What would your Demilitarised DMZ Book Choice be for World Book Day 3 March 2022?
Here’s mine, time to visit a quiet bunch of vanished and surviving branchlines and Short Line railroads …
Read or see more at Man of TIN Blog Two:
https://manoftinblogtwo.wordpress.com/2022/03/03/dmz-no-4-dmz-book-choice-for-world-book-day
Blog posted / cross posted on my Sidetracked blog by Mark Man of TIN, World Book Day 3 March 2022
In place of the promised tankettes and Tankette Tuesday, here is the DMZ demilitarised version: Tank Engine Tuesday
Tank Engine Tuesday? No that’s not engines for tanks. I once saw a Matilda tank engine for sale on EBay and thought for a moment, it’s a start. A Matilda Tank on the Front Lawn would certainly be a conversation piece …
Anyway a DMZ demilitarised look at my occasional Sidetracked blog, where my gaming life sometimes overlaps with railways and model railways.
Ben, this lovely beast of a Tank Engine is still lurking in the family toy cupboards, along with this vintage handmade station with its tin and card adverts
“Bill and Ben are based on the Bagnall 0-4-0STs “Alfred” and “Judy” of Par [Docks] in Cornwall, who are both preserved and in working order at the excellent Bodmin and Wenford Railway in Cornwall.”
“According to the foreword of Thomas and the Twins, Alfred and Judy are both Bill and Ben’s twins. Alfred was once repainted yellow for a Days Out with Thomas event, to resemble Bill.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_characters_in_The_Railway_Series
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Railways are one DMZ demilitarised and relaxing modelling way of keeping the crafting modelling hands busy during current disquieting events.
Its an occasional itch – I come from a Model Railway Family (we’re all about 1 inch tall, made of plastic and don’t move around much).
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Peter Dennis’ versatile civilians from his Little Wars, 54mm Paperboys – great passengers!
One of the attractive sections of H.G. Wells’ Floor Games (1911) is the ‘lectric, or clockwork engines, the photographs of the cities and islands by his wife Amy Catherine (“Jane”) Wells and the charming drawings by illustrator J.R. (John Ramage) Sinclair.
Floor Games 1911
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The most attractive parts of railway modelling has always been the scenics and especially the figures, often a useful (but sometimes expensiv e source) of civilians for my DMZ Demilitarised Games – snowballers, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts / Guides …
https://sidetracked2017blog.wordpress.com/2020/04/26/railway-civilians-54mm-size/
https://sidetracked2017blog.wordpress.com/2017/12/02/fogman-and-brazier/
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Some interesting DMZ reading and viewing
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Why not Do a Snooville? I remember this at the time from the family Railway Modeller magazine! https://sidetracked2017blog.wordpress.com/2019/10/13/do-a-snooville/
Much as I like British railways and vanished quirky branch lines, I also like American railroads, Mixed Train Daily and Short Lines (Hello citizens of Bowdon!)
https://sidetracked2017blog.wordpress.com/2020/10/20/railcars-and-rural-america-mixed-train-daily/
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I also like pop up instant railways
whether in a tin,
a pop up book https://sidetracked2017blog.wordpress.com/2020/05/22/pop-up-railway-americana/
or a Wild West battery train set and birdhouse trackside station
https://sidetracked2017blog.wordpress.com/2018/07/14/the-wild-wilko-western-express/
Set up and taken down in minutes. Instant fix. Quick joy.
Even a quirky pen and ink digital railway?
https://sidetracked2017blog.wordpress.com/2020/12/18/short-trip-by-alexander-perrin/
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Why not take it around in a suitcase?
https://sidetracked2017blog.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/spain-in-a-small-case/
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Taken from my occasional blog – https://sidetracked2017blog.wordpress.com/
Blogposted by Mark Man of TIN, 1st March 2022
Some charming figures – Illustration by J.R. Sinclair from H G Wells’ “Floor Games” of 1911
Cheap and charming civilians, especially period ones in 54mm, are still hard to find. Not much has changed since 1911 then!
https://sidetracked2017blog.wordpress.com/2020/04/26/railway-civilians-54mm-size/
Working again researching and blog posting about H.G. Wells’ book “Little Wars” of 1911, I was reminded of this great illustration page of characters.
This book was expanded by H. G. Wells from a small end section of “Floor Games” of 1911 into two magazine articles and the famous book.
The charming railways section of “Floor Games” is explored and illustrated more here:
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 5 December 2021
A Russian Civil War armoured trains gaming scenario from the Wargaming for Grown Ups website:
http://wargaming4grownups.blogspot.com/2021/10/now-with-added-trains.html
The Bennett Brook Railway channel of railway archive films on YouTube shows Training films on everyday tasks such as track maintenance in the age of steam, including these great 1950s track gang.
