In a Forum Topic posted last year (2020) about a 1932 Austin-7 Tourer car imported and driven in Hong Kong during the early 1970’s , I revealed that I had been the owner of this car. That story had a satisfactory ending with the car having been recently rescued from a barn in USA and shipped back to UK for full restoration.
I also mentioned that later in the 1980s I had imported a 7¼” gauge miniature steam locomotive named ‘Holmside’, which is a 1/8th.-scale model of a saddle-tank steam engine constructed in 1901 for operation at collieries near Durham in north England. A second locomotive, a scale model of a 1980s British Railways InterCity125 HST (High Speed Train) locomotive powered by a lawnmower petrol engine, was also added to the consignment.
Left & Centre Holmside under steam in the car park of Fragrant Villas , Clear Water Bay. Right : the petrol-powered HST engine
Having been delivered safely to my Hong Kong home from U.K., I then set about constructing a portable 500 ft.-long oval track and five passenger coaches. There was also a set of points with a short siding for performing maintenance and the stabling of the spare locomotive, while the other was in use. These together, formed the miniature railway which was taken to various carnivals and school fairs around Hong Kong as a major attraction during the period 1983-1989.
Open Day & Carnival at Shek Kong Airfield in c. 1988. Hundreds of visitors rode the train on that day. ( Left)“ Mike Elvy at the controls of Holmside and (Right) Chinarail’ in charge of the HST, apparently being chased by a large angry gorilla
Left : inese New Year , 1987 at Sam Pui Chau ( 三杯酒) near Ma On Shan Right: St George’s School Fair Kowloon Tong c.1989
At that time, I was fortunate enough to have a company-provided house at Clear Water Bay with two car spaces. My next-door neighbour also allowed me to spill out into one of his unused car spaces. Without this I would not have been able to create a small workshop and store all the railway equipment when not in use.
This was when I had a very well-paid job as a department head in an aircraft engineering company at Kai Tak Airport. However, after 13 years in the company I was beginning to get itchy feet and develop a desire for a business of my own. I had originally dreamed of opening a restaurant in a New Territories property with a large garden so that that the miniature railway could serve as an attraction in the grounds. However, with the high price of property and so many restrictions on land usage, this was not to be and I had to settle for something less ambitious. Thus, in December 1985 was born The Railway Tavern, a pub and restaurant at Tai Wai village within the rapidly growing new city of Sha Tin.
The reprinted green map indicates how New Territories telephone numbers lost their Area Code prefix “0”, changing to eight-digit numbers commencing with “2”. The second digit “6” indicated this was in Sha Tin district.
After opening the business with my Chinese partner, Tam, I didn’t resign from my full-time job; I just made formal declaration of the investment to my bosses and assured them that there would be no conflict of interest and that I would in no way be involved directly in its management (nod, nod, wink, wink). The reality was somewhat different.
I designed the decoration of both the interior and exterior with an antique railway theme. The exterior walls were red brick with neat light grey cement grouting and the old-fashioned style wooden-framed windows were multi-paned with orange stained glass . The window frames were also fitted with louvred wooden shutters, and all painted in Great Western Railway dark green. To conceal the edge of the over-hanging concrete canopy which ran around the frontage of the two shop spaces it occupied, I hung up ornate wooden weather valancing (“daggerboards”) which are traditional along the edges of roof canopies on British railway station platforms.
The main entrance to the Tavern required quite a high step up of about 12 inches to the interior floor level, so in order to make this a little more convenient I created an intermediate step. This comprised a wooden railway sleeper either side of which were two short lengths of steel railway track with stone ballast which I had cemented into a containing frame. The effect was to suggest to customers that they had to step onto railway tracks to gain entrance to the tavern. The lengths of railway track had been provided courtesy of the Kowloon Canton Railways’ Chief Engineer (Permanent Way), the late Mike Elvy. Mike was very enthusiastic about this project and he facilitated the provision of a number of scrapped KCR items lying in their engineering stores which “fell off a passing lorry” into my hands where they were utilized for decorating the interior. These included several lengths of steel railway track not only for the outside step but also to form the footrest below the entire length of the bar counter.
The walls were decorated with dozens of railway photographs and antique ‘railwayana’. The main lighting was provided from converted antique railway oil lamps. (Left) At the back the miniature steam locomotive “Holmside” sits on a plinth where it was stored when not being used at fairs. After 1990 the locomotive never left the bar and remained with its steel parts slowly corroding and the whole engine becoming stained by tobacco smoke. It remained there until the tavern closed in 2015, a few months short of its 30th anniversary..
There were also one or two old KCR signs including a level crossing road sign which had originally warned motorists they were approaching the railway crossing on Tai Po Road just below Kau To Shan. Dozens of railway locomotive photographs and antique railway signs, which I had purchased in England, were also attached to the brick walls as decorative exhibits . The lighting for the restaurant and bar consisted mainly of antique railway oil lamps, which I converted to take electric bulbs. Two London & North Western Railway & Great Western Railway cast-iron plates from the 1880s era, each weighing about 10 kilos, hung outside the pub entrance warning customers they faced a stiff fine of 40 Shillings were they to trespass on the railway tracks or fail to close the gate.
