What sparked or resparked, drives your interest in railways,model railways,railway photography.

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

It seems over covid especially that modelling has resurged to a better place,once the domain of parent and child pleasure it now is on the up.

As with everything on the web,we can share and talk to folk who we will rarely if ever meet,so heres a place to tell your story of what and where your modelling began.

[Pete the Elaner]

Are you going to start us off then?

You mentioned Covid. When going out to meet people was restricted, it showed what a good hobby a model railway can be.

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

13 minutes ago, Pete the Elaner said:

Are you going to start us off then?

You mentioned Covid. When going out to meet people was restricted, it showed what a good hobby a model railway can be.

Yes but im in loft and soon off to film some engineering freight trains for a while,its a great hobby and kept us out of mischief as kids,i miss the close railway is all long gone here and i live where it all began.Thanks.

 

[The Johnster]

It all began for me, so I’m told, when I was being trundled in my push chair by mater along the lane at the back of Shirley Road, Cardiff, which overlooks the Rhymney main line north out of the city.  I was about a year old, which makes it 1953 and, according to mother, a passenger train blasted past heading north.  My delight was apparently palpable and as soon as I got home I promptly began to make trains of building blocks and chuffchuff noises.  Only the degree of detail I can achieve has changed since, and arguably not by all that much; I still do the chuffchuff noises!

[SR71]

Two words;

 

Giraffe Car.

 

Dad who is a triang collector. There was probably earlier things but that is what I remember. That and a 6'x4' oval with a clockwork Thomas that I got one Christmas.

[Halvarras]

3 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

I still do the chuffchuff noises!

 

Considerably cheaper than DCC sound! 😁

 

You and I are similar ages then. My story involves very vague memories of an O gauge clockwork set, and better memories of a Hornby Dublo 3-rail set which came later and comprised an A4 'Silver King', one coach, about 10 wagons and an oval of track with the kind of 'S' cross-over only possible with 3-rail. The loco only worked upside-down so the solitary coach became a makeshift push-along diesel (a sign of things to come.....!) 

I was encouraged to take up Airfix kit building at a very early age (oddly enough I never thought of eating the parts, drinking the paint or chewing on those little jelly-like tubes of glue supplied with kits back then) by an aeromodelling uncle who had served in the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm. This probably stoked my lifelong fascination with all things rendered in minature. By 1966 my brother and I had built so many aircraft kits that the old hardboard door our father had set up in the loft as a shelf could no longer cope with any more - and nice though they were, once built they didn't actually DO anything. That year - famous for......er, something to do with football - proved pivotal as that summer I was caught in a pincer movement: a schoolfriend introduced me to real railways, which at Truro meant Westerns, Warships and NBL Type 2s, and a mate down the road showed me the layout his dad had built in a loft space above their garage. I was hooked - I could build models which actually moved! So my dad built a baseboard in the loft beyond the aircraft storage facility. Back then the limited choice of RTR models meant that like most modellers I just bought whatever I fancied the look of, so 'Britannia' and an L1 4-4-0 rubbed shoulders with a Hymek and Blue Pullman, and an AL1 and 'Electra' running off overhead catenary which could be switched from the track via a 2-way switch (working out electrical flows was also an enjoyable learning experience, after all 12V DC wasn't life-threatening if you got it wrong) - however the increasing number of sightings of Brush Type 4s in Cornwall from autumn 1967 and throughout 1968, all bar D1932 in that lovely two-tone green livery, meant that I HAD to have a model of one, and the only flat-fronted 12-wheeler available at the time was the Tri-ang Brush Type 2........yes I know, not likely to result in an accurate representation but I was desperate! Anyway, armed with drawings in the January 1966 Railway Modeller, a sheet of black 20-thou plasticard, a tub of car body filler I found in the garage, newly purchased tools, a second-hand D5572 and bags of enthusiasm I set to work in the run-up to Christmas 1968. I still have it - inevitably numbered D1660 and named 'City of Truro' with hand-painted nameplates - and looking at it now I'm still impressed at my youthful ingenuity and realize just how much I learned from the pressing need to create the model. Many RTR hatchet jobs would follow over subsequent decades although such near-impossible 'transformations' were avoided, and in any case became increasingly unnecessary. Although my interest in real railways continued unabated alongside the modelling, particularly during the 1970s, the latter has generally remained rooted in the variety of the pre-TOPS era.

