Miniature railways and cultural microcosms: railway modelling in Britain, c.1900-c.1950 (Part 2)

Miniature railways and cultural microcosms
railway modelling in Britain, c.1900-c.1950

Part 2
From model engineering to railway modelling

Ralph Harrington
BA (Lond.), MSt (Oxon.), DPhil (Oxon.)

copyright notice | citation information | plagiarism | notes

III. Model engineering and the rise of railway modelling

In January 1871 The Times observed approvingly that ‘There is no taste so universal among boys, and none so deserving of encouragement, as the taste for mechanics and engineering which has grown up among them of late years. This taste lies at the heart of our national character’.[1] Mechanical toys and models, from miniature working cranes to scaled-down steam engines and clockwork locomotives, were indeed popular with both juvenile and adult recreational markets from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. In his Hobbies: Leisure and the Culture of Work in America, Steven Gelber notes that by the 1930s ‘the English [sic] … had almost a century of experience with what they called “model engineering”, that is, working models of powered boats, trains, and farm machinery.[2] It is certainly the case that until the 1920s ‘model engineering’ is the key phrase in Britain: the term ‘modelling’ or ‘model-making’ is rarely encountered in this context. The first journal to be devoted to modelling, and to give extensive coverage specifically to the modelling of railways, was The Model Engineer, a serious-minded periodical with a distinguished history (the first issue appeared in 1898) concerned above all with the solving of real engineering problems in miniature and the construction of fully working small-scale replicas of mechanical devices.[3]

Miniature engineering: a model of the Forth Bridge on a garden railway of c.1909. From Edward Beal, Scale Railway Modelling To-day (London: Macmillan, 1939), p. 3.

Railway equipment – above all, locomotives – constituted one category of this engineering activity. Other articles dealt with model ships and yachts, steam and gas engines, electrical devices and occasional novelties such as miniature quick-firing guns. Railways, however, always stood out as one of the foremost avenues through which the model engineer could develop and express those mechanical skills that the magazine presented as admirable. When a contributor wrote that ‘One of the most attractive exercises for the young engineer is the manufacture of a model engine’.[4] he was talking about railway locomotives, not stationary or marine engines. This bias towards railways reflected the interests of the editor of The Model Engineer, Percival Marshall, who would be a central figure in the development of the early twentieth century model railway press in Britain. When in the autumn of 1898 Marshall and The Model Engineer sponsored the establishment of the Society of Model Engineers, it was suggested at the inaugural meeting that ‘possibly some of those present would prefer that the society should deal solely with model locomotive matters’.[5] This proposal echoed a suggestion for ‘model locomotive clubs … on similar lines to the model yachting clubs with which every reader must be familiar’ that had appeared in the magazine earlier the same year, in June 1898. At the meeting, however, ‘On putting the question … it appeared that nobody favoured the establishment of a purely locomotive organisation’.[6] The fact that a railway-centred society had been suggested, however, indicates the strength of interest in railway matters within the ranks of those who considered themselves model engineers.

In 1909 the first journal to be entirely devoted to the modelling of railways appeared: Model Railways and Locomotives. This publication was edited by two leading figures in the British model railway world, Henry Greenly and W. J. Bassett-Lowke, and was subtitled ‘a Monthly Journal devoted to Model Railway Construction and Working’ – the phrasing of the subtitle indicating that if constructing vehicles and equipment was one part of the appeal of model railways, operating them according to the rules of full-size railway working was the other. Whereas in The Model Engineer the frequent railway modelling articles dealt primarily with individual locomotives and, occasionally, pieces of rolling stock, along with articles on indoor and outdoor trackwork, Model Railways and Locomotives concerned itself from the outset with the representation in miniature form of the complete railway scene – that is, with visual resemblance as well as mechanical re-creation. Articles dealt in detail with the landscape through which the miniature trains would run and the accessories, from buildings to tunnel-mouths, which the railway modeller would need to create an acceptable representation of the real thing.

