GEORGE NEWS - Hoekwil-based artist Owen Mulrooney is exhibiting part of his collection of scratch-built steam trains, modelled entirely from cardboard, at George Library.
Lovers of vintage steam trains and impeccably handcrafted model trains will have the opportunity to meet him in person and hear more about this passion when Mulrooney gives a talk at the George Library in Caledon Street tomorrow, Wednesday 24 January at 11:00.
Scratch building involves constructing a model without a kit, or premade or preprinted templates. No part of the model is machine manufactured; every tiny detail on the model is cut from card by hand according to a highly detailed, specified technical drawing. Exacto knives with scalpel blades are used for precision cutting.
This is a specialised art form, and there are only a handful of active card model artists in South Africa, and even fewer that scratch build without premade kits.
Owen builds his model trains from photographs, from which he renders the technical drawings himself, with precise measurements to ensure accuracy. Every drawing, and therefore every card model, is a replica of the original locomotive, built to scale.
Card model of SAR Narrow Gauge Garratt Class NGG13
This level of craftsmanship takes hours. Owen says he spends hundreds of hours on each model, with his latest one – an SAR NGG13 narrow gauge Garratt – taking a mammoth 300 hours to complete.
Card model of SAR Class A Tank locomotive
“I joined an American card modelling group in 2016 called papermodelers.com. It has more than 80 000 members, and I learnt a lot from them. I started out building card models from kits, mainly old trams. I tried my hand at other vehicles like tractors, of which I am also an avid lover, but always came back to trams and trains. For the past 18 months I have been scratch building South African Railway (SAR) model locomotives, which form the backbone of this display,” he explains.
Owen has loved steam trains since he was a little boy. He recalls his father taking him at the age of five to the old Johannesburg station, and being lifted onto the footplate of a steam locomotive travelling to Cape Town.
The display at the George Library. The models will remain on display at the library until the end of January.
“The fireman put me into his seat, and the smell of coal smoke and oil, the heat of the fire, and the massive size of everything in the cab made an impression on me that has been with me for the past 70 years. It’s still as strong today as it was on that day in 1950," said Mulrooney.
"My passion for steam endured during the 1970s and 80s when I teamed up with fellow steam enthusiast, Fraser Howell, now living in Knysna, and travelled thousands of kilometres across the country chasing steam with him and other members of the Railway Society of South Africa. It was a dream we revelled in. We thought it would never end, but sadly it did when SAR steam trains were taken off the lines in August 1991.”
Owen was a volunteer for years at the Gauteng-based non-profit organisation, Reef Steamers, which worked to preserve, rebuild and run old steam locomotives after 1991.
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