Clockwise from upper left: A late 19th Century Railway Signal Telegraph with “Train on the Line” indicator; A ‘Walker’s Bell’ use by signal-box staff to communicate by telegraph with adjacent signal-boxes by sounding a series of coded rings on the bell. (rather like morse code); An Edwardian brass “Penny-in-the-Slot” door-catch used on railway station toilet cubicle doors…. giving rise to the term “spend a penny”. Two Chinese steam locomotive “Works Plates” from the 1970s. These were from scrapped QJ type ( Qianjin 前进 )locomotives which had been manufactured at the Datong locomotive works (大同机车工厂 ); Cast-iron London & N. Western Railway warning sign ; Enameled steel Southern Railway station sign for the Waiting and Ladies Rooms (Toilet), which we used for the restaurant ladies’ toilet & Cast-iron KCR Level Crossing road sign.
The pub eventually opened just a couple of weeks before Christmas in 1985 after a bureaucratic struggle to obtain the necessary licences. An objection to the Liquor Licence was one of hurdles faced. A small church operating out of a flat on the 1st floor above the premises had an American priest who claimed in his formal ‘Objection Notice’ that the bar represented “a threat to his church”. Because of this objection I had to wait several weeks for a New Territories Liquor Licensing Board hearing. At the hearing the priest stood up and gave a speech about how my customers “would be a danger to the young girls at the church while they were evangelizing and seeking his comfort ”. The eyes of the Board’s male members almost spun in their sockets when this was translated into Cantonese. The day after the hearing a solicitor I had engaged to help in my presentation, phoned me to say off the record, “Don’t worry …most of the board are indigenous ‘jigei yan’ (自己人 - one’s own people) and from my area of the New Territories…. I know them all well”.
Chops, chops & more chops. A licence applicant got nowhere. without them. I guess this helped to keep civil servants employed.
The Liquor Board, satisfied that my customers had better things to do than endangering the priest’s “girls”, soon sent formal notification of the approval of the Liquor Licence. However, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department would not actually issue this until they saw and “verified” that I had a restaurant licence and an “Approved Plan”. I phoned them back and quite angrily explained that they knew that the restaurant licence had also been approved two weeks previously but was just awaiting some official to put a chop on it and send in the post. “Not our concern…. that is a different section, we need to see that licence before we issue our licence” came the reply. ( 
) Anyway, I took the risk and opened the taverrn two weeks before Christmas but minus the licences actually hanging on the wall. If the police had visited during this time I could have faced having the entire bar stock of liquor confiscated and been in court the next day. I was lucky the first police visit did not occur until after the new year by which time both the requisite licences were dutifully displayed on the wall.
Left: Opening Day December, 1985 .From left:: (seated) Mike Elvy, (standing) Chinarail, Terry Mak (barman) ,Tam (partner) & seated on right Mike’s son David.
Using the miniature railway as a promotion for The Railway Tavern ( visible in background) during Chinese Year, February 1986. Tai Wai old village is on the right.
It would be selfish not to include a few words about our best customer for many years and also about our English barman, who later became a partner and the manager.
The very first customer through the door on the opening day in mid-December 1985 was Michael Elvy, then serving as KCR’s Chief Engineer ( Permanent Way), based conveniently nearby in the headquarters in KCRC House above Sha Tin station. During the building alterations and fitting out period, which had commenced in October, I had written to KCR outlining my intentions for decorating the railway-themed restaurant enquiring whether they might have any unwanted artifacts in their stores which would complement the theme of my business. I was unexpectedly delighted to receive a reply from no less a person than the Managing Director, Peter Quick , who stated they would be happy to assist if indeed there was anything which might be suitable and furthermore, I should liaise with their Chief Engineer, Mike Elvy. Mr. Quick also assured me that Mike would most likely take a personal hands-on approach to the task and show much enthusiasm. Later I learned why Quick had written this ….. Mike was very much a man who liked his beer. Within only one week he had appeared at the door of the construction scene asking how he might assist. He proved very helpful and found me a collection of old KCR photographs and several items for display in the bar which he had uncovered by rummaging around in the KCR Engineering stores, none of which was “on their books”, which meant there were no complications over government rules about submitting tenders and purchase orders etc. This would have taken forever.
Some years after we had opened an off-duty police man appeared in the tavern looking for me saying he had something I might be interested in . From a large bag he produced a heavy brass plate bearing the name “HONG KONG “. The policeman was the late Jamie Clements, then a police superintendent. He had just been appointed to head a new police unit set up to patrol and be responsible for the security of the Mass Transit Railway. During his home leave in Britain, he had secured a copy of the engineering drawing specifying the design and dimensions of the locomotive nameplate affixed to a Jubilee Class steam locomotive formerly operating on the London Midland Scottish Railway. These locomotives were named after the various British territories and colonies, “Hong Kong” being the name attached to the side of locomotive no. 45611 built in 1934.
Model of LMS Jubilee Class Locomotive 45611 “HONG KONG” & Reproduction Name Plate
Jamie, upon returning to Hong Kong had taken the drawing to a small brass foundry near Kam Tin and succeeded in have ten plates cast to the exact specifications. He offered me one for, I recall, $200. This was hung above the bar counter next to a renovated railway locomotive oil lamp, which I had discovered covered in dust inside a disused railway workers cabin on the soon to be dismantled track leading to Tai Shi Tou ( 大沙頭 ) station , the original Guangzhou terminus of the Canton--Kowloon Railway when it opened in 1911.
A Chinese Railways locomotive oil lamp hangs above the bar with its front white lens illuminating a photograph of the Peking station building constructed in 1908
Canton Tai Sha Tou terminus in c.1924. This building survived until the mid 1980s when it was demolished to facilitate road widening. There is now a commemorative railway park nearby and even talk of reconstructing a replica of this buiklding.
( To be continued )