There were many articles in Model Railways and Locomotives that had a practical engineering bias (‘Big End of Connecting Rod’ and ‘Electro-motor Mechanisms’ are two typical article titles from 1910) but such articles appeared alongside an equal number in which the hard engineering content was far less significant, or even entirely absent. For many writers and readers it was clearly the operational aspects of running a railway that were of particular interest. Thus, in the first issue there was a lengthy illustrated article on fitting trains with the correct headlamp arrangements as used on the full-size railways to indicate different types of train, for the ‘enterprising model railway “manager” who wishes his system to conform in all its details to those of the prototype’.[7] There was also detailed coverage of all aspects, technical and non-technical, of full-size railways, including special issues devoted to particular railway companies which covered station management, train timetabling and locomotive rostering, signalling, and other aspects of railway operation.[8] This reflected the magazine’s conviction that railway engineering, in the sense of the construction of miniature working railway locomotives and vehicles, was increasingly only one aspect of the model railway hobby. Percival Marshall would continue to further this belief, even arguing for an ‘artistic’ approach to be taken to railway modelling, as editor of the most influential model railway magazine of the inter-war years, Model Railway News, which began publication in 1925. ‘A model railway builder … would do well to study real station buildings, bridges, embankments and other features from the point of view of “general effect,” as well as for their details of construction’ urged an article in an early issue of the magazine by an author who, significantly, signed himself ‘The Looker-on’.[9] This approach reflected the expansion of railway modelling during the years around the First World War to encompass the reproduction not just of the locomotive or the train, but of the railway system as a whole and of its place in the landscape; and this tendency continued, and gathered pace, as the 1920s progressed.

This movement from ‘model engineering’ to ‘model railways’ was not uncontested, with adherents of the former activity staking its claim to be considered the purer and more skilled pursuit. In response, those who aligned themselves with the more ‘artistic’ tendencies in railway modelling (to borrow Percival Marshall’s term) always took pains to make clear that mechanical skill and dexterity were not the sole preserve of the ‘model engineers’. In June 1929 the Model Railway News observed:

The fact that a model railway is necessarily diminutive in size does not make it a ‘toy,’ and while the hobby undoubtedly has great recreative value, it involves so much technical knowledge and ability that it is far removed from what is normally understood as the province of ‘toys.’ … the hobby affords plenty of scope for a high order of intelligence and for the exercise of much practical skill and knowledge.[10]

The distinction between ‘toys’ (by implication, for the immature: simple, mass-produced, easy to run, popular) and ‘models’ (an exercise for adults: complex, craftsman-built, demanding, elitist) became a fundamental issue among railway modellers of all inclinations. The ‘really true to scale locomotive … the result of creative impulse and effort on the part of the craftsman’ was held up in contrast to ‘lines of “models” which … bear little resemblance to the real thing’ and which gave those outside the hobby justification ‘for assuming that men “play with toy trains”’.[11] Modellers who wished to criticize the handiwork of those whose approach they found wanting, whether they spoke as live steam advocates rejecting electric power or as builders of large-scale locomotive models expressing hostility to smaller gauges, were always very ready to use the damning label ‘toy trains’. Many issues were bound up in the toys/models opposition, ranging from the necessity for true scale models to the role of scenery in a model railway, but it was the question of motive power – what made the miniature trains run – which became the key issue for many participants in this debate.

The starting-point of the turn-of-the-century model engineers had been the creation of a working reproduction in miniature of the full-size machine. The scaled-down steam locomotives they constructed worked as steam locomotives, with fully operating firebox, boiler, pistons and valve-gear. Where such locomotives were based on particular prototypes, visual resemblance to the original was of great importance. ‘It cannot be too strongly impressed upon the model engineer’, declared the second number of The Model Engineer, ‘that if his locomotive is to be anything more than a mere mechanism capable of locomotion, he must be attentive to the aspect he imparts to his engine’.[12] However, truth was as important as accuracy, and truth meant a model that worked in the same way as its full-size counterpart. An immobile display model, perfect in every detail, would be regarded by many model engineers as less of an achievement than a working steam locomotive animated by fuel, fire and water. Russell Potts writes of a similar phenomenon in the world of model yachting, in which model yacht clubs slavishly imitated the rating rules applied to full-size yachts even where they were simply impractical for model vessels.[13] The implication was that a model yacht built to compromised ‘model’ standards was a mere toy, unworthy of serious model yachtmanship.

