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Show Wonderful Miniature Village of Bekonscot Attracts Many Visitors Prepared by National Geographic Society, Washington. D. C WNU Service. A MAZING Bekonscot is a A-V two-acre' Lilliput, art- fully created in flawless flaw-less miniatures of wood and stone, metal, stucco, bright paint, and glass. To the fascinated fas-cinated crowds that throng its narrow paths and streets each summer, it is a thousand thou-sand square yards of bliss. For six years Mr. Roland Calling-ham Calling-ham of Beaconsfield, has worked to build this complete model village in the charming rock garden of his Buckinghamshire home, about an hour by road from London. Originally Orig-inally planned simply to decorate this garden, the little town was opened to the public when its wonders won-ders brought it unexpected fame. Here, where hip-high houses border bor-der yardwide streets busy with the traffic of toy automobiles and people peo-ple less than two fingers broad, every man and boy steps naturally into a Gulliverian role and every little girl plays Alice in a miniature Wonderland. "What is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?" Bekonscot surpasses sur-passes that young lady's ideal in fiction by providing real models, which can be handled as well as seen, to illustrate its "story" of an English village. Village Has Every Detail. From a swelling knoll at one corner cor-ner of this Utopia for youngsters of any age the visitor overlooks an ideal, thriving country town spread out below: Houses, half-timbered and of brick, with tiled roofs and painted trim; three carefully designed de-signed churches; a post office; an up-to-the-minute railway system with speeding freight and passenger trains, electrically operated signals and switches; Main street shops with window stock displays; a floodlighted flood-lighted airport with planes of many types and sizes; luxury hotels; docks, with the latest fashion in mechanized hoisting equipment; sleek ocean liners coming and going in the harbor; and (final touch of realism!) model men and women of appropriate size scattered everywhere ev-erywhere in poses suitable to their activities. Everything is In correct proportion, propor-tion, with no minutest detail neglected but an inch Bekonscot Bekon-scot is equivalent to a foot outside its gates. Bekonscot's principal house of worship and one of its leading attractionsdominates at-tractionsdominates a little rise behind be-hind the town. A cordon of visitors visi-tors usually surrounds this church, whose elegance matches that of many a "grown-up" structure. Forty-five such churches, piled one upon the other, would not equal the height of Westminster Abbey, yet the smaller shrine is built of just as carefully cut stone, is also enriched en-riched with stained glass, also is flanked by "massive" flying buttresses. but-tresses. Bells even chime out from its belfry, and muffled organ and choir music (from phonograph records) rec-ords) comes in just the right vql-ume vql-ume from within. Pleasant homes of timber and stucco stuc-co line fashionable Hill Crescent near North Bekonscot station. Spotless Spot-less white fences enclose smooth green lawns carefully clipped with a pair of scissors. You almost expect ex-pect to see the little people run out from their houses, jump into their parked cars, and hurry off to the picnic grounds! The pulse of business beats strongest strong-est in High street, where stores of many kinds line the block extending extend-ing from Church street to East street, which leads down to Bekonscot Bekon-scot station. Products for sale in each shop are skillfully displayed in the windows electrical appliances in the electrician's, meat in the butcher's, cakes and rolls in the baker's, antiques in the antique dealer's, even deeds and wills in the attorney's! Largely by the meticulous rendering render-ing of detail have Bekonscot's builders build-ers achieved such an excellent appearance ap-pearance of reality. Red mail boxes, like painted spools; tiny telephone booths; ultramodern metal paving blocks the size of dominoes; rain gutters and drain pipes no thicker than your little finger faithful little touches "dress up" the town to look like the real thing. Automobiles and Huntsmen. Automobiles are parked beside curbs or "keep to the left" as if in motion. For their direction, "Slow" signs have been located at intersections, speed limits are displayed dis-played at intervals, and stop lights blink atop pencil-thick posts. Prominent in the outskirts of town is the hunt course, where small, pink-coated horsemen in realistic postures and accouterments ride to hounds. The course, with its white fences, lies in a lovely rural landscape land-scape bounded by a luxuriant shrubbery shrub-bery forest and rows of towering evergreens that a five-year-old can hurdle in one stride. The comfortable Grantley Arms, with hospitable innkeeper offering hearty welcome to travelers descending de-scending from a coach, recalls the days of "Tom Jones." Its red-tiled, half-timbered elegance looms impressively im-pressively (to the low-held eye) above the wheel-rutted, hoof-pitted courtyard, a place always crowded with passengers, grooms, horses, and curious idlers. Two windmills and a water mill commemorate old-time methods of handling grain. Carved figures of millers carrying bags supply human touches to scenes of rustic charm. Painted cattle, posed as if grazing, are scattered over rich pasturage. Laborers may be seen out in the fields, fertilizing plowed ground, planting, or harvesting. Modern Bekonscotian country-lovers find rest from daily toil in bathing bath-ing and boating on the lake. A swimming float, literally "just , a step" from the edge of town, is usually crowded with aquatic devotees dev-otees who sun-bathe on grass or dock, or float in the cooling waters. Lucky it is that the tiny natators are made of wood, or else a fish of no great size might gobble half a dozen of them for breakfast! Gay Parties at the Lake. On Bekonscot road, at the edge of town, a roadhouse does a booming business, principally, gossip says, because it is so handy to a tiled swimming pool with several bathhouses bath-houses and a two-foot diving tower with five springboards. Close at hand, a flag-bedecked pier pavilion juts into the lake. Here little citizens lounge against the rails, basking in 'sunlight reflected from scarcely rippled waters. Boating Boat-ing parties depart from this dock. In the evening relayed phonograph music supplies dance rhythms for Bekonscotian "night owls." Bridges, Lilliput-size but strong enough to support human explorers, explor-ers, connect two islands in the rectangular pond occupying the center cen-ter of the village plan and constituting consti-tuting the outer harbor of Bekonscot's Bekon-scot's port. On the central island a knee-high knee-high lighthouse directs commercial shipping, cabin cruisers, and belated belat-ed sailing craft, while another, on a mainland promontory, guards the entrance to the port proper. This is reached by an estuary leading back from the lake half a mile (15 feet to Uteralists!). Tiny tugs assist scale-model ocean liners, freighters, and warships war-ships into this basin, where they tie up at new concrete docks. Behind the docks concrete steps lead up to a freight station, South-pool South-pool Docks (named after Southampton Southamp-ton and Liverpool, two of England's Eng-land's leading ports). Bekonscot Railway. This depot is on a spur of the famous Bekonscot railway, 1,200 feet of electrified metal rails bound by three-inch wooden ties to an unsurpassed roadbed (of tarred chips). From four tracks under the spreading glass and steel dome of Maryloo station (another combination combina-tion name, from Marylebone and Waterloo, London stations) faithful reproductions of famous trains pull out on scheduled runs over the big recurved loop of double track which circles through the town, out into the rural country beyond, then back through town again to near its starting point. Intelligently, the railway follows the landscape, instead of the landscape land-scape following the railway, which is the commoner way in miniature layouts. Cuts and fills, bridges and tunnels, accentuate the illusion of a man-size transportation system. Several trains, frequently changed, run at once, their course and speed regulated from central control points. "Freights" pull a little wearily into sidings while limiteds flash by on through tracks. Arm and color-light signals, switches, and silent, efficient locomotive loco-motive engines all obey surges of swift electricity. |