I discovered something shocking recently. Apparently ties are no longer a requirement for those working at Railway Modeller magazine. It seems that Peco are "moving with the times". Before long they will be wearing baseball caps back to front!
A bit of me quite likes the idea of dress codes that are slightly old-fashioned. When working in an office, I wore ties long after others had given up on them. My vast collection needed an airing and anyway, it was the only bit of colour I could be bothered with. When your tie has character, wearing a white shirt each day isn't noticed.
I'm not sure this is always a good thing however. Look at this illustration from the 1960 Hobbies Annual. The lad is sawing away while dressed in a suit!
Is this either safe or clever? My guess is that his Mum would appear very shortly and administer a clip around the ear for getting his good clothes dirty. Sawdust gathered in trouser turn-ups must have been difficult to shift in those pre-washing machine days.
And he's doing it on the dining table! Just you wait till your father gets home...
ReplyDeleteI loathe ties, but I'll generally wear a buttoned up waistcoat when storytelling with an audience.
ReplyDeleteNot when making models though as it doesn't look good with superglue.
Is it really much different from school woodwork / metalwork lessons, back in the 70s / 80s - when, as part of our school uniform, we were required to wear blazers, ties, white shirts and smart trousers - clothes that effectively amounted to suits?
ReplyDeleteI can also remember being required to wear smart shoes (and I doubt if anything with steel toecaps would have been allowed, despite the potential health & safety risks inherent with working in workshops - and also labs, for that matter).
Come to think of it, some of the chemicals (and working practices) we were required to use in chemistry lessons would definitely be verboten now - "goodies" like tetrachloromethane spring to mind.
Good fun though - among the more enjoyable parts of school, for me.
Saying that, this stuff still wasn't as good as some of the self-led electronics stuff I got chance to do in some of my Physics 'A' Level practicals. It would take quite a bit to beat experimenting with oscilloscopes - function generators - Lissajous figures (and using this stuff to display transistor characteristics). Now that stuff was real fun!
Good lad! I use my lathe on the dining table. But not whilst wearing a 3 piece suit, although if I did I could keep a 6" rule in the top pocket, a micrometer in the waistcoat and use my tie to wipe the oil off the slideways...
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the Peco (sorry, PECO in those days) catalogue cover in the 1950s with a father and son working together on their model railway - 'Here is a boy you will never have to worry about'. Come to think of it, there is not much wrong with that.
ReplyDeleteTwo or 3 years ago I think hte year the Patriot was shown on the Saturday one of the oppeators of the Peco Model Railway at Warley wore a suit and one of the others wore a tie
ReplyDeleteRichard
My mum had a washing machine in the 1950s. It was a Parnell paddle tub type machine with a powered wringer (mangle). I guess if you has the misfortune to get your fingers caught in the rollers it would have had your arm off.
ReplyDeleteRegards, Geoff
And if your Mum caught you messing up your good clothes making models, you got a clip around the ear. Different times...
ReplyDeleteI used to work as a DT Technician in a school, and there were moves by senior management to get all male staff in every department to wear shirts and ties, to promote a culture of neat appearance to the students. Which was fair enough, but I got some grief one morning off a senior staffer who asked me what kind of example it set, me flouting the rules on wearing a tie. I asked what example it would instead send if my tie became untucked and wrapped around the shaft of a lathe or the bandsaw blade, and I ended up a decapitated twitching corpse...
ReplyDelete(had a similar row about my Doc Marten boots; I was asked why I wasn't wearing sensible shoes, and I pointed to a gouge where a student had dropped a chisel onto my steel toecaps, and how I happily still retained all my toes as a consequence of not wearing said normal shoes)