In this context it is significant that a driving force, literally, in the rise of popular railway modelling was the increasing availability and convenience of electrically-powered models from the mid-1920s. This development reflected the wider context of an increasingly home-centred pattern of leisure among the lower middle and upper working classes,[14] and the expanding availability of domestic electricity.[15] By the latter part of 1926 electric railways were so widely available and popular that the Home Office, noting that ‘electric toy railways, which are designed to be worked off the ordinary domestic supply of current’ were ‘being placed in considerable numbers upon the Christmas market’, issued a warning that ‘they might, in certain circumstances, give serious injury by shock’.[16] Whatever the potential dangers, the supporters of electric power argued that a railway operated by electricity was far closer to the real railway scene in the precision, intricacy and ‘hands-off’ nature of its operation than could ever be achieved by a steam-powered model system:

For example, a train can be started, run at different speeds, stopped, the engine uncoupled, and the train shunted about without anyone touching them … signals and points can be electrically operated; signal lamps and stations can be illuminated; the train can be lighted up … The net result is that the model railway as a whole is a far better and more realistic representation of a real railway than is possible when a steam locomotive is used.[17]

Many railway modellers seized the opportunities offered by electrically-operated points and signals to extend their ability to control their miniature networks still further, adopting the roles of signalmen as well as locomotive drivers: ‘manually operated electric points … do definitely give perhaps more satisfaction to some Model Railwaymen. This is probably due to the fact that their usage permits of the owner adopting the role of signalman’.[18] Once again the appeal of the miniature railway as not merely a set of discrete models but a complete reproduction system is clear. The Modern Boy’s Book of Hobbies enthusiastically conveyed the excitement of full remote operation to its juvenile readership in 1937: ‘you can speed up the express, reverse the slow goods into a siding out of the way, pull off the signals, run the whole line in fact without moving from your seat’.[19] The realism in train movements brought by electrical operation and the multiplicity of mimetic effects it permitted – not merely the trains themselves but the control of points, signals, lighting – brought the ideal of a complete miniaturized reproduction of reality under the control of the modeller closer than any other single model railway innovation.

Thus the followers of the new mass railway modelling hobby established, in effect, a rival aesthetic of visual mimesis (‘realism’) rather than following the philosophy of essentialist truth articulated by the adherents of live steam model engineering. The model engineers’ ideal of a steam-powered miniature locomotive running on extensive purpose-built tracks (normally situated in the open air, and requiring considerable space) gave way to a new paradigm: the realistic, remote operation of working trains within a reproduction miniature railway system, set in a reproduction miniature landscape, scenically complete and intricately detailed, located in the interior space of the home. Electricity made all this possible to a degree and with an ease that was inconceivable with steam or clockwork. The Model Railway News was explicit in arguing that only through the adoption of electricity would the model railway hobby’s status as a popular rather than an elitist pastime be assured: ‘The model railway of the future will be the electrical railway. Steam and clockwork will always have their adherents, but the great expansion of the model railway hobby will come through the enormous interest which arises from electrical operation’.[20]

IV. Resemblance, reality, and rival realisms

The linkage between electricity, ease of use and mass appeal was precisely what the conservative model engineers rejected. During the inter-war years an adherence to ‘model engineering’ was increasingly articulated in terms of a rejection of all forms of miniature motive power but steam, with a particular hostility being expressed to electricity. In July 1936 a contributor to the journal Model Railway Constructor asked, ‘Why have steam outline locos worked by electricity?’ and went on to make the dubious claim that ‘It is no more incongruous to push by hand – and far more realistic in its manoeuvring’.[21] The objection to electricity in such arguments was partly aesthetic, at a time when the three-rail system, involving an extra rail fitted alongside or between the running rails to carry the electric current, was still the most widespread (and only commercially supported) system for powering electric model trains: ‘I detest that extra rail, as it ruins the appearance, even if laid alongside’.[22] The deeper-rooted objection, however, was ideological, even if it tended to be couched in terms of aesthetics. With a steam locomotive, observed a writer in Model Railway News in 1937:

… there is the satisfaction of knowing that its mechanism is a replica of the prototype … we do not take too kindly to large steam outline models in which the ‘boiler’ is merely a cowling over a petrol engine or electric motor. Large electric models only become interesting when they follow their own correct prototype, then they become most fascinating.[23]

The argument here is that model locomotives cannot be authentic if, merely reproducing outward appearance, they are pretending to be something they are not. The electrically-powered steam outline locomotive may look the part, but its real nature is quite different from the appearance it presents: its very essence is falsehood, whereas a miniature live steam locomotive is claiming to be just what it actually is, and its realism is of essentials. A realism of resemblance is rejected in favour of a realism of realities. A model claiming to represent a steam locomotive should be driven by steam, one representing an electric locomotive should be driven by electricity. Thus the locomotive in model form should be created and consumed as a symbol of itself.

