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
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
1953 Mixed Train Daily – one of my favourite railway books
One of the things I like about the Internet age is how you can drop in on small communities for a short while.
I often do this whilst browsing the Forgotten Georgia blogpost and its Facebook page.
Reading Mixed Train Daily, I come across little historical nuggets of rural and wild-west America or Americana that have survived into the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The Bowdon Railroad of west Georgia is one such curiousity. Bowdon Railroad used to link up with one of the Georgia main lines at Bowdon Junction, providing the rail link to the City of Bowdon (“The Friendly City”) located in Carroll County, Georgia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowdon_Railway
Bowdon now has a population of about 2,000, twice what it had in the railroad days of the 1940s and 50s This is more like the population numbers of a small town or larger village in the United Kingdom and quite different from the average city in the United Kingdom with its requirement to have a Cathedral, despite the occasional granting of recent smaller Millennium UK cities.
I like this evocative Short Lines Map of Georgia from Mixed Train Daily
The Bowdon empire 
Through the wonders of the Interweb you can drop in on Bowdon as a community today through its website – see http://www.bowdon.net
You can see on the photo gallery who has received Business of the Month this time.
https://www.bowdonmainstreet.com
You can even see the Founder’s Day Parade video on YouTube, as if you’re standing by the side of the road and wandering around. https://youtu.be/IB1W2_LY7Tg
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN on 20 October 2020.
Sidetracked 