Victorian Train-Set to Contemporary Railway Modelling

[Southernboy]

The other day, out of idle curiosity, I started wondering about the history of railway modelling.

 

I am not aware of any books or essays on the subject as a whole - although equally I haven't gone out of my way to look for one either.

 

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My picture of Victorian train sets comes from that featured in the 1970 film 'The Railway Children' (set in 1905): A basic circle of track on the parlour floor, with a locomotive and a couple of carriages perhaps. Imagination did the rest.

 

In fact model trains precede that by more than 60 years. The rich kid's 'Must Have' toy of the 1840s was the Birmingham Dribbler or Carpet Railway: It was a very basic toy locomotive that ran on the floor with no track.

 

Moving forward some years, somewhere in my Parents' loft I have some model railway magazines from the mid-1920s: My memory is that they focused on the constructional aspects of model track and locomotives only, but not the scenic or 'authentic railway' side of things at all.

 

Yet today we have fully-fledged 'model railways', often crafted to a very accurate degree. And not only is great care taken in terms of stock and scenery, but also in respect of correct signalling, running to timetables and the like.

 

So what happened to change things?

 

What are the milestones of our hobby?

 

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For instance, I wonder when did the first tin-plate 'line-side accessories' arrive in the shops?

 

When did electricity take over from models powered by clockwork or steam?

 

Where there particular 'movers-and-shakers' (like Peter Denny and his layout Buckingham) that inspired a step-change toward more authenticity within the hobby?

 

Did C.J. Freezer's ubiquitous books of track plans motivate a new generation to build more than a simple oval of track plus siding?

 

Have commercial interests, alongside ever-greater disposable incomes and leisure time, combined in a happy marriage of convenience?

 

I guess the reduction in scales (0 through 00 to N and beyond) have opened up the hobby to those in smaller homes (or those in larger homes with big ambitions!)

 

And what about the internet? For inspiration we no longer have to wait for a monthly magazine to arrive at the newsagents or for one or two annual shows to come round - we can now look every night at layouts and products from all around the world to fuel our interests and spur us on.

 

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As I mentioned, this question is just out of curiosity and I probably won't be able to comment much on replies I'm afraid. But nevertheless, I thought it may be an interesting question to put to the floor ....

 

... so over to you gentlemen.

[scots region]

It'll be mentioned before long, there is the Nostalgia aspect to model railways. In that enthusiasts wish to recreate their childhoods in miniature, this ultimately lead to the greater drive towards realism

[Southernboy]

Thanks for kicking-off scots region.

 

Actually, one other question entered my mind, but I forgot to mention it.

 

I wonder how 'train sets' or 'railway modelling' (in their various guises) have sat in the league of popular hobbies over the last 160 years.

 

I imagine initially the first train sets were relatively expensive, but over time, in relation to (say) interests ranging from stamp collecting to playing computer games, I wonder how we have fared?

[Unchuffed]

There's a quite readable overview, in Model Railways, 1838-1939 by Cuthbert Hamilton Ellis (Dec 1962) - which is relatively easy to find at reasonable prices on Amazon etc. Possibly not the most rigorous book on the subject, but includes somes personal anecdotes, by a chap who's a great enthusiast, with something of the manner of the mildly eccentric English gent of the early twentieth century.

 

If you're not familar with, him his paintings of (mainly) pre-grouping railways are worth looking out - although they're all a bit clean, and he couldn't paint people for toffee.

[Miss Prism]

It's no longer a rich kid's/man's hobby as it was pre-WWII. The introduction of plastic was a key technology transfer, as was the development of smaller motors, and the gradual use of nickel for rail (still extremely expensive in the post-WWII shortages) instead of brass. In terms of popularising the 'vision', Freezer's predessor was Edward Beale, but I guess the most-quoted influence on a 'modern' model railway (as opposed to railway models primarily of locos etc) was John Ahern.

[martin_wynne]

What are the milestones of our hobby?

