Simon posted last week - "I've had an interest in French railways (real and model) since the seventies, a Jouef model of the red and cream Draisine in your photo bought from the local model shop was what started it all..."
So I've dug out the rest of the photos I took of Marmagne. They are only mobile phone shots, I'd love to have an excuse to carry out a full photo shoot, but hopefully they show the quality of the modelling. Click on the picture for larger versions.
The layout is set on a rural branch line in central France in the epoch III era 1946 to 1970. Constructed by Roger Nicholls, it's now owned and operated byTony Durose.
It is a really lovely layout. 6ft long plus fiddle yards.
9 comments:
Wow...these are brilliant, many thanks, Phil!
Marmagne has very much the sort of atmosphere I'd like to capture; in fact, the station building/goods shed looks similar to the kits I have acquired for my own eventual effort. I have done a bit of gricing in rural France and ridden on the CF Touristique Du Vermandois, which has a very similar vibe to Marmagne, though with the brick buildings common in Northern France rather than rendered.
Something that was not uncommon in some areas of France (indeed, it was the case on the line now used by the CFTV) is the semi-privately run "secondaire" which is, in effect, franchised to an operating company; these often had something of a light railway atmosphere and lend themselves to a degree of freelancing in model form...probably the approach I will take for my layout.
Thanks again for making the effort to show these photos, I'll have to keep a look out for Marmagne at exhibitions.
Simon.
Glad you like them - in future I'll try to take more of this sort of model. It won't be a hardship!
Sadly I think many UK modellers don't realise how advanced the hobby is in Europe, based on memories from forty years ago. So they close their minds to learning from some brilliant layouts.
Back in the early 70’s I too used to have one of the red/cream Draisine. Probably from a model shop in Calais or Boulogne as my grandparents lived in Seal and we'd take a cross-channel day trip a couple of times a year. The model screamed like a banshee! But it had a higher quality mounding that we were used to in the UK…
James, I think that a part of the reason many British modellers are less aware of European subjects than they were 40 years ago is that back then, beside Continental Modeller, there was quite often coverage of overseas layouts and products in other magazines; I remember reading reviews of Fleischmann items, for example, in Model Railway Constructor as well as the odd article in Model Railways magazine.
Chris Ellis's various titles (Airfix Model Trains, Scale Model Trains and latterly Model Trains International) often featured foreign prototypes and models/ideas too.
Nowadays, the only UK magazine for European stuff is Continental Modeller and I wonder how many British prototype modellers pick up a copy just out of curiosity? There's good coverage of European prototypes on RMWeb, but again you need to find it, it's not really mixed in with the British content so you stumble across it.
I remember in the 80s, the perception was perhaps that European, especially German, model railways had better coverage in terms of prototypes as well as better running quality, etc., for a little more money than British. Nowadays the price gap is still there (if not more so) but the British stuff has improved hugely in both quality and diversity. There also seem to be less European outline layouts on the exhibition circuit than there used to be, which is another big factor in lack of awareness.
Don't forget that early (very early) Railway Modeller's also used to include non-UK models.
You're quite right, there was sometimes non-UK content in RM, ISTR that as interest grew, there was first a Continental Special, then a (?quarterly) magazine and eventually monthly.
I have a vague recollection that a British magazine other than RM also published one or more "Special/supplements" with European content, but I think it was quite a while ago, possibly early 2000s or before?
I think that was a bit later - Ben Jones era BRM. Good idea, but not popular(!) enough for a repeat. Pity, as there is the material out there, and we'd be very happy to photograph it...
Glad I didn't totally imagine it!
It's a shame it doesn't seem to be viable to do another one...I suppose the only way now would be as a supplement to BRM or something on line.
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