This point of view is made explicit in an August 1938 Model Railway News article by a writer called ‘V.C.D.’ who argued – in openly elitist terms – that the ‘scenic model railway’ represented a form of modelling which was not ‘progressing’, whereas live steam model locomotive construction had seen ‘vast improvements’. Once again conflicting definitions of what constitutes ‘realism’ are at issue: ‘One can be certain that the real thing in miniature is safe in the hands of its present adherents’[24] is V.C.D.’s key assertion. In contrast to ‘the real thing in miniature’, the scenic model railway, powered by clockwork or electricity, represented a commercialized mediocrity suited only to the unenterprising and unskilled:

The whole thing has become too easy, repetitive and standardised; we are developing a herd-psychology … at least a fair proportion of us should strive to emulate the progressive sections in other branches of model engineering. Progress in any human activity usually depends on an active, experiment-minded minority, but we do not appear at present to possess this minority.[25]

The abandonment of live steam in favour of other, more convenient and less demanding, forms of power was thus seen as part of a wider degenerative movement away form craft skill and individual enterprise towards a commercialized world of standardized scenic railway modelling. The writer argues that ‘the widespread adoption of electricity and clockwork as motive power’ and the use of mass-produced commercial fittings ‘the assembly of which into a working model requires no great skill or technical ability’ represent the loss of the fundamental principles of craft skill and individual inventiveness which are the guarantors of progress. Only a return to such principles of ‘model engineering’ and, it is implied, an acceptance that the hobby must be led by an elite of model engineering craftsmen who adhere to those principles, would ensure that the model railway hobby continued to move forward. The construction and operation of miniature steam motive power provided the best opportunities for the exercise of such principles: ‘To those enthusiasts who require a larger field of research in which to apply their skill and ingenuity I would say – tackle steam locomotives’.[26]

A correspondent in the October 1938 Model Railway News expressed agreement with V.C.D. and took his elitism a stage further, arguing that the model railway hobby was effectively divided into two tiers: the ‘really serious-minded members of our branch of model engineering’ who were characterized by ‘love of craftsmanship for its own sake, inborn skill or semi-skill in the use of tools, together with a love, deep and real, for all things miniature’; and ‘those not fulfilling the requirements necessary for a real live member of our hobby’ who possessed none of these qualities and would never know ‘the joy of a fully-developed model railway’. The only solution, this writer suggested, was ‘a wholesale sort-out of our hobby’, seeming to imply that some form of fairly drastic social engineering was a necessity if model engineering was to flourish.[27] V.C.D. found more support in a letter from W. L. Jennings, who argued that ‘if you are going to build a correct, true to type model of a steam loco, then let it be driven by steam, otherwise the realism is no more complete than if no power was fitted at all’. The same writer suggested that the building of a live steam locomotive ‘requires a much greater degree of skill than the assembling of an electric motor and a “steam body” on its top’, and that ‘it follows that the steam driven model is the quality product and it is in the minority’.[28] Thus, while objections to electricity (and, to a lesser extent, clockwork) were couched in terms of visual ugliness, lack of realism and a failure to be true to the prototype, the heart of the matter was the threat posed by the mass-market electric model railway to the elite craft status of railway modelling as a constructional hobby.

The model railway press were expressions themselves of the expansion and commercialization of the hobby, and naturally tended to support, both implicitly and explicitly, the popularization of model railways that the model engineers rejected. The pages of the Model Railway News were filled with advertisements from the makers of precisely the kinds of products that V.C.D. and his allies would be expected to despise: electric railway systems, ready-made components such as buffers, wheels and chimneys, mass-produced scenic accessories, and sectional track. Furthermore, editorial notes, layout descriptions and constructional articles in those same pages constantly recommended the use of such commercially available products:

The making of door handles for ‘O’ gauge scale coaches is one of the most fiddling jobs the model constructor is called upon to tackle. He can now procure them ready-made from The Miniature Reproductions Co., 393 Staniforth Road, Attercliffe, Sheffield.[29]