 

The change from clockwork/3-rail/stud contact to 2-rail electrification was clearly a step-change in the journey from toy train set to realistic modelling. Two key developments made that possible:

 

Commercially injection-moulded plastic was perhaps the most significant development, replacing printed tinplate for rolling stock, and awful fibre-based or tinplate track. The entire current RTR industry is impossible to imagine without plastic moulding.

 

And for the modeller an important development was the introduction of printed circuit boards (previously a military technology) for consumer electronics in the late 1950s. This made copper-clad laminate available for hobby use, which was eagerly adopted by modellers as a simple and reliable way to build model railway track for 2-rail electrification.

 

regards,

 

Martin.

[edcayton]

I have a book called "Model Railway Engines" by J.E.Minns, published by Octopus in 1973 bought for me by a relative many moons ago. ISTR that Octopus books were reprints sold by Marks and Spencers way back, I have some car books from the same source.

 

TBH I have barely looked at this book since I got it, your thread reminded me of it and I have dug it out.Alot of it is about large scale museum standard hand-built loco's, up to and including miniature railways and the RHDR and RER.

 

Of more interest to the OP there is some early commercial "train set" stuff with a fair bit of Bing and Marklin, a Basset Lowke 0 gauge electric LNER B17 from the 1930's and a company I had not heard of called Carette. The latter firm produced a lovely live steam model of an SECR articulated rail motor, scale not given in the caption and I don't have time to look deeper into the text at the moment.

 

My favourite is a set called the Rotary Railway Express from the 1850's which consists of a clockwork hub with a 12 inch long arm that pulls the train around in a circle (no track), a bit like my Jetex race car from more than a century later.

 

Ed

 

There is a "piddler" which may be related to your "dribbler"!

[The Black Hat]

Surely its got to start with someone invented the train for people to then want to produce in minature form? The first victorian models were all working small steam engines, before electric models then arrived that were even smaller....

[Jol Wilkinson]

As far as my memory serves, Bing and Carette produced early tinplate models in the larger model gauges (1 - 3) from the late 1800s or early 1900s. The LNWR was a very popular subject and the later models were, for tinplate, very good representations. They were mainly clockwork or steam, with some electric. Electric supply was not that common in many houses before WW2, so battery or accumulator power was required. These models were also, by the standards of the time, fairly expensive and probably out of reach of most households.

 

Bassett Lowke sold some Bing under their own brand, before becoming a manufacturer in their own right. Tinplate was also used by Hornby for their O gauge models, adopting die cast mazak for the Hornby Dublo.

 

These were all really regarded as toys, models being something you built yourself (or paid someone else to do it for you).

[PhilH]

Boys liking toys....

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

As far as commercial production is concerned according to a book by Brian Hollingsworth, a Nuremburg toymaker 'Guntermann' had a clockwork train out by 1855. Other Nuremburg names that figure large in early production are Issmayer and Plank in addition to the better known Bing, Marklin and Carrette.

 

The MRC celebrated its centenary in 2010, so that's a marker for enough interest in model railways (as opposed to tinplate toys) for a group of like minded individuals to form a society.

 

As concerning the 'obvious' two rail electric power system which now dominates the market, (and probably will continue to do so) this milestone relates to the availability of tough plastics to provide the necessary reliable insulation, as already remarked on by Miss Prism. But when precisely this first came about is unknown, 'sometime in the 1920s in the USA' is the accepted guess.

[bmthtrains - David]

Interesting topic, I was looking at a 1953 issue of railway modeller the other day, and it got me thinking, when did the quality of modelling suddenly turn 'good'. Seems that even in the 50s, it was a sort of mechanical interest in the models rather than scenic modelling.

 

I guess the advent of modern technologies to create things like better scenic powders, trees, plastic kits etc, must have given modellers better tools to work with?

