors, also alerting the ship's medical staff.  Many of her passengers, alerted by the activity, actively assisted in preparing the ship to take on survivors likely to be suffering from hypothermia, and donated clothing.  Don't forget this all took place in the small wee hours of the morning when the ship would normally be quiet.

[AY Mod]

30 minutes ago, whart57 said:

it wasn't thatched roofs causing poverty,

 

Thatched roofs didn't cause poverty but cost-cutting resulted in thatched roofs; low-cost local materials and labour.

 

30 minutes ago, whart57 said:

The rural poverty of that period was also caused by the miserably low wages of farm workers, which in turn was down to low prices for produce

 

The first part may be correct but not for the reason given. Most workers were employed by local landowners (notoriously niggardly) in tied housing (with as little spent on them by said landlord). Enlightenment came, in scale, from Quaker industrialists whilst agriculture has been generally lagging a century behind until grants and finance only became more accessible a generation and a bit ago.

 

[jjb1970]

I think context is crucial. Showing the less commendable episodes of history in a way which is intended to educate and which does not glorify hate is good, the problem is it is a vanishingly thin line between doing that and falling into celebrating the events and becoming almost a weird form of historical gratification. Airbrushing bad things out of history does no favours, but neither does turning it into simple entertainment. However, again there is a vanishingly thin line between using drama and comedy to educate and highlight the absurdities of some parts of the past and celebrating it. 

I tend to think we are already close to steam engines burning coal being close to the same stigma as cigarettes and smoking.

[Andy Hayter]

The change from straw thatched rooves to asbestos cement was precipitated in the mid 1930s by the introduction of new more productive wheat varieties.

 

Previously varieties suitable for growing in the UK were high standing so-called long straw varieties.  Standing 1.5m tall or more, such varieties were prone to weather damage.  The resulting straw was however ideal for thatching rooves and from the landowners perspective often a free resource..

 

The new varieties were unlikely to reach 1m and so were no longer suitable as a roofing material.  Landowners then switched to the next cheapest material - asbestos cement sheeting.  

[whart57]

6 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

The first part may be correct but not for the reason given. Most workers were employed by local landowners (notoriously niggardly) in tied housing (with as little spent on them by said landlord). Enlightenment came, in scale, from Quaker industrialists whilst agriculture has been generally lagging a century behind until grants and finance only became more accessible a generation and a bit ago.

 

That may be true, but while those industrialists benefited from Imperial preference keeping out German and American competition, British agriculture didn't. In fact it suffered the opposite in the form of competition from much cheaper grain from Canada, meat and dairy from Australia and New Zealand as well as from Argentina, which before the Peronista regimes of the 1940s was almost part of the British Commonwealth as well. British agriculture was saved by Hitler's U-boats, which forced a more self-sufficient food policy on the country.

 

The much maligned Common Agricultural Policy of the EU (originally Common Market) had the same aims.

[The Johnster]

28 minutes ago, whart57 said:

 

Given that some of the most expensive houses in the county today have thatched roofs I would suggest that it wasn't thatched roofs causing poverty, rather that a long lasting depression in Britain's agricultural industry going back to the 1880s did. The rural poverty of that period was also caused by the miserably low wages of farm workers, which in turn was down to low prices for produce - much being undercut by stuff coming in from the Empire - and inefficiency. Thus using your logic it is also "offensive" to "glorify" poverty by modelling the horse drawn mowers and binders and the teams of workers stacking hay. Or indeed the railways themselves which moved cheaper New Zealand lamb or Argentinian beef from port to city shop.

 

That line of argument is getting rather silly.

 

I don't find the presence of thatched roofs on period models offensive; after all it was the pernicious farm labour system that caused the poverty, not the roofs.  I am more offended by the current occupiers of such idyllic cottages, as you say some of the most expensive in the country, who have been able to use their wealth to persuade the cottage owners, i.e. the big estates or farmers, to move the tenants out and sell the cottages at a profit to second homers.  Difficult to prevent this in a free market, but I reserve the right to be offended by the treatment of the original occupants, most of whom had little choice but to end lives lived in miserable conditions in these hovels in equally miserable crime-ridden and dangerous urban council estates.

 

I have a row of Ancorton terraced stone cottages on my layout.  Backstory is that they predate the railway and were built in the 1850s for workers in the nearby forge/small iron foundry that was served by a tramroad that formed the trackbed of my ficticious branch in a real place.  The model reminds me of the Rhydycar cottages from Merthyr at the St Fagan's museum, which are presented each as they would have been at different periods in their history, inside and out, and show the varying quality of life of the occupants (low points being the 18 and 19 30s).  The Ancorton model, named Lechyd Terrace after the stream that runs behind it, is low relief so I have not modelled the backs, with the communal pump for stream water, laundry shed, mangle, and 'facilities'.

