Derek Barratt

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Derek Barratt is a collector enthusiast who has not only contributed to the road vehicles story, but also, later in this volume, to the development of white metal model aircraft.

Barratt was a wartime baby, and grew up in Southgate, North London. Later in 1963, he became aware of the corner shop known as Beattie’s. Stamps were their major stock, but Derek saw a small box of old Dinky Toys in the window, and a 30d Vauxhall caught his eye. He bought that car for 2/6d, and still has it to this day.

Subject ID: 80933

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Derek Barratt is a collector enthusiast who has not only contributed to the road vehicles story, but also, later in this volume, to the development of white metal model aircraft.

Barratt was a wartime baby, and grew up in Southgate, North London. Later in 1963, he became aware of the corner shop known as Beattie’s. Stamps were their major stock, but Derek saw a small box of old Dinky Toys in the window, and a 30d Vauxhall caught his eye. He bought that car for 2/6d, and still has it to this day.

At the time Scale Models were running a column on model cars, written by Cecil Gibson, and he would feature new white metal new releases, including Paddy Stanley and John Day, together with information on obsolete die-cast. In 1965 Derek attended the first ever swapmeet in Anstey, Leicestershire, at the home of Cecil Gibson. He bought some Dinky Toys and was smitten.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Derek was an enthusiastic collector of all things Meccano, from Dinky Toys to Hornby ‘0’ gauge, and he attended various swapmeets as a trader, to further his hobby. He had joined the Maidenhead Static Model Club, where he met many key people in the hobby, such as Mike Richardson and Graham Bridges.

Moving to Norfolk, in 1973 Derek then met Royston Carss, a Hornby railway enthusiast, and editor of the Hornby Railway Collectors Association magazine. He lived nearby, and Derek helped Royston collate and staple the monthly issues. After two years of friendship, they both wanted to develop fine scale railway vehicles themselves, so Royston proposed they jointly set up a partnership. MetalModels was born.

Derek believes they were the first people to apply etched brass construction to railway vehicles other than locos. Royston did the initial drawings, and together they would spend evenings and weekends developing the business. They selected Bailoy Engineering in London, a small firm of just 2 people, to produce both the masters and the castings for white metal items in the kits.

It was a natural progression from this point to consider road vehicles, and as Derek knew an owner of a Morris Commercial truck nearby, he led on measuring and producing the drawings. Again, Bailoy did both the master and the casting. These were to be kits, including transfers, and Derek admits now that their priority was accuracy, and less focus was given to assembly!

To achieve authentic liveries, they approached the editor of the ‘Old Motor’ magazine, Prince Marshall, who put them in touch with Ted Gaffney. Ted was in his 80s, and had been a delivery driver for Harrods. This well-respected role had included maintaining his vehicle in impeccable condition. Whilst driving around London and southern England, Ted would carry his own sketch pad and record the liveries and advertising of lorries and buses. These sketches were then transformed into watercolours, which in due course he lent to Derek, who used them as the basis for the 12 different liveries.

The Morris was released in 1976, produced in van, open and tilt versions, and approximately 800 kits were sold.

The partnership was dissolved in 1980, in order that each partner could pursue different directions, but it was not until 1989 that Derek saw an article in the Sunday Telegraph on Dennis Knight’s range of Helmet aircraft. These were filling gaps in the line-up of Dinky Toys aircraft Derek had amassed. After collecting these for a while, Derek concluded that he could add further to this collection by making his own, so in 1995, his Supermarine S6B was launched. The master of Tommy Atkins was used, and Tommy also did the casting for Derek.

His ‘Speed in the air’ series followed over the next three years, and for this the name MetalModels was resurrected again. More recently, Derek has teamed up with friends Wojtek Benzinski, Paul Howard and Chris Sayer, due to increasing difficulty in achieving satisfactory pattern making. This has led to the quartet making the move towards use of rapid prototyping, using computer modelling software to produce the drawings which instruct the machines that create the master.

Subject ID: 80933

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Subject ID: 80933