 

David

[martin_wynne]

when did the quality of modelling suddenly turn 'good'

 

The main driver of that was the invention of the fiddle yard -- largely unknown before the mid 50s. More specifically the development of the branch line terminus to fiddle yard style of layout to fit the much smaller post-ww2 housing and allow the use of larger radius curves than the traditional train-set oval .

 

Martin.

[westerner]

Quite often in pre-war days model railways were model RAILWAYS, ie several stations run to a timetable and often the power was clockwork. Post war there was a move to model a single station and operate that, probably caused by less room.

[Southernboy]

Thanks for replies everyone, all very interesting.

 

martin_wynne:

In the lineage of railway modelling history, the innovation of the 'fiddle yard' strikes me as a particularly interesting development. I guess in it's time it was quite a radical departure from the norm.

 

I wonder who did it first, and how it was received at the time.

[scots region]

Thanks for replies everyone, all very interesting.

 

martin_wynne:

In the lineage of railway modelling history, the innovation of the 'fiddle yard' strikes me as a particularly interesting development. I guess in it's time it was quite a radical departure from the norm.

 

I wonder who did it first, and how it was received at the time.

 

As I imagine most innovations are received: some scoffed, some were intrigued and some made tea.

[Pacific231G]

Thanks for replies everyone, all very interesting.

 

martin_wynne:

In the lineage of railway modelling history, the innovation of the 'fiddle yard' strikes me as a particularly interesting development. I guess in it's time it was quite a radical departure from the norm.

 

I wonder who did it first, and how it was received at the time.

 

So far as I've been able to discover it was Bill Banwell and Frank Applegate and their 0 scale "Maybank" layout seems to have been received with rapturous applause. The layout was started in about 1930 and first exhibited on November 5th 1932 at the Wealdstone Methodist Meccano Club exhibtion. It then appeared at the Model Railway Club's Easter exhibtion in 1933 and at almost every other Easter show until the war (which thanks to the Luftwaffe the layout didn't survive) and the layout was run to a well planned timetable that took about 35 minutes to run through.

The layout was 31 feet long built on two seven and four six foot baseboards about two feet wide. It represented a four platform Great Central terminus capable of handling four coach trains (hauled by up to 4-6-0 express locos) with a double track main line and a steeply graded line to a high level loco depot hiding a four road motorised sector plate (these were built on two 7ftx2ft baseboards one above the other)

 

 

The plan still looks pretty good and the layout was clearly very advanced for its time. When it was first exhibited at Wealdstone and at the 1933 MRC Easter show there was a two road high level goods yard behind the station but this had gone when the layout was described at greater length in MRN in 1934. At that time most people were building either roundy round or point to point layouts but, when his father retired as a builder through ill health, Bill Banwell - who was still a very young man-got the use of a 32 foot long but very narrow ladder shed and the terminus to fiddle yard was seen as the best way to use that space but it wasa new idea. The layout was also designed from the start to be exhibited as well as being a home layout.

I've found just one other layout, the 3.5mm/ft scale "Alheeba State Railway" described in MRN in December 1933 that had a simple off stage run round loop so a sort of fiddle yard but it was a couple of years later and not AFAIK ever exhibited. It did though include a fairly well developed townscape and some countryside so John Ahern wasn't quite the first to model beyond the railway fence. Apart from Alheeba, Maybank seems to have been the only layout with a proper fiddle yard that there is any reference to until after the war.

 

From the write ups on exhibtions before the war Maybank also seems to have often been almost the only fully fledged operating layout to be shown- most exhibits were single models rather in the tradition of model engineering shows- and its influence was clearly felt. I think Banwell and Applegate really may have been the inventors of the terminus to fiddle yard layout as hundreds of modellers saw Maybank before the war and a huge number of layouts used the idea from the 1940s onward in Great Britain but not for some time anywhere else. Most of those were of course BLTs but Maybank was an MLT.

[BR60103]

I expect that small engineering models were built to test principles before full size locomotives were constructed.

 

The one date I can offer is 1900. Joshua Lionel Cowan produced an electrically powered wagon which ran on a circle of track. He thought it would attract customers to look in shop windows; after they did they wanted to buy the little wagon.

