A stroll through Railway Modellers past

[kevinlms]

13 hours ago, Martync said:

Interesting that the price of the issue being discussed was 1/6 or 7 1/2p. The first RM I bought (Sept 72) was 18p - I suspect a decimal conversion of 3/6. So it only went up 2 bob in 20 years.  I haven't bought an RM for ages, but suspect its not far short of £5 by now........although a somewhat different magazine of course!!

It might have been 'only two bob' rise, but that is still well in excess of 100%.

 

For the record the issue for July 1992 (20 years on) the price was 1.65 pounds, which is about 9 times!

 

So for a current issue costing 5.30 is about 3 times as much, in 30 years, it's not so bad!

 

The big increases in inflation were the 70s and 80s, not what most people think today.

[Pacific231G]

13 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

 Monthly publication came with Sydney Pritchard's  purchase of the title from Ian Allan with November 1951 (vol2 no 13) the first Peco edition. That and the December edition  were in the original format but Peco enlarged it from vol 3 no 15 in January 1952. Perhaps Peco found a way to overcome the paper shortage.

I've just been leafing through the early RMs (I have 1-7 loose and 8 onwards as bound volumes) and hadn't previously noticed that in no. 12 Sept-Oct 1951 - the last Ian Allan edition- there is a notice saying that, from the next edition (Nov 1951), the magazine would be monthly and how that would affect subscriptions. It then gives the address for correspondence as Pecoway House etc. the proprietor" so clearly the sale had gone through by then. In the November edition there's quite a lot from CJF about moving the magazine and his hopes for its future. 

The business of the paper shortage is interesting because though MRN reduced its size and page count during the war and until 1949 (going to a "landscape" format in 1948 and 1949) by 1950 it had increased its size and was back up to 24 editorial pages. That leaves me wondering whether Ian Allan had simply had editorial problems with a monthly magazine.

[JohnR]

15 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

I've just been leafing through the early RMs (I have 1-7 loose and 8 onwards as bound volumes) and hadn't previously noticed that in no. 12 Sept-Oct 1951 - the last Ian Allan edition- there is a notice saying that, from the next edition (Nov 1951), the magazine would be monthly and how that would affect subscriptions. It then gives the address for correspondence as Pecoway House etc. the proprietor" so clearly the sale had gone through by then. In the November edition there's quite a lot from CJF about moving the magazine and his hopes for its future. 

The business of the paper shortage is interesting because though MRN reduced its size and page count during the war and until 1949 (going to a "landscape" format in 1948 and 1949) by 1950 it had increased its size and was back up to 24 editorial pages. That leaves me wondering whether Ian Allan had simply had editorial problems with a monthly magazine.

 

If I recall correctly, paper was in effect rationed between publishers, and IA having already a number of publications were having to spread their allocation of paper amongst a number of different magazines. 

[Pacific231G]

4 minutes ago, JohnR said:

 

If I recall correctly, paper was in effect rationed between publishers, and IA having already a number of publications were having to spread their allocation of paper amongst a number of different magazines. 

It was definitely rationed and MRN were only able to supply their subscribers so no newsagent sales. I can't find a definite date for the end of paper rationing but it would have gone completely by the Coronation in 1953. Clearly Peco were able to get a paper ration when they bought RM. Up till then, apart from catalogues, packaging and instructions, I think the only publication they'd produced (from 1949) was the Platelayer's Manual - basically a step by step guide to using their track components- and though they did use a certain amount of paper in their products,  notably the Peco foundation tape, this would be tiny in comparison with the paper needed for a monthly magazine. 

[RichardT]

Timber was also rationed/very difficult to get hold of, plus all other shortages caused by the concentration of industry on the export drive.  Hence the rise of the idea to build small branch line termini as a realistic modelling objective, as opposed to the “mainline spaghetti” layouts that were fashionable pre-war.  The Cyril Fry & Edward Beal layouts featured in these early RMs were essentially unachievable fantasy dream layouts for most new post-war modellers - a bit like mags featuring Rod Stewart’s layout today.  Cyril Freezer gets a lot of the credit for the BLT boom, as he used his new job to move the RM editorial line closer to the reality of most of his readers’ lives and bank balances.