To me they look just like the Airfix track workers still available from Dapol.
You can access the channel via YouTube through their railway newsreel archive posts such as: https://youtu.be/MGszU8cA8_I
It’s all the everyday detail that make such films fascinating.
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN on Sidetracked, 28 December 2020.
The Last Train from Southwold 1929
Southwold Railway History
http://www.southwoldmuseum.org/transport_Railway.htm
Precious post link to Southwold Railway
As featured in
https://sidetracked2017blog.wordpress.com/2020/12/20/more-curious-railways-on-british-newsreels/
I like the corner compactness of this layout, gaming as I often do tucked away onto a corner table. Another vanished Short Line, this time in Stiperstones, Shropshire.
Another stray article that caught my attention in old Railway Modeller magazines I was lent, this one by Roy Link from Railway Modeller February 1979.
Blogposted by Mark Man of TIN on his occasional Sidetracked blog, December 2020
Whilst I was cutting out more of the civilians from Peter Dennis’ Little Wars PaperBoys book, I thought that these figures not only look good on a toy theatre stage but they look very much like railway civilians with their bags and baggage.
With all the head and arm variants, these are highly versatile Victorian, Edwardian and early 20th Century 54mm paper card figures.
Tucked away on the platform is one of my paper suffragettes (made using one of Peter Dennis’ figure outlines for scale).
Keen eyed ‘Little Wars’ / ‘Floor Games’ fans will spot an advert for Jabz Hair Colour (as handwritten in Floor Games by Wells or G.P.W. one of his two sons).
I presume they are meant by Peter Dennis to be evacuees for the War of the Worlds element of the Little Wars PaperBoys volume of H.G. Wells, as well as civilians for Wells’ Little Wars.
The station is plastic OOHO Hornby platform, Lemax Christmas Village lantern, whilst the Halt building is our family’s old wooden farm buildings from the 1960s.
You may have seen a similar platform set up with 54mm hollowcast and new metal figures on my LWR Little Wars Railway blog post here on my Sidetracked blog in May 2020:
The train set and track is from a toy plastic battery operated Wilko Western Express bought in 2018.
Blogposted on Sidetracked by Mark Man of TIN, 21 December 2020.
1. The Motor Railway (1923) British Pathe
A Rail Car or Rail Bus – the British version of the Galloping Goose and Jitney in America, like the Bowdon Railway in Georgia.
2. The Railway That is a Real Joke – Southwold Railway 1929
British Newsreel (Gaumont Mirror) UEA EAFA
A one passenger carriage and mixed freight service – a British Mixed Train Daily?
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN on his Sidetracked blog December 2020
Short Trip is a delightful interactive illustrated railway journey with sound, like a digital Myriorama endless landscape, by Australian based illustrator Alexander Perrin.
As quirky as the photos and short lines of the USA of my favourite railway book Mixed Train Daily, Short Trip was inspired by a real railway in Japan called the Hakone Tozan Railway https://www.hakone-tozan.co.jp/en/.
This was recently damaged in a typhoon and has now reopened – there is a charming little YouTube video about it here featuring a small Japanese boy and his toy train https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd_2-tNqWSw&feature=youtu.be
This Short Trip website was a tip off by Alan Gruber of The Duchy Of Tradgardland blog who is working on his own Garden Railway plans. Thanks Alan! Another wet morning happily sidetracked …
This is delightful – you drive or travel at your own speed, listen to the bird song, the train sounds and trolley bell at each station stop.
You can go forward or backward, right or left at your own speed.
Go slowly and look at the all fine detail of hand drawn buildings, bridges, stations and landscapes. There are moving parts ranging from tiny humanoid animal passengers, turning waterwheels and windmills to rippling water.
You can read more about its creation and creator here
https://alexanderperrin.com.au/portfolio/short-trip/
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/09/interactive-illustration-short-trip/
“It’s a magical, rickety switchback railway that ascends a forest shrouded mountain all throughout the year,” Perrin told Colossal.
“There’s something about the beautifully crafted forms of the railway in sculpted union with the cliff faces and trees that just hits such a therapeutic, aesthetic sweet spot. It’s a little bit like riding an enlarged miniature railway, if you know what I mean. You remain passive and enjoy the ride for the sake of the journey.”
Source quote: This is Colossal.com
If you are too flibbertigibbet to finish your own railway project or it’s too wet a day for a garden railway, this is just the calm thing for you.
I’m sure Heath Robinson and Rowland Emmett would approve.
Blogposted by Mark Man of TIN, 18 December 2020.
B.P.S. Blog Post Script
There is a donate page on the simple menu linked to PayPal if you want to reward Alexander Perrin for the fun you have had with his creation.
Sidetracked 