When Model Railway Constructor began publication in March 1934 it took an unambiguously populist line, running constructional articles for modellers whose resources in terms of time, space, skills and tools were limited and offering advice to newcomers in a series entitled ‘Beginner’s Luck’. In February 1936 a correspondent wrote to complain about the rudimentary approach of one such article: ‘Why waste pages on such stuff? Do get away from the visiting card and match construction and give sound construction with 3/4 mm. ply with good cheap tools’.[30] The editorial response was forthright: ‘Everyone has not the same conception of our hobby … The appreciation of better class models and modelling can only come slowly to the ab initio, who has to start at the bottom of the ladder’.[31] The practical slant of the Model Railway Constructor magazine was continued in the successful Model Railway Constructor Technical Handbook series (1935 onwards), which sought to encourage the ordinary model-maker by demonstrating that modelling skills were not the preserve of an elite but were available to anyone willing to put in the time and effort in a properly organized fashion: ‘provided the job is treated systematically, there should be no insurmountable difficulties that should beset the amateur in his efforts to produce a good model of any of the fine locomotive prototypes that are running on our railways to-day’.[32] Furthermore, the handbooks had no compunctions about recommending whatever commercially-available products made the job easier, pointing out to would-be locomotive builders that ‘Funnels, domes, safety valves, buffers and axle-guards are purchasable in 3½mms., 4mms., and 7mms. scales, at such small cost that it is hardly worth while trying to produce them without the proper turning tools’.[33]

'The four vital dimensions' to be taken into account in model railway standardization. From Model Railway Constructor, vol. 3, no. 26 (April 1936), p. 86.

‘The four vital dimensions’ to be taken into account in model railway standardization. From Model Railway Constructor, vol. 3, no. 26 (April 1936), p. 86.

The Model Railway Constructor associated itself most clearly with the forces of popularization in the railway modelling world in its campaign for 00-scale standardization. By the mid-1930s convenience and cheapness, along with extensive commercial support, had made the 00-scale electric railway one of the most popular choices for newcomers to the hobby. The problem was that although all 00-scale models were ostensibly to the same scale of 4mm to the foot, there were in fact wide variations between products from different manufacturers, even in the vital area of wheel and track dimensions. The Model Railway Constructor was clear that this was an impediment to the development of the mass market and thus to the growth of the model railway hobby:

The Model Railway Public hesitate to purchase an item of stock if they feel there is the remotest possibility of it not running satisfactorily with other items already in their possession; and hence, under present conditions, there is for the purchaser – dissatisfaction, and for the supplier – a lost future customer.[34]

It was thus with both the continuing development of a thriving commercially supported mass model railway hobby and the practical needs of railway modellers in mind that the magazine, ‘always out to give the maximum amount of assistance to the Model Railway Public and Trade’, established in 1936 the British Model Railway Standards Bureau (BMRSB) ‘so that some sound working agreement over the vital dimensions … can be arrived at’.[35] For the old-style model engineer whose workshop produced everything that was required, such standardization was, of course, not an issue; it was the mass ‘ready to run’ market that demanded the universal standards which the BMRSB provided.

The enthusiasts for craftsman-built live steam locomotives began the 1920s as the dominant force in what was clearly a part of the leisured, gentlemanly ‘model engineering’ world rooted in the pre-Great War years; but increasingly they felt themselves to be an embattled elite as the tide of mass railway modelling rose, fuelled by the wide availability of relatively cheap commercially-produced models and the ease and convenience of electric power. Most of the new modellers of the inter-war years, working within the constraints of limited space, time and finance, did not have the extensive grounds, copious free time and ample budgets of the live steam model engineers who built and ran ‘the real thing in miniature’ through the real landscape over cuttings and bridges that were in effect actual specimens of railway engineering. The enterprise became scaled down and, literally, domesticated.

Index | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

© Ralph Harrington 2008. This work is protected by copyright and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivative Works 3.0 Licence. This means that you can copy, distribute and transmit this work freely as long as it is attributed to the original author; you may not alter, transform or build upon this work; and you may not use this work for commercial purposes.

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Notes

1. The Times, 4 January 1871, p. 4.

2. Steven M. Gelber, Hobbies: Leisure and the Culture of Work in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 231.

3. The Model Engineer and Amateur Electrician. A Journal of Mechanics and Electricity for Amateurs and Students, vol. 1 (January 1898).