 

Richard T

Edited March 1, 2022 by RichardT
Spelling

[Pacific231G]

It's interesting to compare the development of RM with the other magazines around at that time (MRC and MRN) My impression is that, for most people pre-war,  railway modelling was more about building models than building layouts. Layouts tended to be the preserve of the fairly wealthy or of clubs where members could run the models they'd built. 0 gauge was also by far the most popular scale so you'd need a lot of space to build any kind of main line layout and main lines and/or the trains that ran on them were what people modelled. I think that's still fairly true of 0 gauge now with the building of railway models perhaps more important than the building of  model railways: the running track seems to be a far more important feature of 0 gauge life than it is in the smaller scales. Those who were using 16.5mm (and 19mm) gauge seem to have mainly used it to build more extensive layouts (Edward Beal wasn't alone in that) than to have smaller layouts. 

 

After the war, 00 and EM (and H0 in other countries) became far more popular as did the charm of the bucolic branch line- which had previously been all but ignored. A lot of that may have been due to the efforts and writing of John Ahern, who seemed to be the only person actually building a layout during the war (he wasn't of course) though model building was clearly continuing. The combination of smaller scale and railways other than main lines made the personal layout available to far more people without needing to dedicate an entire room to one's hobby. RM under Cyril Freezer seems to have really picked up on that particular zeitgeist  well ahead of MRN and MRC (though it was in MRC that the Buckingham Branch first appeared)  It's not true that most layouts in RM were branch lines, there were also plenty of double track main lines, but there were enough to say to modellers "I could build something like that".

 

 

 

Edited March 2, 2022 by Pacific231G

[Nearholmer]

Chimes with my reading of it. 
 

The glimmerings of “4mm, simple but scenic” are visible in one or two pre-war articles, but it seems to have been Ahern who cemented the move (can you cement moves, or do you fluidise them?). The majority of genuinely small layouts pre-war seem to have been laid on dining room tables using Hornby Dublo ……. By boys who went to war and relieved the tension and tedium by thinking about building 4mm layouts maybe?

[Pacific231G]

Possibly and MRN (and presumably MRC also) was certainly reaching readers "OAS" (On Active Service) as their letters often appear in its wartime pages. I'm just looking though at John Ahern's intro to Miniature Building Construction and he was certain that the greater interest in scenic model railways was explaine by the possibilities from the introduction of the smaller gauges. He also says that it was A. Cosomati's "Alheeba State Railway" (December 1933 and Jan 1934 MRN) that "had more than a little to do with my Madder Valley Railway".

Looking at the docks section I think the influence on Maddeport is evident

 

Alheeba, which was 3.5m/ft scale  had complete townscapes and  countryside and was also the first private layout I've found that used the now familiar terminus to fiddle yard formula just before Bill Banwell and Frank Applegate's 0 gauge Maybank (which had no scenery beyond the railway fence but was described by Cyril Freezer as "the first of the modern (layouts)". I think they were all probably members of the MRC so the idea may have been floating around there.

 

Earlier on, in 1925 or 1926 ,A.R.Walkley who pioneered practical H0 with automatic  couplers and reversible permanent magnet  motors also wrote an article "too much railway" extolling the virtues of scenery.  He managed to include some in his 6ft x 1ft folding "portable goods yard". Unfortunately, though that layout didn't seem to lead to anything on similar lines in the pre-war period. All three of these pre-war layouts (Madder Valley was built durng the war) seem to have been  generally forgotten in the post war period but I think they sowed seeds. Maybank certainly inspired the teenage CJF who saw it at its last appearance at the Model Railway Club's Easter show in 1939 (It was destroyed in the Blitz and we're fortunate that the Madder Valley wasn't)    

[locomad2]

On 01/03/2022 at 17:57, RichardT said:

Timber was also rationed/very difficult to get hold of, plus all other shortages caused by the concentration of industry on the 

 

Richard T

According to my late father timber was "rationed" as late as 1957, you could only by it at "official" timber yards and for DIY restricted to 7s and 6d per week.