 

Perhaps inspired by the Rhydycar terrace, each dwelling is slightly different to represent the occupants, all of whom in the 50s would have been fairly poor, but in different degrees.  They are in poor repair, but that's down to the landlord whoever he is; extreme poverty is suggested by newspaper curtains or boarded up windows, and faded paint, while relative prosperity can be inferred from fresher paint, net and proper curtains upstairs as well, and flowers in vases inside windows.  There are houses in in 'in-betweeny' states as well, all very Rhydycar!  Nobody owns a car.  Ultimate hedonism would be a (rented tv) ariel, but one doubts reception would have been any good in such a location in those days...  Tv would have been quite unusual anywhere in the valleys in my 1948-58 time frame, and didn't really take off until the late 60s/early 70s when relay transmiter towers appeared on the mountains.  Even in my middle-class Cardiff suburb, most of us didn't get it until the Coronation, 1953.  Rediffusion's cable network rental was used where it was available, but of course there is little outside indication of this...

 

Lechyd Terrace is probably not long for this world in the 50s, and will be derelict by the early 60s as standards of living improve a little, and residents give up the struggle and move down the valley.  There are (as yet unmodelled) terraces of later housing connected with the development of the colliery, probably dating from around 1890s, brick built/stone faced and in much better overall condition, on proper streets with pavements and main drains, water, and sewers.  I'm considering Rue d'Etropal's Recreation 21 3D prints of rows in perspective for these; pricey but effective and ideal for the location I'm considering.  They run in perspective from 4mm to 2mm, so I may be employing some N gauge stuff at the small ends as well...

[AY Mod]

11 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

most of whom had little choice but to end lives lived in miserable conditions in these hovels in equally miserable crime-ridden and dangerous urban council estates.

 

Any evidence for the sweeping statement? I don't know of any  specific cases, personally, where a long term tenant was forced out prematurely but I know of many who continued to live in estate properties (continuing to pay rent of course) until they move to retirement accommodation or die; whichever occured first. That's from experience. They may have found the accommodation, and the landlord, less than ideal but country folk were rarely daft enough to be lured by streets paved with chip wrappers and tin cans.

 

With increased agricultural mechanisation there was less of a need for labour and hence tied accommodation leading to estate asset disposal or letting to non-staff.

 

Save the offence for subjects better understood.

[Ravenser]

What adverts you put on a layout is very much up to you. Therefore you aren't compelled to choose a particular poster.

 

I don't think I would put a Saville poster on a layout , for my own peace of mind. A vintage cigarette poster is another matter. Such things were - and nobody was compelled to smoke. (I never did). For the most part the risks were unknown , or partly known and thought bearable , until the later 70s. It might be thought as  a sobering warning of the perils of ignorance rather than a promotion of smoking .

 

It's when you seem to be celebrating or promoiting a positive view of a notorious malicious horror that the issues arise. I would be unwilling to model the German railways between about 1930 and 1945, because the political/social situation could not be avoided and the subject is not a subject to celebrate. (In general you model a prototype because it attracts you..). Apartheidt South Africa heads towards that territory

 

In a more muted vein, I would personally be very hesitant about modelling a prototype in the former Soviet bloc  before 1990. But I would think it intolerable to object to someone who was actually there modelling the railways of their youth. (For what it is worth, when interrailing in the mid 80s I consciously avoided the countries beyond the Iron Curtain because I didn't want to bankroll a totalitarian regime - and potential invader - through putting money in to prop up their economy , or be fed a carefully manipulated regime propaganda view)

 

Similarly I'm doubtful I would want to model the American South, or even go there. But then I'm not much interested in US prototype and I've spent a grand total of 7 or 8 nights in the US in my entire life - a total that may not ever rise given the state of the world and the deteriorating socio-political situation in North America

 

Those bra adverts were somewhat crass and poor taste in the 90s , and somewhat peripheral too. They are more so now - so why bother? I'd wince and roll my eyes and mutter "why ?"and move on, but I'm certainly not going to make any Official Complaints. Bad taste is regrettable but not a hanging matter.