[cravensdmufan]

Around 1960.  I  remember being fascinated (and initially quite scared) by the steam trains that used to thunder at speed through Shenfield station on the GE main line.  My mother used to stop for tea in the refreshment room while waiting for the suburban train to go and see my grandmother who lived at Brentwood, just the next station along.  The whole place shook when the fast trains passed by.

 

We had no car in these days.  I'd have been around 3 years old.  I now realise those steam engines were Britannias and the suburban trains were Class 306.

 

Then my dad took me to watch the trains from a lattice footbridge just up the line.  We called it the "iron bridge".  Used to spend hours there - then eventually I started going on my own and spent whole days there!

 

We marvelled at the new train types.  Big green diesels with "snouts" (which I now realise were Class 40s) and the "red electrics"  (class 309s).

 

Eventually I was allowed to use the box brownie camera!

 

When I was around 5 he bought me a train set from a church jumble sale.  I now realise that was a Triang Jinty and a couple of wagons and a brake van,  Original Tri-ang track with grey moulded ballast. Plus a big chunky controller.

 

Such happy days remembered with affection.  The interest in trains has never left me.

 

Thanks Mum and Dad, may you rest in peace.

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

My model trains started as a five year old in 1958 with the new Hornby Dublo two rail train set fitted to an 6x3 board the xmas of that year,the set being the bo bo [class 20] and the 062 N2 ish off my older brother and sisters, they were all working so i was spoilt.

The real railway was everywhere as i live a mile off Consett where the iron and steel works was so the trains passed day and night going and coming with ore etc. I would sit on the wall at Leadgate and watch as 9Fs passed yards away up until the Diesels started in around 63/64 i guess.By the end of the sixtys i had other interests but until 1980 trains were still always at hand,i even worked a few years at the steelworks until its end.

After that i was more into Rallying and ran my own garage but the return to railways came as my youngest daughter was train mad after a trip to see Rocket at York,and every two weeks we were there on a Sunday for years,it was out time out together,and thats 20 years back now as shes 24.

I would take her to the model railway club and as i had always said i would built a layout in the loft now im semi retired its in progress.

My interest now is to run modern image freight as i guess the time watching the heavy ore trains has e wondering what a 59 would have made of the climb from Tyne Dock to Consett,but alas we will never know,as the dock is filled in and the steel works line all long gone. Thanks .

[33C]

The railway ran on an embankment at the bottom of the garden where I grew up, plain blue EMU's and 31 and 37's on paper/parcels trains. It was those, and the purchase of a (Lincoln International) battery powered, double track train set, with 2 Chad Valley tinplate signals,home and distant, that set the ball rolling. The night railway fascinated me, because that was when the odd trains ran and the noise was louder and scarier, in an exciting way, that drew me in deeper. And the smell of the brake dust and horsehair, nowhere and nothing screams B.R. in the seventies as much as that! I last smelt that in 1990 in a porters room on a relief turn and wish I could bottle it. Later, a Triang-Hornby pick up goods set, (with a siding!) and Airfix loco, wagon and trackside kits completed my devotion to the polished rails.......

[CameronL]

15 hours ago, The Johnster said:

I still do the chuffchuff noises!

 

Real men don't use sound decoders. 

 

My Dad was an engineer who brainwashed me into railways with all the ruthlessness of a religious cultist indoctrinating his followers. Unlike said followers, I really don't need to be rescued and deprogrammed.

 

Earliest memories of railways are being scared silly by a black 2-6-4 tank at Chorlton Station in Manchester, getting on the train to go to Marple. Later research tells me it was probably an ex-LMS Fairburn, and here's a picture of one at Chorlton.

 

Holidays often involved trains - just to travel as we didn't have a car, or at the destination (Ffestiniog, Talyllyn, Isle of Man both steam and electric). I remember an early holiday in Penzance at a caravan site by the railway watching the Westerns going past - big, strange engines (as a Manc I never saw them at home) with names. Loved it.

 

My first layout was a shunting plank with a a few wagons, a Hornby 08 (remember the old ones that ran on the same chassis as the Jinty and didn't even have outside frames?), a Nellie, a Superquick goods shed and an Airfix engine shed. Then I had a 8x4 roundy in my bedroom that let me run three trains at once and I was in hog heaven.