 

So his first house layout took 6 months to build as you could only buy so much per week.

 

Apparently "Sundeala" was not rationed at the time as it was sold as loft installation and someone though this would make idea base for layouts

[Nearholmer]

Interesting.

 

I’m pretty sure there wasn’t formal rationing, as in government imposed limits on consumption, but that the supply of timber could barely keep up with demand, so I wonder whether rationing system was something that local timber yards were applying of their own volition, maybe to prevent DIY users stripping their stocks, leaving them unable to supply loyal trade customers. 
 

The average wage for a man working full time in a manual job in 1957 was 241s/week (Hansard), so 7s 6d wasn’t a huge proportion of that, and can’t have bought a lot of timber.

 

Does Railway Modeller mention timber shortages at this date? You can see from the amount of re-using that people like Denny mentions that either supply or price must have been an issue. Just as price and quality are now!
 

 

 

 

[pete_mcfarlane]

On 03/03/2022 at 00:32, Pacific231G said:

Possibly and MRN (and presumably MRC also) was certainly reaching readers "OAS" (On Active Service) as their letters often appear in its wartime pages.    

Hermann Goering famously got his MRN subscription copies delivered to him in Berlin. 

On 03/03/2022 at 00:32, Pacific231G said:

 He also says that it was A. Cosomati's "Alheeba State Railway" (December 1933 and Jan 1934 MRN) that "had more than a little to do with my Madder Valley Railway".

 

Inventing your own country, and then inventing a railway to serve it, has a certain appeal. 

[Nearholmer]

Continuing to obsess about whether timber was in short supply in 1957, I dipped into the July 1957 edition, which was a good choice, because it contains an article about making model buildings for garden railways from wood, an article advocating using timber for parts of garden railways, and a long letter discussing the pros and cons of dexion vs timber to support baseboards. All speak as if timber is in ready supply, none mentions rationing, and none complain about quality (except about how easily ramin in small sections splits, which is no surprise given its grain structure).

 

The plot thickens.

 

PS: sheds are advertised for sale in virtually every month of 1957, again suggesting that timber supply wasnt greatly restricted.

 

PPS: December 1957 includes an article about building a double wardrobe to house a layout, made using about a thousand feet (I exagerate slightly) of 2 x 1.

 

 

 

Edited March 4, 2022 by Nearholmer

[RichardT]

16 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Continuing to obsess about whether timber was in short supply in 1957,

I think we probably need to distinguish between timber being formally “rationed” i.e. its supply being under government control, and colloquial use of “rationed” to mean “in short supply due to economic conditions”.
 

Timber was certainly formally rationed during the 1940s - hence utility furniture (the Domestic Furniture (Control of Manufacture and Supply (No 2)) Order 1942) and the  Women's Timber Corps (the “Lumber Jills”): policies intended to reduce consumption of wood for domestic purposes, reduce the need to import timber, and maximise domestic production to meet the demand from military & industrial users.

 

These restrictions continued after the war when the need for to shore up the pound and earn dollars meant diversion of all resources into industrial production for export. (Combined with the continued need to avoid importing timber which needed paying for in foreign currency).  

But rationing was increasingly unpopular, especially as it increased after 1945, instead of diminishing as people expected because we’d “won the war”.  The Conservative party used continued post-war rationing as a stick to beat the Labour government with, and rode on that wave to return to power in 1951.  Furniture rationing ended in 1952 and all rationing by 1954.  So yes, timber wasn’t formally rationed by 1957.

