Andrew Mawer makes replica First World War precision model railway wagon

Tristan voyage meeting gives model-making opportunity

Report and Photos from Chris Bates
From Tristan da Cunha to "Tracks to the trenches" via Skegness

     The middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, half way from Cape Town to the world's most remote inhabited island, on board a South African ice-breaker and research vessel, is not where you'd expect to meet someone with a detailed knowledge of the unique former World War One Ambulance Van preserved on the Lincolnshire Coast Light Railway at Skegness.

     But watching out for whales and dolphins in the endless grey waves, I was seated next to Elaine Mawer, a Tristan islander who for many years has lived and worked in Glasgow, who was making the 1,750 mile voyage to Tristan to see her family.

     The conversation (perhaps inevitably) got round from how much Julie and I are enjoying our "new life" in Horsington, near Horncastle and how that enables us to spend more time on the Lincolnshire Coast Light Railway (with which I have been involved since 1961) in the Skegness Water Leisure Park.

Former Tristan da Cunha UK Representative Chris Bates (left) with Andrew Mawer
at the LCLR's display stand in the Tracks to the Trenches event. (Photo: Julie Bates)

     At which point Elaine told us that her son Andrew builds models of the War Department Light Railway locomotives and wagons which served the British forces' trenches in France and Belgium in World War One. It emerged that he was seeking more information about the interior of the LCLR's ambulance van -- the only complete example in the UK -- and layout of stretchers and equipment to help transport the wounded form the front line to hospital and hopefully, recovery.

Andrew Mawer with his completed model
- thanks to information gleaned by his mother on the way to Tristan da Cunha! (Photo: Chris Bates)

     Astonished to learn of her son's detailed interest in the LCLR's collection and especially the Ambulance Van, I agreed to take a selection of photos when I returned to Lincolnshire and to email them to him in Glasgow so he could complete his model.

     Andrew Mawer, meanwhile, travelled by train from Glasgow to Staffordshire, bringing with him his precious model of the LCLR's Ambulance Van, which he has now been able to complete thanks to that conversation on the way to Tristan da Cunha (ironically, one of the very few places on the planet never to have had any sort of rail transport).

     It was displayed on the LCLR's stand and attracted much favourable comment and enquiries about purchase -- Andrew is taking a break for a few months from his model-making business to continue his further education, but plans to resume making the models when that is completed.

     It was all due to that conversation on board the SA Agulhas II that his spectacular model could be made and then, displayed inside the "real thing" as well as on the LCLR's stall -- all worth it, said Andrew, to see the actual vehicle all the way from Skegness attracting such attention for the quality of its restoration by the LCLR's volunteers and to enjoy the appreciation of visitors admiring his model.

See also this webpage for more:
www.railadvent.co.uk