 

Over the years there have been other layouts when time, space and money allowed, and a lot more planned (I sometimes feel like I've designed more layouts than CJ Freezer). Currently between layouts but in the planning stages for the next one, I'm a keyboard modeller at the moment. 

 

Best wishes to all fellow cultists. 

 

Cam

Edited May 15, 2022 by CameronL
Typo

[The Johnster]

The modelling, apart from pushing building blocks and chuffing, with my finger on the pushing block representing the steam, started with a Triang Rovex Black Princess set when I was 4, so 1956, loco, 2 very short coaches, and a grey 'standard track' oval.  This was expanded with a gift from a neighbour of a figure 8 of the original, darker coloured, Rovex track and another Black Princess with 2 coaches and the original hook and loop Rovex couplings; I think these were from the original Rovex sets.

 

This expanded into the figure 8 and an oval englarged with Series 3 to circumnavigate it, and a pair of Series 3 turnouts to connect them, on a very poorly build hardboard with battens baseboard by Buffalo Bill Enterprises PLC, aka my dad, painted green for 'scenery'.  A Triang 748 saddle tank and some freight wagons followed, then a Southern Region emu.

 

A bigger version of this, discarding the 8 and replacing it with an inner loop but on a similarly carp baseboard, was set up in the garage, and could be folded away against the wall to leave room for the car.  This had sidings accessed from both running lines and a crossover. By now it was the early 60s and I was starting to be capable of building Airfix kits, so some buildings and details started to appear along with some awful foam hedges.  An 08 with a Jinty chassis, some Triang 8 inch Staniers in green, then a Brush Type 2 and Winston Churchill over various xmasses and birthdays, and by now I was capable of building Airfix wagons and discovering the delights of incomapatable couplings.

 

The layout was banished from the garage because Buffalo bought a bigger car, and the loft was converted to his standards and a proper, to be fair, 8x4 chipboard with proper bracing and supports put up there for me to built my own layout on.  This was a single track secondary main line with the station as a passing place with a bay platform, a proper goods yard, and a 3 road loco shed accessed by a Triang turntable.  This saw my first encounter with flexible track, Graham Farish Formoway, and we were now advancing into what might be loosely described as railway modelling, with scale length mk1 coaches, and a layout concept.  'Blackwater' was a small port on the North Devon coast with an overnight ferry service to Cork, served jointly be SR and WR trains.  

 

The desire to use more GW locos led to kit bashing, some of which were offences against modelling that I'm not too proud of but it was highly educational.  I was in my eary teens by now, reading MRC, and among the horrors were a 56xx on the old 748 chassis (Airfix 61xx). and an Airfix 4MT mogul with the chassis and mech from a 2h Triang 3MT prairie, a 63xx from bits of 61xx and Cot on a Princess mech, and, of course, an Airfix 61xx numbered as a 5101, on the other Princess mech after I'd tried to cut'n'shut that into a Black 5.  Motors stuck out of cabs to a degree that even Hornby Dublo would have been ashamed of, and none of the locos that used Airfix motion were successful of course.  Oh, and I rebodied Winston Churchill with an Airfix Biggin Hill.

 

The attic layout lasted a few years but was never successful, because of course Buffalo had seen no need to insulate or ventilate it, though he insulated between the joists.  The result was a temperature variation that would have done credit to the Gobi Desert, either freezing or oven-like, the latter even on sunny days in the winter.  The boards warped, and the layout eventually tore itself apart with expansion and contraction.

 

Elements of this can still be traced in my current modelling, nearly 60 years later!

Edited May 15, 2022 by The Johnster

[Mike Storey]

I, too, was unconsciously inseminated into this godforsaken hobby, by my Dad. My mother would be fast asleep in the car, when we would suddenly be parked at a station, at god knows where. Quite bizarrely, I have done the same, to my family. 

 

Please help.

 

 

[melmerby]

On 14/05/2022 at 21:38, The Johnster said:

 I still do the chuffchuff noises!

 

23 hours ago, Halvarras said:

 

Considerably cheaper than DCC sound! 😁

 

And more realistic....😆

[Nearholmer]

TBH, I’m not totally sure.