 

Two things that are worth comment, and in at least one case should be avoided. Occasionally you see on a steam-era French layout which features a brothel. Oo la-la! But I once tripped over a website for a French TV series about such a place - and the legal regulations governing them seem to have been quite appalling, amounting to state-sponsered sex slavery . Apparently the girls would be arrested by the police and returned if they tried to leave. I'm sure the modellers thought they were just perpetrating the equivalent of a saucy postcard - but the reality seems to have been grim and need not be modelled 

 

And in a much lighter vein - a notorious lighting accessory  which is a sign for a strip club. Now such places are vastly better for the occupants  than the "sealed houses" of the French Third Republic, but they aren't very common at all. This just looks like going out of your way to poke everyone else in the eye...

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, Ravenser said:

 

Not quite as daft as it seems to us. In its discreet stud-contact form 3-rail AC is still big business in Germany , so it isn't a hopeless dead duck

 

Quite, and there seems to be a good bit of Marklin H0 in the States as well despite the DCC revolution and despite their extra space.  Do Peco still do their stud contact strips?

 

Our transatlantic colonial cousins seem to be much less inhibited than we are when it comes to using setrack and very tight curves, perhaps because their stock doesn't have buffers to lock on them, and of course they're not as tight to scale in H0.  8'x4' layouts with insane curvature, main lines crossing on the level, and spiral to 2 or 3 levels above the main baseboard seem common, a bit trainsetty to my mind but it takes all sorts; wouldn't do for me but I'm not condemning it!

 

 

27 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

 

Any evidence for the sweeping statement? I don't know of any  specific cases, personally, where a long term tenant was forced out prematurely but I know of many who continued to live in estate properties (continuing to pay rent of course) until they move to retirement accommodation or die; whichever occured first. That's from experience. They may have found the accommodation, and the landlord, less than ideal but country folk were rarely daft enough to be lured by streets paved with chip wrappers and tin cans.

 

It's exactly what happened to several hill sheep farmers that were known to my Valleys rellys in the 60s, in one case a tenant sheep farmer being moved to a new council property on land bought from his previous landlord, this in the 70s at Penrhys, which is pretty desolate (tell you what, let's take all our most impoverished families and stick 'em up top of a 1,700' mountain in the wind and rain in a poorly built housing eyesore that won an award from architects who live well out of sight of them, and not run any buses after 6 or at all on Sundays, what possible effects of social deprivation and poverty-related crime/drug addection could possible ever result, what a good idea!).  He may have committed suicide or been murdered when his house was ransacked and set on fire a few years later, this is unclear.

 

The whole story of the Penrhys estate is pretty disgraceful, especially shameful from a council with a deep history in socialism.  The idea was plausible; architect award winning design to minimise the effect of the mountaintop wind, and a genuine need to house people who could not afford to buy their rented terraced home which were coming on to the market at the time further down the hill.  A few of these estates appeared on moutaintops around this period, none of which attracted the best of reputations, such as Mount (un)Pleasant in the Cynon Valley, Beddau (Colditz), and the Gurnos at Merthyr (surely this would now be developed as executive luxury housing, on the National Park border), but Penrhys was the worst.  I went up there for gigs with a band I'm involved with a couple of times in the 90s, and the genuinely well intentioned advice was to be back down off the estate before nightfall, or by 6 o'clock in summer; it was serious indian country up there! 

 

 

 

I could hardly blame them for the attitude, it was pretty obvious that this was a punishment posting by NIMBY people who didn't want them in the valley any more.  A society can cope with problem families if they are thinly spread, but grouping them to stop the complaines only makes more problem families!  The bus companies refused to even run over the moutain road between Pentre and Ferndale, never mind stopping at the estate, after six because the kids stoned the buses and their older siblings shot at them, not always with airguns.  The police generally ignored the place and went in mob-handed if they had to.  The third world isn't always overseas...

 

Common end for sheep farmers is something like this; the bills mount up, the eviction notice is served, and the farmer goes into the barn with the dog, a shotgun, and two shells.  The dog knows what's going to happen, poor sod, but goes along meekly out of faithfullness.  The door is closed, and there are two bangs.  This is because of fear of the council estates as much as anything else!  Rural poverty is still with us, make no mistake.

Edited August 20, 2022 by The Johnster

[AY Mod]

6 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

The dog knows what's going to happen but goes along meekly out of faithfullness.

 

OK, you win the 'added for dramatic effect' award for the day; just when I was trying to bring some balance to the generalisation.

[The Johnster]

1 minute ago, AY Mod said:

 

OK, you win the 'added for dramatic effect' award for the day; just when I was trying to bring some balance to the generalisation.

