JOHN Read was an expert model maker. He had been making models all his life – one of the first models he made in his native South Wales was a miner’s lamp, part of which was the top of an old cocoa tin.

This picture, taken in 1973 at his home in Hill View Road, Oxford, shows two traction engines and a steam car. The amount of detail was astonishing. Every part was exactly as it would have been on the real thing, right down to the coal shovels, hammers, spanners and oil cans – and everything worked.