Make your own buses (with and without matchboxes)
For my tenth birthday in 1943 my Nan bought me a book called "Matchbox Town", which showed you how to build models, mainly of buildings, made from matchboxes covered in paper. I persuaded our few relatives, also friends and neighbours to hand over their old matchboxes, and in a good week I might scrounge 20 or more of them. I soon got tired of the range of models in the book and decided to make a double-decker bus from 12 matchboxes, covered with paper on which I drew the sides with windows, walls and the entrance. The prototype was meant to be one of the earliest wartime Birmingham Corporation 'Utility' buses painted in the blue and primrose livery rather than the later wartime grey. It was just a rectangular chunk of cardboard, and I soon decided to do better.
My next effort was slightly bigger, made from some thick cardboard cut and folded to make an bigger oblong, but with four wooden wheels I picked up from a shop on Hawthorn Road. I painted that one grey, and it was meant to represent utility bus 1327, which was a one-off.
Like all kids I wanted immediate results, and resented the time spent on making these big models. So I decided to make much smaller model buses using just one matchbox surrounded with paper. They were far too short and squat to be very realistic, but I could knock off two a night. I also had a go at trams, using a heavier card which would give me rounded ends. When I ran short of matchboxes I would make my own box out of card, sometimes putting a taper on the front end like real buses had. I must have made over 200 of these over the next 18 months or so.
I don't remember where I got all the cardboard and paper from, but I remember our local newsagent, Mr Keeling in those days asked my mother what I was doing with all the 'Mendit' glue I bought from him.
Peter