 

Fair enough, Andy.  Drama was deliberate for an issue I consider ignored and glossed over, but perhaps there are better fora!

[wombatofludham]

With regard to tied housing, if you drive around some deeply rural counties you'll often find small groups of council housing in the middle of nowhere.  These largely date from the 1930s onwards, and more so in the 1950s, and were built to house rural workers following the demise of tied housing, as well as local what would now be termed "key workers" (village bobby, head teacher etc).  From what I recall of my Planning degree, the rural economy went into a steep recession in the 1930s triggered by the financial crash, which led to farms closing, tenant farmers and their workers being evicted from their tied accommodation, which was only really resolved as we approached the war and the Government invested heavily in bringing land back into productive use.  Some of these isolated council houses are a direct consequence of this period, a visible reminder today of a deeply troubled rural economy.

Much as I will stop and admire all layouts at a show, regardless of subject, as a recognition of the model maker's skill, I do sometimes find the "chocolate box, Miss Marpleshire" rural branch line subjects a bit contradictory in that in many cases the scenes shown are too well modelled, clean, with every tiny figure "knowing their place", but in many cases avoiding the dirt and squalor that would have been there.  Which of course is the modeller's prerogative and doesn't detract from the skills and care taken with the model.

[PMP]

1 hour ago, Jim Martin said:

Was he? I didn't know that (although it wouldn't have been that surprising in an American male of his generation). I know about his wife skipping the country with his negatives.

 

Jim 

It’s utter made up bollox, there’s no truth to it whatsoever.

Bearing in mind the recent BLM protests in the USA and heightened awareness of racial issues you’d think that Winston Link’s museum might have attracted some attention if he were as @The Johnsterhas described him. Why do I say that! Well Roanoke where the museum is based has a white population of 60% and a black population of 30%. Roanoke houses the Harrison Museum of African American Culture.

Anyone remember seeing these images of ‘End Racism Now’ painted on the street? 
 

Now you’d think if your city has a 30% black population, a celebrated museum regarding their culture and history, that someone might have noted that a world famous ‘unrepentant and confirmed racist’ photographer had a museum in their city, and perhaps that wasn’t ‘on message’.

 

Unless of course it was a typically fact free contribution from that forum member. The irony doesn’t escape me that in a discussion about racism etc and the hobby, that there’s a post defaming someone as a racist who wasn’t, and that hasn’t been corrected when challenged on it by three people.

[kevinlms]

1 hour ago, Clive Mortimore said:

It did from the point where Kevin started on about asbestos.

 

You're joking, considering much of the rubbish in this thread, well before I mentioned asbestos!

[Clive Mortimore]

2 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

You're joking, considering much of the rubbish in this thread, well before I mentioned asbestos!

Fair point Kevin.

[Nearholmer]

31 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

Save the offence for subjects better understood.

I can give a personal example of a case where the story doesn’t quite fit the stock “evil landlord; victimised tied worker” picture too.

 

My grandfather was head gardener on a small estate, with a very nice tied house, a quite large ‘arts and crafts’ cottage, which my grandmother kept immaculate. His Lordship expired, Young Lordship inherited, and held a great many parties with lots of film stars, and lived a high life, and, er, sort of got into financial trouble pretty soon. The estate was rented by The US Ambassador for a period, and my grandfather was kept on, but eventually the place was sold, and the new owner couldn’t run to keeping the gardens as they had been kept. So, out on his ear?

 

Not quite. Young Lordship was a cabinet minister by this time, so wangled my grandfather a job keeping the grounds of a big government property, and he and new owner pulled strings somewhere so that my grandparents moved to a new council house, on what was a very civilised and pleasant estate in the next village.

 

Now, One might wonder about abuse of office, but Young Lordship did at least make sure that his erstwhile ‘outdoor servant’ was looked after.

 

In a strange footnote, I was on a cycling tour in the area a couple of years back and noticed that that he Big House is now a B&B, so out of nostalgia and curiosity decided to stay there one night. I expected it must have been sold on, but not a bit of it, the landlady was the very same person who had bought it all those years ago, the woman who made my grandfather redundant, and impressively ancient too. And, why does she let rooms as a B&B? To raise funds to pay a gardener to restore the grounds as far as possible to the condition my grandfather had them in fifty years ago. I had a long matter with the old lady and the gardener, who in another strange quirk of fate has two hobbies: cycle touring, and steam railways.

 

Apologies for OT ramble, but it does make the point that people are not simple animals.

