Hi again.

First a correction to my last blog. I got P.D.Hancock's first name wrong. It's Philip not Peter.

I played about with standard gauge in the early days as I guess many of us did. My interest in NG took off after reading the late L.T.C. Rolt's "Railway Adventure".It's hard to define why one should take a shine to a particular type of railway. Anyway I constructed 18 inch of 8mm gauge track and an 0-4-0 chassis. None of this was done overnight and I came round to realising that with a young family and shift working- I was a Signalman- total scratch building was not on the cards. I was about to revert to standard gauge when along came Triang with TT scale. It was pretty crude stuff and 12mm gauge ie three foot gauge but so was the I.O.M. and the Irish NG lines. I think I got the Jinty,two coach and track set The track was a no no and along with the coach bodies discarded. The Jinty chassis was coverted to a 2-4-0 and resulted in an I.O.M inspired loco. This was No 1 ANTHONY Named after my son I have the completion date as May 1957. The 8mm chassis was used as the basis for No 2 ANNE. This was inspired by one of P.D. Hancock's locos.this was completed in March 1958. The bodies of both these locos were constructed from my now iconic OXO tin box! In those days you followed the crowd, metal for locos card for rolling stock This was pre plasticard. Loco No 3 AUDREY.was named after my youngest daughter, ANNE my oldest daughter.. AUDREY was of mixed construction.Chassis ,boiler and smokebox. from a lipstick tube and other bits of metal the cab and bunker from card.I tried to follow the Forney practice of flangless rear drivers and the bogie had a fixed pivot. Needless to say this did not work. So back to flanged rear drivers and swivel bogie. I had to pack the boiler and smokebox with lead as the motor was in the cab and bunker. As you may guess it had a heck of an overhang on curves.but she ran very well. She was completed in Febuary 1960. Inbetween times some rolling stock was built, for instance the two bogie coaches based on the Welshpool ones and the four 4 wheeled coaches based on the Talyllyn original stock. The latter were mounted on Triang freight brake van chassis As you will see every thing did not run smoothly but we were getting there. And indeed I'm just about of space so will close down for now.