Tether(ed) cars still fascinate many people. They're not particularly cheap as models go, they're potentially dangerous, and they need special smooth surfaces to run on, protected by safety fences and all sorts of expensive paraphernalia. In some ways, you might wonder where the fascination comes from.
When World War Two was over, and speedway racing began again in Australia, I used to catch a tram at Central Station to the Sydney Showgrounds every Friday night, and join crowds of men and boys going through the turnstiles.        My mother disapproved of the Speedway. When I said that one driver was better than another, or that Offenhauser engines were more powerful than Edelbrock, she would tell me to stop talking nonsense.   I started work in the soon-to-be-demolished Commonwealth Investigation Service, Canberra, where I found a file on my father who had cleared out during the Depression, and had made all kinds of false claims to get to the rank of Flight Lieutenant during the war. Amongst other things, he claimed to have been a speedway rider, and a German flying ace.           In my spare time I started building a model speedway car. It was to have a 2.5 cc motor, Meccano gears, special wheels and steel axles mounted in steel bearings.   The working men's hostel where I lived was the wrong place to build such a thing. My room was less than ten feet square and contained a bed, a wardrobe, a table and a chair, so there was no space for a drawing board, let alone a bench for basic equipment like a vice or a bench drill.     The engine cost 20 quid, a set of wheels came from a hobby shop in London. The body design was copied from a speedway program. It was supposed to look like the car that Ray Revell raced.   I began to call on engineering workshops and motorcar repair shops with the hope of getting help with the mechanical parts of my project. Most of the men had little time to listen to me, or understand what I wanted. Their conversation was often interrupted by phone calls, or by customers requiring more important work. The one or two who did understand what I wanted tried to discourage me. Whirling an object the size and weight of a house brick at sixty or so miles per hour, at the end of a single strand of wire, could end up killing somebody. What I was proposing was a dangerous fad that would only last a week or two and then be forgotten.     During the week, when I was supposed to be working, I would sneak out of the office for hours at a time, and go around pestering people to do such jobs as machining a flywheel, or skimming an axle to fit wheel bearings. Things like that.   One bloke promised to skim a drive shaft to take a Meccano crown-wheel gear for the transmission. Ten minutes work for a competent mechanic with the right tools. The bloke said he understood, and that the job would be ready that same afternoon. His lathe was set up for another job just at that moment, but if I came by at half past five, my job would be ready. When I called back, the garage was shut. After three weeks of cajoling and pestering the job still hadn't been started.     I decided to try the Hillman and Humber car sales and repair shop a few miles away near Civic Centre. The manager was a well-known racing driver. He  invited me into his office and listened to my plans. Then we went to the workshop at the rear of the premises, where a mechanic in spotless white overalls was working on a ruby red Grand Prix racing car that must have cost tens of thousands of pounds. The workshop itself was like a luxury showroom - full of light and clean air, with stainless steel benches on which stood dozens of glittering machines that could cut steel to a thousandth of an inch. The mechanic stopped work to look at my handful of pencilled plans and drawings.
 

	Above: Host John Hazelden talks to photographer Martin Stubbs

 
 

	Above: A Meccano non-working model built in the 1950s by an unknown constructor

  His opinion was that if the model car were to work properly, it would need as much precision and balance as the Maserati. Otherwise it would shake itself to pieces before it even reached 10 miles per hour. And if it did get going at all, the centrifugal force would pull the whole thing apart within
seconds.   After a moment's thought, the bloke offered to machine the set of axles and bearings for ₤20. He guaranteed the job would be ready in a couple of days. Before returning to work, I went to the Post office in Civic Centre, and sent a telegram to my mother asking her to lend me the money.  The money order arrived, the job from the workshop was collected, I finished sanding and painting the bodywork. A short time later, the model car was finished at last.   There was a good area of concrete behind the Reid House kitchens where delivery trucks came to unload groceries and other supplies. I thought it would make an ideal track, far enough away from the residential blocks not to cause too much disturbance. I sank a bolt in the concrete (which had a crack in it anyway) fixed a tether wire out to the car, and started the engine up. It made a lot of noise.
Before long, people gathered round. They got in the way, and spoiled the first two launchings, but the third was a beauty and off the little car went. She went flashing round the concrete, looking beautiful. All black and shiny with her shiny copper exhaust pipe. I was so bloody pleased with myself that I didn’t notice that the twenty or so people gathered around were chattering and getting excited about something else.     A wisp of black smoke was trickling out from under the big double doors of the kitchen. Somebody went to fetch Mr Gorrie, the Hostel manager, who turned up a minute or so later with the keys. By that time smoke was pouring out in clouds. Mr. Gorrie opened the doors. All we could see inside the kitchen was black smoke with a red glow in the middle. Mr Gorrie spun around and called to his wife, "Call the fire brigade, love - Betsy's on fire."    Betsy turned out to be a deep fryer that had somehow or other been left heating, and was now spilling boiling fat on the gas burners underneath. Flames had run up to the surface of the vat, setting the whole kitchen alight.     Firemen, policemen and residents began to arrive, and were tripping over the wire that I had attached to the tether car. I gathered everything up and scuttled back to my room. The police wanted to charge the kitchenman with negligence.  
 

August 2010 - some people never grow up. Pull start motor	Other side - belt drive - fibre glass body: see top pic

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