HOBBY HORSES

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 35, 4 November 1933, Page 12

HOBBY HORSES

Engineering Models A POPULAR EXHIBITION The fifteenth annual Model Engineer Exhibition at the Royal Horticultural Hall, In London, was not, as the uninitiated might suppose, exclusively the haunt of schoolboys (says a special correspondent of the London "Observer. ) Model engineering, in England at least, is the spare-time pursuit of hundreds of thousands of middle-aged men who still possess 'deft fingers and have a passion for reproducing in ' miniature scale railway trains, aeroplanes, ships, and almost everything that moves and has mechanism. It is (to those who do not participate in it), an even, more insidious - vice than chess or patience or crosswords. This year's exhibition is a remarkable one in many respects. It is remarkable, in the first place, for the technical excellence of the competitors in reducing to scale and reproducing such elaborate pieces of mechanism as aeroplane engines and locomotives, with an accuracy that even experts cannot deny. It is remarkable for the enthusiasm of its competitors who look forward to the completion of their labours not months, but years, ahead, hnd upon whose deft handiwork no price can be put. It is remarkable for the fact that in a mechanised age, such as ours, the large majority of the exhibits in the ship model section are not speed-boats and liners, but four-masted barques, clippers, dhows, Spanish galleons, carracks, and craft in which the design is for decoration rather, than for speed. One of the exhibits is of a Dutch Admiralty yacht of the early eighteenth, century, made hr a plumber during a long illness. Beside* these even the model speedboat, which is capable of doing 30 m.p.h. looks a drab enough exhibit, though it has lines and a gratifying litheness. And as if to show that there is still the old spirit among the model-makers, there is a four-masted barque in a bottle —as neat an example of its kind as could be found among the junk-shops of the Caledonian Market or the East End ten or twelve years ago, before the collecting of such articles of virtue bebecame popular. Superb Pieces. On the strictly technical and mechanical side there are some superb “pieces,” as the collectors would say. There is a beautiful scale model of a Caledonian Railways locomotive, valued at £lOOO. There is what is reputed to be the world’s smallest aeroplane, a reproduction to a scale of 5/64th of an inch to the foot of a Blackburne flying-boat of 1919, with a working electric motor of 3-Bth of an inch long, driven from a tiny dry battery. There is a miniture roll-top desk only four inches high, and a Lilliputian market-place, which was made on a kitchen table, the only tool used being a penknife. There is, among the curiosities, a model of the Ball and Cross of St. Paul’s, three feet high, made by the staff of the Clerk of Works of the Cathedral. There is a model cinema to seat 1800 people,, made by a boy of seventeen, who had to do all his work in the scullery of his home. There is a working model steam engine made from scrap materials at a total cost of fivepence. Dwarfing most of the other entries is a quarter-inch scale model of the Cutty Sark, in the deck of which a plank of the original deck of the famous old tea-clipper may be found. Dr. C. Nepean Longbridge, the maker of the model, spent over 6000 hours on the making of it, and though the actual materials cost him less than a five-pound note, the model is now valued at over £lOOO. The model has just been presented to the Science Museum at South Kensington. In a different class is Major Raymond Phillip’s new model railway, which can be controlled either by wireless or by the electricity that is given out by, the human body. Major Phillips has for many years experimented with "stunts” of this kind, but this one is the most remarkable one he has yet achieved./ In the human control the operator merely clasps a- pair of copper handles and concentrates his mind on the model. If he thinks hard enough (the task in this case, it must be admitted, is not a difficult one) the train starts to move. In the case of the wireless control he merely speaks into the microphone the words, “Start," "Stop,” or “Back,” and though the microphone is not in any way connected with the model the trains at once obey the command. Major Phillips has also applied the same principle to a model dirigible.