 

But I suspect that shortages of timber for domestic use - due to the increased demands of the building trade (the 1950s Conservative govt massively expanded the building of social housing), industry and the export drive - continued for a while after the end of formal rationing, only fading in the late 50s.  So, for most of the early years of RM it was indeed a case of “reduce, re-use and re-cycle” for layout boards!

 

Richard T

Edited March 5, 2022 by RichardT
Better English

[St Enodoc]

14 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

the pros and cons of dexion vs timber to support baseboards.

My first "proper" layout was supported by Dexion.

 

[pirouets]

I've been reading through the 50's recently and I do remember some articles talking about the challenge of getting timber. I think they were in the earlier part of the 50's. I had a flick back but could not find an example. My memory is in one article it talks about one of the base boards being on an old door. In Dec 59 the statement "Nowadays we have a wide choice of sheet materials" definitly implies the challenge has gone by then.

 

Have to say thouroughly enjoying looking back and realising how easy we have it. The other key theme seems to be how many layouts were systems to operate which is triggering bad thoughts about other ways I could use the space in the shed, even though the current layout is no where near finished.

[Pacific231G]

On 04/03/2022 at 16:59, pete_mcfarlane said:

Hermann Goering famously got his MRN subscription copies delivered to him in Berlin. 

Inventing your own country, and then inventing a railway to serve it, has a certain appeal. 

Presumably via Switzerland or Portugal. They were very careful not to give anything away even when the MRN offices were blitzed and I was amused by photos of the first S160 Consolidations, "sent to help our railways with the greater movements of wartime goods trains"

 

One of my favourite layouts to operate was Giles Barnabe's 0:16.5 Puerto Passeo (now part of his permanent layout) set on the imaginary tropical Isla Blanca (a tropical island about four times the size of the Isle of Wight but with a surprisingly similar railway map)  whose rather convoluted railway history has left it with a mixture of stock of British and American origin. Chris Ford described it very aptly as "Our Man in Havana meets Minories". It's a rare exhibtion layout that I can enjoy operating for two hours at a stretch but this was one.

 

Edited March 6, 2022 by Pacific231G

[RJS1977]

On 04/03/2022 at 01:07, locomad2 said:

According to my late father timber was "rationed" as late as 1957, you could only by it at "official" timber yards and for DIY restricted to 7s and 6d per week.

 

So his first house layout took 6 months to build as you could only buy so much per week.

 

 

"You can't get the wood, you know...."

[RJS1977]

On 05/03/2022 at 11:03, St Enodoc said:

My first "proper" layout was supported by Dexion.

 

 

The rear half of the 'permanent' section of the Reading Society of Model Engineers' 00 layout is likewise supported on Dexion (which also provides shelving to store the baseboards for the portable extension).

The boards do have folding legs as well, as the layout was occasionally taken out to exhibitions until the end of the millennium. Nowadays the only purpose of the folding legs is to get in the way of people attempting to replace point motors.... ;-)

[RJS1977]

On 19/02/2022 at 12:13, Pacific231G said:

and  J.N. Maskelyne (MRN). 

 

Now, that is a gentleman I would be interested to learn more about as he (along with the Earl of Northesk, Bill Worrall, Jack Shayler and a couple of others) were instrumental in reviving Reading Society of Model Engineers following WW2. Jack was the only one to survive into my time of membership of the club.

[Nearholmer]

He was everywhere in model railways, apparently always dressed the same, in what looked like Edwardian clothes. He must have been very “clubby”, because he appears in any photo showing a formal dinner, an opening of anything etc, and always looks cheerful.

