I settled into life and school life in Kent with relative ease, adjusting my Glasgow accent accordingly upon seeing the utter incomprehension of my contemporaries.
The train set was still a ramshackle affair, but it still worked, and still gradually grew, not wildly as funds didn’t permit, but steadily, still not boarded down, just a pile of stuff on the carpet.

I had always had a hankering for a Class 37. These to me epitomise the diesel era on British Railways, they were everything a diesel should be. There was something about diesels with bonnets, Deltics, Peaks, 40’s etc. and indeed their Stateside contemporaries, the F7’s, E8’s etc.

In due course it arrived, the rather magnificent Tri-ang Hornby R751 Rail Blue D6830 Class 37. Everybody needed a Class 37 in those days, and I’d coveted one ever since I’d seen my friend Adrian’s green one many years before. Even the model produced a guttural growl, which I think in retrospect may have been due to some dodgy gear meshing, but run it did and soon it was taking over the crack expresses of the early 1970’s. I wasn’t too worried about heating the passengers in those days, so any freight locomotive could be used at will.

The long-coveted Class 37...with dummy centre wheels on the driving bogie

Like the Hymek, the Class 37 was easy to dismantle…unlatch the body side clips, lift off body, slide screwdriver under spring clip on chassis and out it all came. I must have performed this operation 100 times in the interests of keeping to the timetable… and removing carpet fluff.

I had also accumulated a Graham Farish OO Gauge Pullman Coach from somewhere, this being a cut above my battered and random coaching stock.

I soon fell in with 2 schoolfriends, Mac and Tippy, who had also fostered railways on their bedroom floors, and it wasn’t long before 3 railways were combined into one monster that took up an entire lounge. This wasn’t about the running, we barely managed to make anything run consistently that day, I think the staff were on strike. Striking realism, for the real railway was doing the same.

At least the real railway didn’t have to put up with huge dogs knocking over the stock in their enthusiasm to ensure the passengers reached their destination.

Tippy was rather unusual, in that he wasn’t a Tri-ang Hornby lad, he was a Trix lad. I had never really come across Trix in the flesh, but it was rather good. To my 12 or 13 year old eyes, his E3001 was a magnificent piece of work, and it ran particularly well for many years. The AC electrics were almost the apex of rail travel in those days, powerful yet quiet and seemingly effortless, and the original electric blue livery was particularly attractive.

The much admired E3001 from Trix, well-engineered and heavy for its time

Tippy was also a Peco track lad, and between us we had a huge variety of different trackage. Tri-ang Standard, some Series 3, a lot of Super 4, Peco and now the new Triang-Hornby System 6 track had arrived. Thankfully there were adapter tracks to the finer System 6 and Peco track available.

Writing this has made me curious to find out whatever happened to Series 5 track. It seems it was never released, but that the new outside radius Super 4 curves were to be the start of the Series 5 track system. So there, I never knew that.

Our combined layout, whilst huge and multi-sidinged (new word there, OED), was never an exercise in efficient rail travel, there was simply too much variety in stock, couplings and track systems, some of the track was beginning to show its age, with dirt and loose fishplates being particularly prevalent. It did however, establish a common bond between 3 individuals.

A teacher at school happened to hear about this, and mentioned that a local house, Restoration House, next to the school, housed a railway in the cellar, and it was not long before 3 boys went a-knocking. Restoration House was not for the faint of heart, it was big, and inspired Charles Dickens in Great Expectations. No mean house.
It was Dickensian, from the moment a very old man opened the door, but downstairs was a vast model railway, in the midst of construction, looping around the pillars and arches of the cellars. I have very dim memories of the occasion, but the carriage sidings alone must have held a hundred coaches, and all with full corridor connections. I also recall quite a continental flavour to much of the stock, Wagon-Lit cars etc.

Restoration House, home to a secret model railway. I never did know what became of it.

And not a dock shunter in sight.