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Sometimes I think that I'm trying to re-create my childhood, piece by piece. Toys, books, old copies of the Radio Times, drooling over Humber Super Snipes. "A comfort blanket to hold up against the tyrannies of the new century" someone once said. Actually, it was me. The thing is, all those years ago I didn't have a Hornby 0 Gauge level crossing for my 1950's clockwork train. So very recently I couldn't resist this, in its bright red box that told me it was of 1953 vintage. I just love it. Opening and shutting the gates, trying to not let them scratch the printed tinplate as its first (probably) owner had done. I wanted to share it with you, but thought it was a bit plain on its own. Not having a clockwork train and carriages yet I reached out for my cheese biscuits tin and sourced these two Britain's farm models. And I didn't have those either as a child.
I am currently being kept out of trouble by photographing and writing a book on engineering-reliant structures in Britain, for a firm of civil (very civil, as it happens) engineers to celebrate a milestone anniversary. Here's 'one I made earlier' of the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge. Made famous by appearances in Billy Elliot and Auf Weidersen Pet, it is so defining of Middlesbrough that it's also on the council badge. In 1911 a bridge was required here that gave access to Port Clarence and yet still gave headroom for tall-masted ships. The solution was to suspend a gondola from a 160 feet high gantry by what are known as trolley wires, in order that this strange craft could ply (as it still does) across the River Tees with foot passengers and up to nine cars. I was fortunate enough to be taken up to the top, a hair-raising ascent that was like going up into the clouds through a gargantuan Meccano model. I just hoped that the nuts and bolts were better secured than those of my unfortunate boyhood attempt to build something similar on my dining room table. Certainly the Middlesbrough bridge's endurance record is more impressive, having survived raids from both Zeppelins and the Luftwaffe.
Sometimes I think that I'm trying to re-create my childhood, piece by piece. Toys, books, old copies of the Radio Times, drooling over Humber Super Snipes. "A comfort blanket to hold up against the tyrannies of the new century" someone once said. Actually, it was me. The thing is, all those years ago I didn't have a Hornby 0 Gauge level crossing for my 1950's clockwork train. So very recently I couldn't resist this, in its bright red box that told me it was of 1953 vintage. I just love it. Opening and shutting the gates, trying to not let them scratch the printed tinplate as its first (probably) owner had done. I wanted to share it with you, but thought it was a bit plain on its own. Not having a clockwork train and carriages yet I reached out for my cheese biscuits tin and sourced these two Britain's farm models. And I didn't have those either as a child.