 

 

 

 

[F-UnitMad]

25 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

 

Our transatlantic colonial cousins ....  8'x4' layouts with insane curvature, main lines crossing on the level,

The US prototype will go through tighter curvature than UK stock, for precisely the same reason - buckeye couplers & no buffers.

And an awful lot of American main lines DO cross on the level, at 90° or so, so whilst on an 8 x 4 sheet yes, a figure 8 looks (and is) very train set-ish, it is replicating something prototypical (a 90° diamond) that is far more common Over There than it is Over Here. 😝👍

[kevinlms]

8 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I can give a personal example of a case where the story doesn’t quite fit the stock “evil landlord; victimised tied worker” picture too.

 

My grandfather was head gardener on a small estate, with a very nice tied house, a quite large ‘arts and crafts’ cottage, which my grandmother kept immaculate. His Lordship expired, Young Lordship inherited, and held a great many parties with lots of film stars, and lived a high life, and, er, sort of got into financial trouble pretty soon. The estate was rented by The US Ambassador for a period, and my grandfather was kept on, but eventually the place was sold, and the new owner couldn’t run to keeping the gardens as they had been kept. So, out on his ear?

 

Not quite. Young Lordship was a cabinet minister by this time, so wangled my grandfather a job keeping the grounds of a big government property, and he and new owner pulled strings somewhere so that my grandparents moved to a new council house, on what was a very civilised and pleasant estate in the next village.

 

Now, One might wonder about abuse of office, but Young Lordship did at least make sure that his erstwhile ‘outdoor servant’ was looked after.

 

In a strange footnote, I was on a cycling tour in the area a couple of years back and noticed that that he Big House is now a B&B, so out of nostalgia and curiosity decided to stay there one night. I expected it must have been sold on, but not a bit of it, the landlady was the very same person who had bought it all those years ago, the woman who made my grandfather redundant, and impressively ancient too. And, why does she let rooms as a B&B? To raise funds to pay a gardener to restore the grounds as far as possible to the condition my grandfather had them in fifty years ago. I had a long matter with the old lady and the gardener, who in another strange quirk of fate has two hobbies: cycle touring, and steam railways.

 

Apologies for OT ramble, but it does make the point that people are not simple animals.

 

 

 

 

Ah yes, but the storyline is one that is the basis of many British murder TV shows, such as Miss Marple or Father Brown. 

🙂

[Colin_McLeod]

Were not many level crossing kerpers living in tied accommodation?

[Nearholmer]

Lots of ‘railway servants’ lived in railway houses until the 1960/70s, and very many continued to live in them even after lines were closed or crossings automated. I knew several booking clerks and general clerks who lived in stations that had closed in the 1960s, still working for BR as clerks in the 70s and 80s.

 

The big sell-off of railway houses happened as the sitting tenants expired or moved to old folks homes in that period. Each week there were lists of houses for sale IIRC in the back of the regional staff vacancy list. I was looking to buy my first house c1980, and went to see several, all of which were in such terrible disrepair that I decided firmly against bidding (sealed bids to Waterloo General Offices IIRC). BR had done the bare minimum or less to keep what were cheaply-built places standing up - they needed bathrooms, re-roofing, re-wiring, in some cases treatment of damp, all the exterior woodwork was rotten, non-cavity walls, mind-boggling access restrictions ……. Fine if you had ready cash, a nightmare if you needed a mortgage!

 

 

Edited August 20, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Ravenser]

In view of the idea of tip-toing around "sensitive subjects" I think I ought to link this - one of RMWebs more fascinating layout threads

 

Belfast Great Victoria St - A

Belfast Great Victoria St - B

 

Now I don't believe an outsider from the mainland would have dared to hint at any of this , but then they wouldn't have had the local knowledge to depict any of it

[roythebus1]

On 14/08/2022 at 21:06, Wheatley said:

I don't think any reasonable person, even non-smokers ,could reasonably object to historically correct tobacco advertising anymore than all but the extreme fringes of the temperance movement could object to "My Guinness, my goodness !" billboards. After all, they were everywhere.  But Robertson's jam's onetime motif  is likely to a) cause real offence and b) start a fight as to whether it ought to cause offence or not, so personally that particular one is probably best avoided. 

 

In 20 years time our block trains of coal and oil will probably raise a few eyebrows. 

a friend has a preserved Maidstone Corporation bus. It had robinsons Marmalade adverts on the front, complete with golly. He's taken the decision to remove the golly pics from the adverts in case it causes offence whilst out on the roads. His choice, his bus.