Malcolm Smith of Malcolm’s Miniatures has been working on a project for Pendon Museum in Oxfordshire.

The Museum uses models at the model railway scale of 1:76 to depict life in the 1920s and 30s. The main scene at the Museum is some 70ft x 20ft and contains a complete village, fields, farms and the railways running through the countryside. The buildings are based on real buildings from the Vale of White Horse in Oxfordshire/Wiltshire and have interiors which can be seen when the buildings are lit during the night sequence. However, because of the small scale it isn’t possible to see much detail.

Attention to detail

Malcolm has, therefore, been working on a series of room boxes in 1/12 scale to show life in the houses in more detail. The first of these room boxes is now complete. It represents a typical workman’s cottage with the main room acting as lounge, kitchen and dining room and a wash house to the rear with a pantry under the stairs. It is based on one of the cottages in the scene at the Museum, where the interior was recorded in detail in the 1930s by the founder of the museum – Roye England – and reproduces many of the features he noted – the mirror above the mantlepiece, the lady’s husband’s socks hanging on the mantlepiece, the knob missing from the middle drawer of the chest of drawers and the spike with the receipts (the lady who owned the cottage was most indignant when Roye called them bills as she paid her bills immediately!) and the crystal wireless set with the headphones hanging on the wall.

As in the main Vale scene, it is Monday and the washing has taken all day to do using the copper in the corner of the wash house and the dolly tub and dolly peg for rinsing. The mangle has also played its part in removing the water from the clothes and bedding which are hanging from the rack in the wash house and on the clothes maiden in front of the range. The iron sits on its stand in front of the range ready for tomorrow’s ironing day!

Bringing History To Life

As usual there is no time to cook a meal, so tonight’s dinner is the leftover rabbit pie on the table and “bubble and squeak” (mashed leftover potatoes, cabbages, etc) in the frying pan on the range. The lady of the house is nodding off, waiting for her husband to come home from work.

There are many more details in the scene – the Staffordshire dogs and clock on the mantlepiece with some postcards behind the clock and sepia photographs of relatives. There is a tin of Brasso, a box of matches (Swan Vesta) and a pipe on the mantlepiece as well. In the pantry there is a selection of period packets, bottles and jars and on the shelf in the wash house are packets of Lux, soap, etc.

The room box, furniture and most of the details were made by Malcolm, but many items such as the packets, etc were sourced from other vendors. The fabulous figure was made by Timea Vajonne of EnchanteDolls.

Unfortunately, the room box is not yet on display at the Museum – waiting for some alterations to the Museum to provide a display space for this and the other planned room boxes – a vicar’s study, a village shop and a manor house.

More about Malcolm right here – http://www.malcolmsminiatures.co.uk/