A Wheel Standard Conundrum

[BachelorBoy]

On 02/09/2023 at 16:58, Il Grifone said:

I think there was a general slow shift to metric from about 1951 (all my school rulers had Imperial one side and Metric the other), possibly to prepare for joining the Common Market as a founder member. 

Then again it could have been a business decision to sell rulers: a metric-and-imperial ruler is more useful than an imperial-only ruler.

[goldfish]

17 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

When it comes to Greenly’s overall reputation, I tend to the view that we are standing on the shoulders of (a rather slightly built and diffident looking) giant, and that without his input the hobby of model railways wouldn’t have flourished to the extent that it did c1909-1914, depriving us of the legacy of what was without question the first golden age of r-t-r, and may never have taken off at all. He and WJB-L were an ideally matched pair to get the thing going: an ambitious entrepreneur with advanced social skills and a flair for self promotion, and a diligent technician with the skills to help turn visions into reality. 

 

 

It might have been a golden age for r-t-r but it was one confined to a very small well heeled section of society. As a commercial reality r-t-r didn't exist before Hornby came on to the scene. The high point of the second golden age must have been Hornby's introduction of the No.2 Specials in 1929.

[Not Jeremy]

Quote

When it comes to Greenly’s overall reputation, I tend to the view that we are standing on the shoulders of (a rather slightly built and diffident looking) giant, and that without his input the hobby of model railways wouldn’t have flourished to the extent that it did c1909-1914, depriving us of the legacy of what was without question the first golden age of r-t-r, and may never have taken off at all. He and WJB-L were an ideally matched pair to get the thing going: an ambitious entrepreneur with advanced social skills and a flair for self promotion, and a diligent technician with the skills to help turn visions into reality. 

 

That may well be true, but given the little known fact that John here produced (against the general flow of the dead hand of G1MRA) one of the most exquisite (scale) Gauge One layouts ever, "Great Halviggan", and that Gauge 1 is even today firmly stuck in the boondocks, (as Iain Rice would have said) then I feel compelled to observe that he may well also deserve a bit of a slap for promotion of Gauge One at 10mm to the foot.

 

John's Great Halviggan was one of the most exquisite small scenic model railways to have ever been created, in my opinion. It featured as "Portfolio" in MRJ 20 (back in 1988) and also features in Iain's "Creating Cameo Layouts" book of 2016. In which (P 105) Iain says that it was John's model that inspired and led him to his own "Trerice" series of models.

 

The point being that "Great Halviggan" was built at 3/8" to the foot scale (1/32) instead of the bloody awful 10mm to the foot scale that Henry promulgated.

 

Apologies, little to do with the current thread, but I felt suddenly and strangely compelled to chip in...

[Nearholmer]

10 hours ago, goldfish said:

It might have been a golden age for r-t-r but it was one confined to a very small well heeled section of society.

The top-notch stuff, of course, but if you read the old mags, they contain articles from all sorts of people, hacking about cheap tinplate stock to “improve” it, building lineside fences from match-sticks, using their newborn sons as excuses to start a layout etc.

 

It wasn’t just about super-skilled model engineers and the sons of the upper middle classes, although both of those communities were well represented; it was about a broader constituency too.

 

10 hours ago, goldfish said:

As a commercial reality r-t-r didn't exist before Hornby came on to the scene

 

Utter nonsense.

 

Hornby entered the toy train market because supplies of both toys and the slightly better class of r-t-r were cut off while the customers and suppliers were busily trying to kill one another. They dismantled and copied Bing products in order to create their first range of trains*, then value-engineered and Meccano-ised the product, before moving up the scale of fidelity in the late 1920s. Have you never seen a Bing 4-4-0 ‘George the Fifth’, or a Precursor Tank, or a Peckett 0-4-0ST, or any of the other German products that fit into “affordable by the lower middles” bracket? They were imported and sold in large quantities (which is why they are still so common).

 

If you look lower down the scale of fidelity into good quality toys, and then into pure toys of decreasing fidelity and quality, the place was awash with German products before WW1, they served a mass, not just an elite, market, and they were so important to Britain that the Government took very active steps to promote British toy manufacture to fill the gap left when they ceased to be available.

Commercial r-t-r in Britain started with German imports, not with Hornby, and our old friend Henry Greenly was hugely instrumental in working with German suppliers on products to fit the British market.

 

*The locos for their preceding Raylo toy, which can’t be called s model railway or train/set in the conventional sense, were made for them by Maerklin in Germany. Maerklin also made the Meccano clockwork motors before WW1.

 

 

Edited September 11, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Il Grifone]

On 11/09/2023 at 08:15, BachelorBoy said:

Then again it could have been a business decision to sell rulers: a metric-and-imperial ruler is more useful than an imperial-only ruler.

 

Undoubtedly, but there would have been little demand without a shift to metric.