 

Yes, I had a Hornby Dublo train set as a birthday present, on the day of my birth, not that I was aware of it at the time, but why railways, real and model, struck such a chord, when cars, motorbikes, fishing, football, cricket, air guns, aeroplanes, armoured fighting vehicles, and all the other things that were around to excite young boys in the early 1960s didn’t, I can’t say for certain.

 

The strongest possibility, I think, because it’s common to two other things that have stuck with me, a love of cycling, and a passing delight in proper buses, is that railways represented “travel and adventure” to a boy growing up in a very staid country town, in a family without a car. The most exciting thing we ever did was go to visit my mother’s family by train, travelling through the place that was more exciting than any other place we ever went: Waterloo Station.

[john new]

All the usual for a 1950s baby-boomer but then a bit of a drift away post-steam from modelling to working as an NYMR volunteer. Met the late Mike Cook (YMRS) circa 1981 and got back into modelling but it has always been a to & fro wobble between following the full size and researching that versus doing my own modelling. 
 

Surprisingly when I first met Mike it wasn’t at a model railway event but in a joint interest, and one completely unrelated to railways or model making. Been actively involved with running YMRS ever since in some form or another! Might have had something to do with real ale though!

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

The younger ones into the hobby of which it seema non have jumped in seem to come from you tube filming or copying others,or the box openers who to be honest i find not the most interesting of hobbies,but it takes all sorts. I did think that there would be odd ones that covid lockdown had pointed in this direction...

[Steamport Southport]

I certainly don't think it was BR. Pretty drab when I was little. Mostly boring blue electrics and DMUs with occasional diesel locomotives. It was rare to travel on them and it was only later that I started to pay proper attention.

 

We wasn't really a railway enthusiast family as such, more that there was a few model  trains about just like there was a few cars,  tanks, planes, soldiers, boats, etc. My brother for example had a Hornby FS and a Coronation, but not really a model railway. That came later.

 

 

A day trip could have been anywhere at the time. A castle, stately home, slate mine, museum, seaside resort, etc. so I don't know why railways was the one that stuck. By the late 1970s it was a case of not bothering with those other places as me and my brother wasn't interested. There was also the fact that my dad always liked (still likes) going to places he knows.

 

I think it must have been visiting places like Carnforth, Dinting, Southport, K&WVR, etc. and clambering over big 4-6-2s and 4-6-0s with famous names that were in the few railway books we had. Sir Nigel Gresley, Lord Nelson, Flying Scotsman, Blue Peter, Bittern, Mayflower, Leander, Bahamas, Scots Guardsman, Raveningham Hall, numerous Black Fives, etc. 

 

 

I may have realised why I have a like of big 'uns rather than little tank engines..... 

[zarniwhoop]

Fell away because of many reasons. In 2007 I happened to pick up a Muddler and saw mention of a forthcoming 4-CEP - something I could relate to, a bit. Then found out about kits for 2-BIL and eventually 2-HAL - of course that all got sidelined by Hornby - some adequate stuff if you waited long enough, some horrors (4-VEP), but many gaps.

 

Meanwhile, I came across Continental Muddler, saw the Bemo and various Austrian NG and it was good. Unfortunately, the Austrian politics and flooding banjaxed the prototypes I was really interested in, and then our own politics banjaxed importing.

 

One day I might get something running, or not.

[Steadfast]

No idea where it all started for me. No railway interest in my parents or grandparents. But I know I was young, as I was promised a trainset when I could reach the catch on the door. Would've made me about 5. The set was a Hornby Intercity 225 set. Probably explains my love for Intercity swallow livery!

Railways was clearly in the blood, as I'm at least a 3rd generation railwayman, just there's a few gaps between the generations! Someone on my dad's mum's side was guard/ ticket collector for the Deutsche Reichsbahn, and various others worked for the GWR, at Paddington and Swindon works, and no doubt other locations too.

 

Jo

[DaveF]

 

Dad was a keen railway photographer, Mum liked trains so she almost always went with him.  That meant I was taken along too, I have photos of me in a pram and pushchair next to railways.

 

He also built model railways, my first loco was a clockwork 0-4-0 in the general shape of a Bulleid spamcam which I ran on his 0 gauge layout.  A couple of years later my Christmas present was a Tri-ang train set, the interest never left me.

 

In my teens I started taking railway photos, building locos from kits and so on and have continued ever since.

