Hello from Devon

[Lambolavis]

After a year of lurking about on here looking at all the fine layouts and everyone's hardwork making progress I thought I'd finally get around to making my first post and make a brief introduction.

I'm Jon and have lived in Devon all my life but now spend quite a bit of my time between Devon and Northern Ireland.

I've been into trains and cars since I was youngster, I like anything with a big noisy engine. V12s in particular. Living within walking distance of the railway track meant it was almost inevitable that I'd get into the hobby. I used frequent a foot crossing to watch the trains speeding by, mainly 37s, 47s, hsts, 150s, 158s and 153s in NSE, intercity, regional railways and various greys. Favourites at the time were the 37s and the screaming HSTs(miss the Valenta 12 pots) I lost a bit of interest once I hit my teenage years and got fully obsessed with cars and the like, had plenty of interesting cars since I started driving.

Got back into trains a couple years ago after seeing the many engineers trains down here for the Dawlish seawall repairs, followed shortly after I got a renewed enthusiasm for model railways after going to a show just across the road from my place of work at the time. Since then I've recently acquired a small OO gauge TMD layout which suits my needs with my lack of space at the time, its a DCC layout withh all sound locos on, mostly Legoman Biffo sounds.

I'm about to embark upon a new project of Exeter St Davids station and surrounding areas in OO gauge fully DCC controlled, would like to be able to controll all the signals and points via computer too. I've been lurking on here reading up on the advice and tips everyone so generously gives on here and it's really helped to inspire me to actually put my ideas into practice.

 

[jcm@gwr]

Hello Jon,

 

Welcome to the forum.

 

Good luck with your project.

 

Jeff

[Rivercider]

Hello Jon, and welcome.

 

I know St Davids well, that sounds an ambitious project! What era will you model?

 

cheers

[phil_sutters]

Welcome! St David's looks like a long term project. Exeter was about as far west as Dad could get on day trips from Highbridge where he lived in the 60s, so he took a number of photos there. These are a couple which actually show bits of St. David's - and illustrate some of your challenges! Just the huge array of signals beyond the Warship is enough to put me off a project of that scale! So, best wishes and good luck.

Phil

[bgman]

Welcome my 'ansome, I'm sure you will get plenty of help and enjoyment from the parish which is RMweb

Certainly in at the deep end with St.Davids, I wish you all the best with the project.

[Lambolavis]

Thanks all. it's certainly going to be a few years in the making as a project especially for somone who has no idea like myself.

 

The era I am looking at modelling is early to mid nineties and maybe a bit of eighties too, Nineties is the era I grew up with, Used to regularly go on the 150s to exmouth to see relatives and the HSTs to london to visit the various museums there in my youth so St Davids holds many great memories for me.

[Ohmisterporter]

Welcome to the forum Jon, you will find plenty of advice and inspiration on here.

[brianusa]

You can learn a lot here. I come from Plymouth and my wife from Bangor, N.I. so am familiar with both places.

 

Brian

[DAVE1562]

Welcome to the forum jon....

[Triumph]

Hello Jon, How's planning for Exeter St Davids coming along?  I know it well from the early eighties, I used to live in Exmouth (and hello DAVE1562, also from Exmouth I see!).  Summer Saturdays on the sea wall were something else, with all the inter-regional holiday trains (and of course, every Saturday was a bright blue sky and clear blue sea :-))

 

Cheers,

Tony