At last, 3rd February 2012, on a very cold and frosty morning (look at the grass in the photos!) Don and I got together with all the bits including the surviving model and took the photos you see here. I'm sorry that we can't provide a contemporary 'action' one, we simply don't have one. The only one I can recall seeing is Derek Allen's one which appears elsewhere on this website. It's at the Nationals in 1959 and, from what's going on and the fact that we are flying in the marked out racing circle, I think it must have been taken during an actual race.

Anyway back to the present. The poor old model which used to be so pristine is sadly somewhat 'battle scarred' and has lost a wheel; the passing of the years in a loft have not helped either. However I put in an engine and a tank and cameras were pointed at it and us. The engine is one of Ken Bedford's that we flew for him, effectively as a 'works' team, in our later seasons and I am fairly sure it's the one with which we did the 100mph average (10 miles in less than 6 minutes) final.

The surviving model is the last and best of the line - the red and white one, "No. 15" and the one in the 1959 Nationals photo - not its blue and white predecessor, with which we made our name and which most people seem to remember best. Don was a brilliant model maker and his models were always turned out to the very finest 'exhibition standard' and were beautifully elegant, including the much admired, hand carved, lady pilot with pony tail hair, and they really captured the spirit of the full size racers in which team racing has its roots.

In some of the pics which include Don and myself (on the right), I am holding one of the tanks and the survivor of the two engines I built myself. They were the ones with which we made our name when, for about a year and a half, we could beat everyone including all the 'big names' in team racing.

Since I took the earlier photos I have smartened up the 'pit stop' box a bit and replaced the rusty clips and the perished rubbers on them and this time got most of the right tools etc in their right places - but not quite as I realised afterwards! I must have made that box somewhat later than I thought as I well remember lugging the big box around for many seasons but I was surprised to see in Derek Allen's photo that I was still using the little 'Woolworths' attache case for the tools and spares during the race with the battery separate as late as the 1959 Nationals!

The club emblem I painted by hand on the big box, scaled up from Rex Gough's design which we had made into transfers to go on members' models.

The "cowl off" photograph gives a view that everyone in team racing was desperate to catch sight of when we were beating them all; it was obvious from the sudden step change in performance that we had done something quite revolutionary but no one knew what it was and we kept them guessing for as long as we possibly could! Note how the tank is shoe-horned around the engine to get the little 'chicken hopper' almost level with and as close as possible to the carburettor jet just like the float chamber would be in a full size carburettor.

I hope that you have enjoyed looking at the photographs in this gallery and that they are of interest in getting the feel for what Team Racing was like 50 years and more ago.

Ray Tuthill