London Transport Museum Acton Open Day, March 14th 2010

In some circles, the term “anorak” is pejorative, indicating greasy outdoor clothing, a camera and an unhealthy predilection for standing on railway bridges and the ends of station platforms with a notebook.

In a particularly fine evocation of the attraction of watching steel wheels on steel rails, the journalist Mike Carter, [‘Shunted on a branch line to nowhere’, The Observer, June 25th 2000], tells of the reaction when he asked the assistant at W H Smith, Birmingham New Street, if they still sold trainspotting books:  “‘I don’t think we sell that type of thing any more’, she said, looking at this 35-year-old man as if I’d just asked for the latest copy of Nuns in Rubber.”

I argue that the general public and its posterity owe a great debt to those who spend their weekends scraping rusty metal, polishing brass, learning to drive locomotives, trams, buses and cantankerous vintage cars – or making models of long-gone vehicles. If they also spend their evenings arguing over which defunct railway company had the smartest engines, or how many electric dustcarts operated in Birmingham after the last war, there are far worse ways of passing the time.

And without the “anoraks”, where would we now hear the beat of a steam train approaching, admire the sheer craftsmanship of coach-built cars, buses and trams, sail in a paddle-steamer, see in flight the aircraft that fought the Battle of Britain?

I spent an entertaining Sunday in March at the London Transport Museum Acton Depot, where they keep the trams, buses and Underground trains that won’t fit into the Covent Garden museum, along with piles of memorabilia ranging from posters to railway signals.

I was astonished at the range and variety of volunteer-built models on show – highly convincing representations of trams and Underground rolling-stock ranging in size from miniatures you could hold in your hand to models you could ride on.

You can, of course, buy kits or ready-made models if you want a train, bus or tram to put on your mantelpiece.  You can even buy the kits of my fifties childhood – Bayko and Hornby Dublo. But I most admire the craftsmen (mainly, so far as I could see, men) who spend countless hours getting the detail right and making the whole thing work.

They recreate scenes and customs that vanished a couple of generations ago.  One shows, for instance, how the four-track tramway layout at Dog Kennel Hill in East Dulwich operated, and why it was necessary [see http://londonmodeltramways.webs.com/dogkennelhillmodel.htm and http://www.londontramways.net/articles/dog_kennel_hill.php].  Another provides the only opportunity so far to compare the size of first-generation London trams with the vehicles of Croydon Tramlink, because there was a layout running models of both.

It’s essentially a species of entertainment, and well worth a tenner and a few hours’ time.

Future London Transport Museum Acton Depot Open Day arrangements are at http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/whats-on/museum-depot/events.

Heckington Windmill, Lincolnshire

When my friend Elisabeth, who is one of the ladies who lunch, suggested stopping at Heckington during a drive round Lincolnshire, the tea-shop was our priority.  In fact, the tea-shop she had in mind was closed, but we found a new one, the Mill House Tearoom – a work in progress by Michaela Spenger and Ian Yardley who provide excellent pots of tea and pastries with a Viennese accent.

Alongside stands the unique eight-sailed Heckington Windmill [http://www.heckingtonwindmill.org.uk/products.html], which was built in 1830 with five sails, and uprated (as one would say of a motor-car) to eight sails in 1890 when the Mill House was built.  Commercial milling stopped in 1946, and the mill was restored to working order in 1986.  Eight sails means that this mill keeps grinding when others run out of wind.  Visitors are invited to climb through its five flours, and can buy Heckington Windmill flour to take home.

Alongside the windmill is a railway level-crossing, for the village has a full train-service between Nottingham and Skegness.  At least once an hour traffic stops as the signalman manhandles the gates, and the signal box works in the traditional way:  for everything you could want to know about this, see http://www.signalbox.org/gallery/e/heckington.htm.

The original 1859 Great Northern Railway station building was saved from demolition by the Heckington Village Trust in 1975, and now houses the Heckington Village Trust Railway Museum built around the layouts of the HVT Model Railway Club.  For £1.00 you can chat about trains and use the station loo.  Opening times are at http://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/popiOrgVenue.asp?vid=2109.

And, as Elisabeth and I found, you might see the arrival of a huge train from Nottingham too long for the platform, so that the rear carriages block the level crossing and Heckington grinds to a halt.

No pun intended.

For more illustrations of the windmill and the signal-box (though, oddly, not the station), see http://www.urban75.org/photos/england/heckington.html.

For the story of the Mill House Tearoom see http://www.sleafordstandard.co.uk/news/Tourists-to-get-more-at.5468333.jp and http://www.sleafordstandard.co.uk/news/Heckington-Mill-House-project-takes.5485289.jp.