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All things 1950's/60's British garages - typical workshop layouts?


bootneck

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I am constructing a diorama based around a 1950s-60s British garage but I'm struggling to find any images of how such a garage would look inside.

The garage could be prewar and modified to postwar improvements, although those modification may not be extensive during those austere years.

 

I am trying to find images and information on the following:

where the inspection pit would be situated, in relation to the main doors.

the length, width and depth of the inspection pit. How far in from the doorway.

what type of lifting gear/pulley would be used, for lifting engines etc.

would hydraulic car lifts/ramps have been in use in that period?

any other information that would help me to furnish my garage, once completed.

 

The internal measurements of the garage will be approx. 27 scale feet length and width, and 10 scale feet high to the cross beams.

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The garage could be prewar and modified to postwar improvements, although those modification may not be extensive during those austere years.

 

I do have the Miniart [35596] Garage Workshop set, ready to install once I know where to position the pit and lifting gear etc.

 

Any helpful advice and/or images would be appreciated.

cheers,

Mike

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Having been the customer of several proper "grease monkey" garages in my time, I can say none of them followed any set pattern that I could see. So, I would suggest you could lay the interior out any way you like and no-one would argue.

 

Until car ownership really kicked off in the 1930s, most mechanical work was done by local engineers, blacksmiths and so on. They’d use the tools they already had, improvising as needed. As cars and trucks got more complex after the war, more specialised equipment was required. Things like ramps instead of pits probably started in the late '50s. The MOT was only introduced in the early 1960s - 1963 I think.

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I've spent a lifetime around garages of one sort or another and agree with Heather that just about anything goes as far as layout is concerned. Ideal and real world rarely coincide in my experience.

A garage I once lived above was built in the fifties to a thirties design, complete with rounded corner glass. The front was originally a showroom but was used for car work when I was there. A workshop out back was very similar to your proposed building. It had a hydraulic four post in one corner, an electric in another and enough room for two cars in front of them. Iron stairs led up to a rather basic mezzanine used for storage. Lots of roof lights and not many windows. Four part folding doors led into the building from a side road next to the frontage. The building is still there, although just sold and due to be demolished for housing. North American Motor Co. Park Road Farnborough GU14 6LP puts you outside it. The service entrance was in South Street.

 

https://www.owenisherwood.com/property/107-park-road-farnborough-gu14-6lp/640

 

 

The owners previous garage was in Fleet and was a long tandem effort that was seriously impractical. The four post ramp was at the back end of the building and cars were continuously being shuffled back and forth as work required. Everything in the place was squeezed in where it could be. A very difficult place to work, but it ran like that for years.

Another garage on a farm where I rented a unit was in one of a row of old Nissan huts. Benches down either side, tiny office cubicle at the back end, no ramp or hoist fitted. A portable engine crane was as hi tec as that place got.

 

None of those places had a pit. Most of the Fire Stations I knew had them, as basic checks on the chassis were still carried out weekly into the early nineties. They are no longer legal as they are a bit on the dangerous side. I can't think of any car service garages that I know of that had pits.

 

I'll be following along with your build with more than a bit of interest. Good luck.

 

Tony.

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I've never been is a 1950/60 British garage but I would query it they would have had a lined roof below the roof rafters.  All old garages I'm been had exposed rafters. I assume to increase air flow when engines were running. Just my thought.

Edited by dcrfan
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I am old enough to have been in a couple in the 50's and early 60's as a kid.  My uncle was a motor engineer and when I moved to Selkirk in the very early 80's there was still an old fashioned garage there complete with old style showroom in front with all the old British manufacturers company crests in etched glass on the quarter lights above the main windows.

 

The abiding impressions is one of age, oil spillage, the mixed smell of fuel, oils, metal machines and a sort of concrete/brick dusty decay.  Health and safety were non existent and overalls were one piece and got changed once a year if needed.  The Selkirk garage did have (and still has!) an inspection pit but its now a concrete one.  

 

As @dcrfan says neither had a "ceiling"  - both went straight to the roof and very freezing in winter so hot air blowers arrived in the eighties.  I think guys just froze before then.  

 

I've been in a few since where they obviously date back.  Not a lot has changed though the floors have a finish on them now instead of bare concrete and the overalls are clean.  In them all there was a back area which look like a cross between a junk or scrap yard where every old tool  under the sun and parts would be kept - often in oils rags.  

 

So I'd say Mike  @bootneck you need to make the place look incredibly cluttered, loads of benches with vices and metal working kit, drills, laithes burnishers etc and none of them clean.  Imagine a real film of oil smeared over everything.  If it was painted red then it looks black like it was in a fire !  And just loads of stuff all over the place in some sort of order that makes sense to the owner but not to anyone else !

 

Oh and old tyres too and old Castrol signs but they cant look new - have to be old - say 1930's and a bit battered and rusty

 

Hope those musings help

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At least a couple of garages I knew around London were converted inns and stables, with the courtyard roofed over.  So it was a real Hodge podge of equipment and stores arranged around 18th/19th century spaces, with stable " chocolate block" flooring in places.  This was late 70s / early 80s, one at least had been in continuous business since horse days.

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p?i=bb35ac32002f70ab6d655961c0196f82

 

 

 

As others have said , it was where ever things could be fitted in and the space available. Here is a photo of a local garage where I grew up. Solved the space problem but wouldn't have like a oil leak in the top car.

