Alheeba to Hav via the Madder Valley: The Greening of Bert's Garage

Freshly painted walls temporarily tilted up for a glamour shot

I like to read the introductions in books; there's often surprising stuff there. Consider this slice from the introduction to John Ahern's Miniature Building Construction.

A model railway can be almost anything from a featureless circle of track for large scale steam locos to a complete countryside with hills and rivers and farms, villages, towns and harbours. Between these extremes infinite variations are possible according to the tastes and inclinations of the builder. But from the pages of the journals devoted to modelling it does seem that increasing numbers of people are discovering an outlet for their creative powers in constructing not just a model railway, as the term was usually understood twenty years ago, but something more: something approaching a miniature make-believe world of their own. The explanation of this is to be found in the fact that, with the introduction of the 16.5 and 18 mm. gauges, the possibilities of the scenic model railway were increased enormously; for it at once became possible to accomplish so much in so little space, and one of the earliest workers to recognize and explore this field was A. Cosomati, whose "Alheeba State Railway" was described and illustrated in the December 1933 and January 1934 issues of The Model Railway News. After ten years it still remains one of the most stimulating and interesting examples of a railway with a "history" and a "territory" to serve, and I think it had more than a little to do with my Madder Valley line, which has been described and illustrated at various times in The Model Railway News, and of which further photographs appear in this volume.

The clear implication being that A. Cosomati's Alheeba State Railway inspired John Ahern. 

I wanted to find out more about the model railway of A. Cosomati - who turns out to be the artist Aldo Cosomati - mentioned in that introduction so I went to Google to see what I could find. I found this interesting discussion at RMWeb, and found a place to order those two issues of The Model Railway News from the 1930s. And order them I did. Here's how that Dec '33 article starts.

Alheeba owes its existence to a veritable lust of model making of all kinds. Modelling of houses, landscape, railway and ships were of course, the prime movers. Its geographical amenities, if they can be so called, were the outcome of an adventurous story, told amongst three friends over many years. This story was bristling with characters who all clamoured to be appropriately housed.

All that seemed very E. L. Moore to me: lust for all sorts of model making, and story as a major creative source. That's a type of introduction I don't see that often - actually, I can't recall where, or if, I've seen one like it before. I love its enthusiasm.

I also found out that the Alheeba State Railway was discussed in Model Trains International #82 (a copy of which I'm still looking for), and in the May/June 1984 issue of Continental Modeller (I've got a copy on order). I'm hoping to use all this to put the pieces of this story together. But while I wait to get my hands on these two magazines, and since this is the Wild West called the Internet, here's some wild speculation.

You can call me Al

I'm wondering if the Alheeba in Alheeba State Railway is constructed from the names of those three friends who cooked up the stories that eventually became the model railway: Al-hee-ba. Is the first syllable, Al, for Aldo? Who are Hee and Ba? Hee-nry and Basil maybe :-) Your guess is as good as mine. 

To Hav and Hav Not

The Alheeba peninsula shown on the map reminded me of the geography of Jan Morris' fictional peninsula of Hav discussed in her 1985 novel Last Letters from Hav and 2006's Hav of the Myrmidons.

On the left is a map of the territory covered by the Alheeba State Railway from the December 1933 issue of The Model Railway News. On the right - deliberately flipped upside-down so it roughly presents the same orientation as the map on the left - is a map of Hav's territory presented in Jan Morris' 2006 book Hav, which contains both the novels Last Letters from Hav and Hav of the Myrmidons. Both maps present a railway that starts in some high country bordering the mainland, then cuts through the centre of a peninsula, and terminates at a sea port. This is all just coincidence, but maybe Jan Morris was a secret model railroader, well versed in the ancient texts of model railroading :-) Read in a certain way, the Hav stories could form the basis of a spectacular model railway as did the ones of Aldo and friends.

Ahern Green

The other thing that made me think of E. L. Moore when I saw Bert's Garage was that it's painted green. A wooden structure painted green is almost an E. L. Moore signature. I know there isn't a real connection between Ahern and Moore even though there is one in my mind. Maybe it's just the colour green that pings a circuit in my brain. 

Anyway, I looked around for some green paint on my workbench and found some bottles. They didn't quite match Mr. Ahern's Bert's, but they were ok, and I didn't want to buy anything.

I brushed on some Tamiya green acrylic paint to the wall's outside surfaces. I tried to be a bit loose with the colour so some of the raw cardboard would show through.

The inside surfaces were painted with loose washes of thinned green, white and grey. The next step will be to letter the end walls with the business name, and then add trim and windows before gluing the walls together.