Sunday Times article today

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Mods- feel free to move this where required. I found this flattering article in the Sunday Times this morning written by one of the hosts of the GMRC. One of my complaints after the first series was the lack of joined- up communications plan between the manufacturers and magazines to promote the hobby- it seems like this lesson has been learnt this time around.

 

Last week’s news that the tartan rocker Sir Rod Stewart has spent 20 years building a model railway has caused widespread surprise in our troubled nation. Models we knew he enjoyed playing with. Railways, not so much. Still, it’s true: while Rod’s passion for miniature trains has been no secret, it was a surprise to learn he has spent more than two decades building an extraordinarily detailed 23ft by 124ft layout modelled on a 1940s American city. As the BBC’s website breathlessly informed us — in a piece headlined “I am railing” — the star “has released 13 studio albums and been on 19 tours during the time it took to build”. While some may marvel at him wasting his time in this manner, others do enjoy his music.

 

I wasn’t shocked by Rod the Modeller’s pastime. Two years ago, I too entered the shadowy world of the train enthusiast when I became one of the hosts of Channel 5’s sleeper hit The Great Model Railway Challenge.

 

Modellers are keen to let you know how Jools Holland, Roger Daltrey and Phil Collins all have layouts. How David Hasselhoff and Bruce Springsteen are also said to dabble. And how Neil Young is not only an enthusiast but part-owned the Lionel trains brand in America and has helped develop its product line.

 

What makes them do it? What attracts men who in years gone by would happily go off the rails now to spend their evenings fettling them? Perhaps it’s that Proustian quest to recapture the certainties of their childhoods. Perhaps it’s the sheer delight of making little trains go around and around. What’s certain is that they’re not alone.

 

There are hundreds of thousands of modellers in the UK — and the numbers are on the rise. Our television programme featured a broad selection from this parallel world, building layouts in a Great British Bake Off-style competition in a big train shed near Henley-on-Thames. Not many were international rock stars but they came from almost every other walk of life: struggling actors, steampunk enthusiasts, railway engineers, oil-rig workers, biochemists, pensioners, students and gutsy Scottish grandmothers.

 

Some were incredibly skilled modellers. Others stuck two woks together and called it a visiting spaceship. What they all shared was a desire to fashion a better world, if only in miniature, one tabletop at a time. It’s a passion that elsewhere in the world finds expression in such noble pursuits as saikei, the Japanese art of creating miniature landscapes. In Britain, we think of attics and anoraks, rather than artistry.

 

This is wrong. What we found in that shed in Henley — and what Sir Rod doubtless enjoys when, after a hard day’s rocking, he turns to his flanges and fishplates — is a Zen-like dedication to detail, coupled with a chance for some remarkable creative expression.

 

I’ve had many surprises in my two summers filming with the modellers. One was those woks. Another is the broad mix of genders involved in the hobby, both binary and non. Perhaps the most unexpected, though, was how social the pastime is.

 

Some of our teams made vast layouts with family members, and built common ground in the process. Others had taken up with local clubs as a means of making friends. Community is a key attraction, particularly for older male modellers. Connecting to a network isn’t just for train lines.

 

Clearly, railway modelling is a force for good, and any rock stars or TV shows highlighting this should be encouraged. To get your own sense of the vast scale of this miniature movement, why not take a tour around one of the shows that take place up and down the country. The Warley National, the UK’s biggest, is on next weekend at the NEC in Birmingham. There you’ll find everything from painstaking recordings of British branch line journeys to exquisite Japanese Z-scale models — at 1:220, small enough to put a layout in your suitcase. There’ll also be some of the best modelling from the UK — including the winning layout from our most recent series.

 

A final thought on the power of this unheralded hobby. In 2008, it was reported that Phil Collins was so incredibly busy building a model railroad at his home in Switzerland, that the album he was supposed to be recording had to be put on hold — at enormous benefit to the wider community. It’s time to give all modellers, not just Sir Rod and his fancy layout, some respect.