I think the outfit was 2-rail -- metal straps in wooden ties (sleepers).

[westerner]

Back in 2001 BRM produced a Spring Special called Classic layouts by Bob Essery.which includes a history of model railway development from 1899.

[Southernboy]

Pacific231G:

 

What an interesting history there! And the trackplan even more so - a sort of 'Minories plus' (although I realise it pre-dates Minories of course).

[Castle]

Hi All,

 

I am surprised that the Madder Valley - John Ahern's 1930s work is highly influential and is rightly recognised as a seminal piece. The fact that we can still go and see it thanks to the great people of Pendon is a further bonus... It was great to see some of Peter Denny's work in action at Alexandra Palace this year too.

 

I guess this is a lesson that we should be taking care of our own history as much as representing it in miniature form. The full size preservation movement has suffered from this a bit too. There has been a realisation amongst a number of the older members of the GWS who have recently started to write stuff down and gather up the history of the society before there isn't anyone of that era left to tell it!

 

All the best,

 

Castle

[TT3]

A very interesting topic, and especially as I am currently re reading the Buckingham Book from 1972 pretty timley.

 

I think, there are a number of different phases of true railway modelling as opposed to to the roundy train sets. I would think proper railway modelling has been around alot longer than it would appear but far less widespread due to the model engineering/scratchbuilt nature of the exercise - Pendon, Denny or even 2mm Bert Groves.

 

I think, the humble train set - the roundy toy for children has been around as long as we have had railways, what I think has changed dramatically is the propensity for individuals to move beyond the toy train to the model railway.

 

I think there are a number of drivers for this:

1. the long-term decline in relative cost for the models making RTR avaliable to pretty much everyone, e.g. decline of the rich mans toy in the billard room syndrome
   
2. the increase in leisure time to persue interests. This is very important and linked with point the point above. Work and leisure time commitments have changed dramitcally since the eary days of model railways. In the early days it was the idle rich who could afford to spend time playing with trains. The middle classes and workers were lucky to have enough $$ to pay for family and living expenses while working long hours before retiring for a couple of years before death.
   

From what I can determine the big growth in MR coincinded with the big changes post WW2, and to a greater extent in the 50s and 1960s we we experienced (on average) greater disposable income, smaller families, longer life expectancy, smaller houses (in the UK at least). These changes freed up time and resources for the average enthusiast to devote to MR.

 

Responding to these changes, what we have seen is the expansion of propietry 'scale' models enabling an transition from the train set to model railway without requiring the necessary scratchbuilding/engineering skills.

 

The avaliablity of such models, or at least major components enabled the spread of modelling to the masses and raised the standards. For 4mm scale, HD and later Triang as the prime mover for this scale would have assisted many in moving beyond the train set stage. Furthermore, having a reasonable range RTR models will assist in establishing the critical mass for the scale for the entry of kits, detailing parts, wheels..

 

A comment was made about model railways becoming 'good' in the model press over recent years. This is partulary notable in RM looking at 4mm in the 50s and 60s, 2mm in the 70s and 80s.

 

However, the important difference is there was an apparent expansion in the number of people attempting to model something or build a railway like layout.

[westerner]

Re reading Classic layouts supplement that I mentioned in my previous post, it would seem that whilst scenery might have been lacking and curves even in O gauge could be an eye watering 2ft radius and power was often clockwork (Think of the Sherwood section) there was much more emphasis on getting the operation correct and I don't just mean running to a sequence or timetable. Today we have many layouts which are very good scenically but more often than not not run prototypically (my own included). Of course there are modern layouts that are good scenically and are run prototypically but I suspect they are in the minority. I suspect the reason fro the change in emphasis (particularly with steam layouts) is that in the past it could all be observed whilst that is not the case now.

 

I could be said that early layouts did not look like real railways but were worked like real railways, and nowadys our laouts look like real railways but often aren't worked like real railways.