Model masterpieces which helped Vic, 96, through the nightmares

For three years 96-year-old Vic was a prisoner-of-war at the hands of the Japanese and returned home haunted by his experiences.

He found that the intense concentration required in making the highly detailed working models helped him shut out that nightmare.

And now visitors are able to admire his award-winning handiwork as his collection has gone on display, being showcased at Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery in an exhibition titled Miniature Marvels - Celebrating One Man's Passion for Model Engineering.

For Vic, from Hanwood, it is the first time his magnificent work has gone on display as a collection.

His precision engineered models range from steam locomotives to fire engines and stationary steam engines.

The display, which runs to April 15, was arranged thanks to his friend Neil Spence, who contacted the museum.

"I just can't thank him enough for what he has done," said Vic.

"I've had a lot of feedback," said Neil.

He says the best compliment to Vic's skills came as they were putting the models in cabinets for display at the museum and a man said: "Fantastic - I'm a model maker" but, after looking round and seeing how good Vic's models were, revised his opinion and then said: "No I'm not."

Eleven models are in the exhibition although Vic's lifetime total is around 30. But there will be no more. His last was made in 2015 and he now walks with sticks and has had to call an end.

"I would love to make them. I would do anything to be able to get in my workshop. But I can't."

He caught the model making bug before the war, as a child growing up in Birmingham.

"As a kid I used to go in my dad's workshop and make simple models and elementary steam engines. The people I knew were all my dad's friends and were all that way inclined. My dad used to make clocks."

He also was, and is, an amateur radio enthusiast and with the outbreak of war wanted to go into the RAF as a radio operator, but was turned down because, of all things, colour blindness.

So he went on to aircraft instruments instead and in 1941 was sent to Singapore. Within months Britain was at war with Japan, and as Japanese forces closed in, they were evacuated from Singapore by the ship Empire Star, which ran the gauntlet of bombing.

"They started bombing us at about 11 in the morning. They dive bombed us. They high level bombed us. It lasted all day until sunset."

He says an ambulance at the back of the ship was full of curry powder and was hit, with the result that they were all covered in curry powder.

Despite being hit several times the Empire Star made it to Java, but the Japanese were not far behind.

"We had an army officer come to us. He divided us up into four and we were given rifles and a Tommy gun between the four of us. They turned round and said 'just do what you can' and left us to it. We couldn't do much. I had the Tommy gun - it was the first time I had ever had one."

With the fall of Java and Sumatra, they were taken prisoner and used as forced labour.

"We went to a place in Sumatra. There was a bloody great hill near where we were. We were told we had to shift that hill, level it out, and build an aerodrome."

The prisoners were brutally treated, poorly fed, and riddled with disease. Vic narrowly escaped certain death when he secretly acquired some bits and pieces of radio equipment, although not enough to make a radio.

"One day I was recovering from malaria and put it to sort it out when a Japanese guard walked in. I thought 'Christ, that's it.' I lay on it and started moaning, and he didn't notice it."

Had it been discovered he would have, in his words, got "the chop" - that is, been beheaded.

"That is if you were lucky. If you were unlucky they bayoneted you."

In the final part of the war they were taken back to Singapore to dig tunnels in the hills. At one point he was in the notorious Changi jail, but says: "We thought it was relatively cushy in there."

The Japanese guards made it clear to the prisoners that if the Allies landed on Singapore they would be "disposed of."

"We were digging these tunnels about mid morning one day when they lined us up and stuffed us on the back of lorries. We thought: 'Bloody hell, that's it. We're going to be done in.'

"They took us to the camp and shut the gates behind us. We got in there and our officer said the war had ended. And that was it. The reaction was quite muted. It didn't register."

Vic had survived, but was less than six stone. He returned to Britain through RAF Cosford, a reception centre for returning prisoners-of-war.

Then there were the enduring nightmares.

"The way the Japanese had treated you made you feel humiliated. I got married 12 months later. My wife suffered then. I nearly strangled her one night."

At this point wife Elsie - it is their 71st wedding anniversary on March 22 - chips in to demonstrate how during one nightmare Vic grabbed her round the neck and called her a "yellow *******"

Vic, who worked for the Midlands Electricity Board, thinks his model making was in some way a reaction to his wartime experience.

"I get the feeling that the Japanese left me in this way. You became the bottom of the heap, nothing, and I just wanted to prove to myself that I could do it."

During his time as a prisoner he had made a mug out of clay and a knife made from metal from an aircraft that had been shot down in the jungle.

"I thought that if I was going to get killed, I would try and take one of them with me.

"I left them behind. I didn't want to know. You want to forget it."

His models have won six gold awards from the Society of Model Engineers in London.

Individually they take around two years each to make, and all can be steamed up and work.

Vic went to great lengths to ensure absolute accuracy and scale, including taking photos and preparing detailed drawings. To produce the tiny components, he even had to miniaturise his own tool kit.

Emma-Kate Lanyon, curator for Shropshire Museums, says: “The detail on Vic’s models is astounding.

“However, we are now at a point where model engineering may soon disappear. We are at risk of losing the skills which have been mastered and perfected by model makers like Vic and I hope that the quality of Vic’s work might inspire another generation.

"At the very least it will showcase the talents and, to quote Vic, 'misspent youth' of one man.”