SimonDe

I registered with this site just so I could reply to this topic! I was a founder member of the Watford and District MRC, along with Martin and my late dad. I was also one of Martin's trusted crew on Hope Mill. At the time I was a teenager and I considered this a great honour! My dad was helping him out at an exhibition, there were short of people so I was asked if I'd like to help. I'd known Martin since I was very young (maybe 5 years old or so) and he was a lovely guy as well as being a superb modeller. He used to give me rides in his old MG in return for me popping round to his house to fix his computer! Happy days. I even got to operate the 7mm Arcadia at least once. I'm so glad to see Hope Mill again as I have many happy memories of taking it to exhibitions with Martin and his wife Jan. I do remember it being *very* heavy, as you say, and it was always a long job to get it set up, dragging parts of it out of a hired Luton van. It ran to a time table at the conclusion of which we had to spin the fiddle yards around (after taking the fascia off, unplugging the electrics, and asking people to mind out the way) and start again. I remember on one occasion the operator on one of the fiddle yards fell asleep and we woke him up by throwing some of Martin's extra strong mints, which he always kept on the main control panel, at him! Occasionally I got to sit on the middle control panel and be captain of the ship while Martin indulged in one of his long shunting sessions. It's great to see the layout again in these pictures and I'm glad it's survived. The mill was there from the start, I'm sure of it, and used to have a little sack that went up and down. There were also several moving figures (a man hammering, someone drinking a cup of tea) controlled by a mechanism under one of the baseboards and we always had to be careful when setting up/breaking down not to put the board down on this mechanism. Do any of these features still work? For me, I think it should remain as original as you can keep it. It was an iconic layout and you could tell it was a Brent creation by just looking at it (as well as by spotting an MG and a pub). That's easy for me to say though as I'm not the one having to fix it all! :-) It would be great to see it running again. Somone mentioned the junction. When we first started the Watford & District club (after the original Watford club had split) we had various member layouts. Hope Mill was one and Marston Abbots was another. We built a junction board (Tilling Junction) which joined the two layouts. It was a bit of a monster and I remember it was hard to sequence the two layouts together as well as needing a lot of people to make it work. It did run though and I remember operating it at the first Watford Finescale show in 1991 (or 1992 - sometime around then). I helped to build some of the scenery for the junction. You might have the extended control panel from that junction board. I've no idea what happened to the junction itself but I'm pretty sure Marston Abbots is still in the care of one of the original Watford members. It lived in my dad's garage for a few years but was put back in action, I'm sure of it. I'm not involved in model railways anymore, but this has brought back some great memories. I hope you don't mind me commenting! Just out of interest, where had it been residing all these years before you got hold of it?