 

This is the only biog detail I can quickly find online Maskelyne, John Nevil
Hendry (p. 15) illustrated on Plant Centenarian and short biography from which details abstracted: Born Wandsworth Common on 3 January 1892 and died 24 May 1960 (Obit. J. Instn Loco. Engrs., 1960, 50, 395). President of Stephenson Locomotive Society Presidential Address: instrumental in preservation of Stroudley's Gladstone. (Portrait and note in Hennessey's account of SLS Centenary in Backtrack, 2009, 23, 646). Educated St Pauls School and Kings College. Worked Waygood-Otis. Editor of Model Railway News.  See also Marshall. See books and RCTS The locomotives of the Great Western Railway. 10¼ inch gauge 4-4-2 designed by him Locomotive Mag., 1938, 44, 173.

 

His name was precisely the same as “famous stage magician and inventor of the pay toilet”, who I think must either have been his father or an uncle.

 

Aha! He was the third John Nevil Maskelyne in the family: his grandfather was both magician and inventor of the pay toilet, and other things, and his father was also a prominent stage magician and author on the topic.

 

Maybe the twinkle that he seems to exude in photos came from all that heritage of amusing people.

 

Intetesting that he’d worked for Waygood-Otis, because his father had worked in wireless telegraphy at the pioneering stage, so both stage magic and what was then technical magic.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 6, 2022 by Nearholmer

[RJS1977]

So was he any relation to Jasper Maskelyne, also a magician, of cardboard tank fame?

[Nearholmer]

J N was Jasper's elder brother.

[cp409067]

11 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

He was everywhere in model railways, apparently always dressed the same, in what looked like Edwardian clothes. .....

 

This is the only biog detail I can quickly find online Maskelyne, John Nevil
Hendry (p. 15) illustrated on Plant Centenarian and short biography from which details abstracted: Born Wandsworth Common on 3 January 1892 and died 24 May 1960 .....

 

 

*

When not yet a teenager (by a few months) I was permitted to veture solo from my home in the London suburbs, and to traverse the Underground system in order to attend the Easter 1960 MRC exhibition. I recall seeing JNM - perhaps I knew it was he from a photograph previously published in MRN. My memory is of tall dignified gentleman with substantial moustache, and dressed in wing collar and tie, waistcoat, striped trousers, and black tail coat.

 

I am saddened and surprised reading the above to learn this was shortly before his death at the age of only 68 years.

 

 

CP

[2mmMark]

1 hour ago, cp409067 said:

 

*

When not yet a teenager (by a few months) I was permitted to veture solo from my home in the London suburbs, and to traverse the Underground system in order to attend the Easter 1960 MRC exhibition. I recall seeing JNM - perhaps I knew it was he from a photograph previously published in MRN. My memory is of tall dignified gentleman with substantial moustache, and dressed in wing collar and tie, waistcoat, striped trousers, and black tail coat.

 

I am saddened and surprised reading the above to learn this was shortly before his death at the age of only 68 years.

 

 

CP

The average life expectancy in 1960 was just over 70 years so a death at 68 seems early from our 21st Century perspective of 80+ years but not unusual for the time.

Jack Ray's book "A Lifetime With O Gauge" has a lovely description of visiting JNM in the MRN offices in the 1950s. From Jack's description of JNM and his demeanour, he does seem like a true Edwardian gentleman. 

Mark

[cp409067]

21 minutes ago, 2mmMark said:

The average life expectancy in 1960 was just over 70 years so a death at 68 seems early from our 21st Century perspective of 80+ years but not unusual for the time.

Jack Ray's book "A Lifetime With O Gauge" has a lovely description of visiting JNM in the MRN offices in the 1950s. From Jack's description of JNM and his demeanour, he does seem like a true Edwardian gentleman. 

Mark

 

*

This may be correct in terms of general life expectancy in 1960, but I could not help viewing it in comparison with my own grandfather. He was born in 1885 (and thus would indeed have been a young man during the reign of Edward VII) and died a few months short of being 90 in 1975.

 

Whilst I recall that (in the 1950s until his death) he usually dressed in a formal manner - soft collar and tie, waistcoat in the winter - he did not seem like an Edwardian relic. That JNM did - and I mean no criticism of him - was presumably a matter of his personal choice.

 

 

CP