4. W. J. Tennant, ‘A chat about model locomotives’, The Model Engineer, vol. 1, no. 2 (February 1898), p. 17.

5. ‘The Society of Model Engineers’, The Model Engineer, vol. 1, no. 11 (November 1898), p. 207.

6. Editorial, The Model Engineer, vol. 1, no. 6 (June 1898), p. 111.

7. Model Railways & Locomotives, vol. 1, no. 1 (January 1909), p. 9. In January 1911 the journal changed its name to Models, Railways, & Locomotives, having increased its scope to include powered model boats and other model engineering projects, but railways remained the subject matter of the overwhelming majority of articles.

8. For example, the issue devoted to the Great Northern Railway: Model Railways & Locomotives, vol. 2, no. 7 (July 1910). The Great Northern co-operated extensively with the magazine in putting this special issue together; it would be interesting to know whether the initial idea for a GNR-themed issue came from the magazine or the railway company.

9. ‘The Looker-on’, ‘Realism in model railways’, Model Railway News, vol. 1, no. 2 (February 1925), p. 47.

10. Editorial, Model Railway News, vol. 5, no. 54 (June 1929), p. 162.

11. Letter, ‘Scale v. standard’, Model Railway News, vol. 13, no. 145 (January 1937), p. 24.

12. W. J. Tennant, ‘A chat about model locomotives’, The Model Engineer, vol. 1, no. 2 (February 1898), p. 17.

13. Russell Potts, ‘Sporting hobbies and social class: the case of model yachting’, Journal of the History of Sport, vol. 5, no. 2 (September 1988), p. 218.

14. John Clarke & Chas Critcher, The Devil Makes Work: Leisure in Capitalist Britain (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1985), pp. 76-7.

15. For examples see Alan A. Jackson, Semi-Detached London: Suburban Development, Life and Transport, 1900-39 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973), pp. 103, 145, 210.

16. ‘Danger of electric toy railways: Home Office warning’, The Times, 8 December 1926, p. 13. Percival Marshall responded by pointing out that most electric railways used batteries or were worked through transformers and were perfectly safe, and only those that were plugged directly into a live socket presented a possible danger: ‘Points from letters’, The Times, 10 December 1926, p. 12.

17. Edward W. Hobbs, Model Electric Railway Making (London: Cassell, 1934), pp. 5-6.

18. Anon., Practical Train Control Schemes (London: Model Railway Constructor, 1935), p. 9.

19. Modern Boy’s Book of Hobbies (London: Amalgamated Press, 1937), p. 88.

20. Model Railway News, vol. 1, no. 2 (February 1925), p. 33.

21. Model Railway Constructor, vol. 3, no. 29 (July 1936), p. 187. The comment was among a selection contributed in response to a questionnaire published by the journal in its October 1935 issue.

22. Model Railway Constructor, vol. 3, no. 29 (July 1936), p. 187.

23. ‘Realism in model railways’, Model Railway News, vol. 13, no. 148 (April 1937), p. 90.

24. ‘V.C.D.’, ‘Scenic model railways: some trends, tendencies and a plea’, Model Railway News, vol. 14, no. 164 (August 1938), p. 212. Emphasis added.

25. ‘V.C.D.’, ‘Scenic model railways’, p. 212.

26. ‘V.C.D.’, ‘Scenic model railways’, p. 213.

27. Model Railway News, vol. 14, no. 166 (October 1938), p. 273: letter from ‘Great Eastern’.

28. Model Railway News, vol. 15, no 171 (March 1939), pp. 81, 82, italics in the original.

29. ‘“O” gauge door handles’, Model Railway News, vol. 7, no. 74 (February 1931), p. 64. Note that this is an editorial announcement, not an advertisement.

30. Letter from ‘A Well-Wisher’, Model Railway Constructor, vol. 2, no. 12 (February 1936), p. 55.

31. Model Railway Constructor, vol. 2, no. 12 (February 1936), p. 55.

32. Model Railway Constructor Technical Handbook No. 1: Designing and Building Model Locos (London: Model Railway Constructor, 1935), p. 1.

33. Model Railway Constructor Technical Handbook No. 1, p. 36.

34. Editorial, Model Railway Constructor, vol. 3, no. 26 (April 1936), p. 85.

35. Editorial, Model Railway Constructor, vol. 3, no. 26 (April 1936), p. 85.