 

David

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

10 hours ago, Steadfast said:

Railways was clearly in the blood, as I'm at least a 3rd generation railwayman, just there's a few gaps between the generations!

Thanks Jo,thats something ive noticed that a lot who model now seem to have worked or do work on or around the real thing,if your out taking pictures or video some drivers will actnowledge you wave or toot,lots seem to have twitter pages to follow them and a lot are femails who like the job and attention.I know there was steam day drivers and firemen in my family history,someone has to have been related to Joe Duddington and Bill Hoole.

[Reorte]

My dad had a bit of a model railway (well more of a train set) when I was small, and when I was a child I liked travelling by train, including looking out of the window at all the other bits of the railway (always preferred semaphore signalling because I worked out how that worked from a book I had but I never got my young head around its explanation of colour lights :-) ) That mostly faded until I happened to be passing a model shop a few years ago (still a few around!) and on a whim went in and had a look around.

[Hibelroad]

For me it started with a desire to make some money. As a youth (early teens) I had never had a train set or been a spotter. However One day a friend gave me a box containing a battered assortment of Lone Star push along rolling stock and track. I fiddled around with this a bit, then I saw a layout in the window of the local second hand shop and thought I should nail to track to a board and then sell it to the shop. So I set to and created to track layout and started on scenery using plaster of Paris. By the time I had it looking something like I had become engrossed, bought a copy of Railway Modeller, joined the local club and the rest, as they say, is history. 

[Velocemitch]

Thought I'd chip in on this as my real interest in railways and subsequently railway modelling was triggered by a trip to Steamport at Southport (I spotted the user name above!). This must have been in about 1974 so very early days for the museum I was struck dumb by the physical size of steam locos and then saw some N Gauge models in the shop. I would be about 13 at this point and had built just about every Airfix kit ever brought out. As a young child we had a train set, shared with my brother but It didn't inspire me.

Following the Steam port visit I started exploring my local railways taking numbers, photography followed and became quite serious as I got older trips to South Africa and Turkey plus regular escapades chasing stem specials.

The modelling started in N with an end to end around two sides of my bedroom, then a roundy roundy, both seemed really good to me but in truth were a bit rubbish. It got more serious by 1976 when I built a prototype of Holmfirth Station in N along with a few scratch built Loco's (some even worked!) and exhibited it a few times. I remember buying a Peco Jubilee with my first ever wage packet (there wasn't much left !). I had a dabble with EM gauge for a short while, learnt a lot about track standards etc and then moved back to the smaller stuff with 2mm finescale.

The hobby stayed with me and became an obsession then for about thirty years until I started to find myself being drawn away towards Cars and Motorsport and failing eyes meant I was really struggling with 2mm. I gave up modelling in about 2010, but as retirement is starting to loom and motorsport becoming ever more unlikely to carry on (At least at the pace it was for me) due to the costs involved I'm starting to put my toes back into the world of railways. Strangely my eyes are starting to come back to me too, so I'm back soldering up ludicrously small pieces of metal to make 2mm stuff work!

[Robin Brasher]

My interest in model railways probably started when I played with my uncle's 0 gauge Hornby clockwork train when I was about 4 years old.  My grandfather was interested in trains. He was the headmaster of the local village school and I have got a picture of him teaching the children to make model steam engines out of wood. He took me to see the 'Golden Arrow' passing through Orpington Station.

 

When I was five my parents bought me a Hornby Dublo 0-6-2 goods train set and  laid it on a 4' x 3' sheet of hardboard. It used to derail a lot as did my Hornby Dublo Mallard and every time it derailed it blew the fuse on my transformer and the fuse cost me a week's pocket money.

 

We went on holiday to Greatstone when I was six and my parents had a job to take me away from the wonderful Modeland layout at New Romney Station. I also enjoyed travelling to Greatstone by train from Orpington and travelling on the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway.

 

I eventually got my trains running well when I built an 8' x 5' scenic layout mounted on chipboard when I was 15 and Jones Brothers of Chiswick converted my 0-6-2T and Mallard to run on Tri-ang Hornby track. 

 

Now my model railway collection has got completely out of hand. I have not got enough room in my flat for an 00 gauge layout but I run trains on my Corfe Castle layout about once a month at Furzebrook village hall.