 

 

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I guess the building is a kit, but a real 50s industrial building would much more likely have a steel truss roof than timber king post which was obsolescent technology after the war.  I would expect the front door to be much wider, like this local garage running since the 30s.gb-gallery-01.jpg

gb-gallery-02.jpg

The interior is fairly authentic too, with racks and tools round the edge, though probably tidier than in olden days.  To be honest it looks smarter than when we moved here 20 years ago!

But i do like the authentic damp stained render on the side extension of your model!

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Plan of the Tourist Trophy garage and an interior photo.  Having the boss watching you weld must be intimidating, let alone a World Champion!

https://flic.kr/p/2nch7Bv

 

https://flic.kr/p/2ncibGt


Linked as these are from “Mike Hawthorn-Golden Boy” by TBailey and PSkilleter.

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On 03/04/2022 at 16:57, malpaso said:

I guess the building is a kit, but a real 50s industrial building would much more likely have a steel truss roof than timber king post which was obsolescent technology after the war.  I would expect the front door to be much wider, like this local garage running since the 30s.

gb-gallery-02.jpg

 

Thats a great photo Malpaso and I can use some of the detail there for my dio. I am wondering, apart from the modern cars in this view, what else would have been different in the  1950s and 60s?

I am going to add an RSJ under the first beam and that will take a travelling hand pulley system.  I just need to find a photo of such in order that I can scratchbuild the setup.

 

23 hours ago, TonyW said:

This has got the makings of a first class thread.

Absolutely Tony.  Perhaps I should amend the heading to "All things garages and workshops of the classics era"?

 

Cheers,

Mike

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A good garage would have the big-twin cylinders on a trolley oxyacetylene welding gear, with googles and not a face mask

A bench for recharging batteries - bench would have at least 6 to 10 batteries on it plugged into a bus bar along the wall behind it, both 6v and 12v batteries

Numerous axle stands and jacks laying about

A wheel/tyre balancing unit - a cone shape with a vertical round bar coming out of the top of the cone

A kettle, old chrome dome shape, and loads of murky tea mugs

Numerous large posters and calendars, some well out of date, but all with pictures of scantily clothed maidens

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Thanks BK, those are noteworthy.   A school chum and I both worked at garages for a time around 1964.  I worked on the forecourt of the garage I worked at, so never saw the inside of the workshop; however, my mate worked in a garage that specialised in repairing Jaguars, I think Mk.5 and 7 as I remember their very big mudguards.  He showed me round once but all I can remember is a guy spraying one of the jags at the back of the garage, and a big heat blaster (looked like a turbine engine off an aircraft!).  The sprayer wasn't wearing a mask and all the other mechanics were working on their own vehilcles around him.  The problems is that all I can remember is the spraying and nothing on how the garage looked, apart from being very dark.

 

cheers,
Mike

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In about 1984 my father bought a premises which had been a car workshop garage from the late 1940s to about 1976-ish. It hadn't been used since then and was full of 30 years of accumulated car bits, old used and OEM and other new parts for cars long since out of production.

I made quite a bit of ££££ selling a lot of it on the very new ebay when it started up.

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On 03/04/2022 at 16:57, malpaso said:

gb-gallery-01.jpg

 

Hi Malpaso,

 

I am going to rework my garage,  first will be the widening of the entrance as per your photo; plus, I shall add a similar stucco facade.

 

If anyone else has any images depicting the inside of British garages in the 1950's-60's then I would be very grateful if they could be posted here please.

 

cheers,
Mike

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  • bootneck changed the title to All things 1950's/60's British garages - typical workshop layouts?

Here's a few pictures to be getting on with.

 

Taken from an edition of Volume II of the Modern Motor Engineer. First published in 1927, my copies are from 1956.

 

IMG-2607.jpg

 

IMG-2608.jpg

 

IMG-2609.jpg

 

IMG-2610.jpg

 

IMG-2601.jpg

 

IMG-2603.jpg

 

IMG-2605.jpg

 

I'll add another lot soon.

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How about this Art Deco masterpiece! I would love to see a colour picture of this settup. Tecalemit used red and blue for their company colours. I'll have a stab at colourising the big picture later.

 

IMG-2594.jpg

 

IMG-2593.jpg

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Those plans are excellent, I didn't know such publications existed.  Looking at the plans, I would think that fig.166 would suit my dio without too much hacking and slashing.

 

I would also like to convert one of my 1:35 Land Rovers to a breakdown vehicle, to go with the garage, but I don't have any plans of the crane gib/unit.  I shall have to go over to the vehicles forum and ask for advice there.

 

Thanks again Tony, :D


Mike

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This is really good, thank you Tony.  :worthy:  It looks as if I may be getting enough data to start my WiP on the garage diorama. :thumbsup:

 

The page, with fig.313, finishes with a section on the suitability of vehicles for salvage cranes.  Presuming that the next page will describe the vehicles, would it be possible to see that page also please?

 

cheers,

 

Mike

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Here you go, a bit on the technical side, but useful non the less.

I have a few real photo's of a couple of fifties breakdown lorries somewhere. If I come across them I'll add them here.

 

IMG-2620.jpg

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37 minutes ago, bootneck said:

Thanks again Tony, it might take me some time to digest all this; in the meantime, do you have any data on this type of crane please?  I would like to make one for my Tamiya Land Rover.

 

cheers,
Mike

 

It looks like a Harvey Frost crane, although I know next to nothing about them. Sorry Mike.

From the picture, it looks like it might be easy enough to scratch build, what with the gearing covered up like that. 

 

Tony

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