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

[The Johnster]

On 27/05/2022 at 11:31, Robin Brasher said:

 

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.

 

My big sister lived in New Romney for a period, while brother-in-law was involved with installing switchgear at Dungeness, then being built.  This was when I was between 10 and 13, and I loved visiting, and like you couldn't be torn away from Modeland.  Yet my memories of the actual layout are not clear; I recall an outer double track main line, a lot going on, and a mountain at one end with a 00 gauge rack railway shuttling up and down it.  My memories of the RH&D are much clearer, the station only a few minutes walk away from their house, as well as going fishing off the beach at Dungeness with b-i-l, a great ship watching spot.

 

It is a unique and very characterful place, especially at Dungeness, and made a big impression on me.  It was on one of these visits that I heard the story of the branch train that won a dogfight with an FW 190 from a local, taken with a pinch but I found out years later that it really happened.

Edited May 28, 2022 by The Johnster

[PeterStiles]

We always had model trains around when I was a small boy and my elder brother would buy Railway Modeller and I'd marvel over the effort people went into to recreate the layouts. As a young teenager I attempted to make an "N" gauge layout and unfortunately School, The ZX Spectrum and Girls meant that the railway fell by the wayside for a huge number of years. I kept modelling, but on the darkside with wargaming and such like (albeit with a strange affinity for building scenery).

 

The Esteemed Wife and myself like to finish off an evening with a bit of mutual Reading Of A Book Aloud, and I picked up Pratchett's Raising Steam in Dec 2019 and as we read it I became filled with the utmost desire to lay track and watch the trains go round and round. I grabbed my trusty Google, started reading about what had happened to the manufacturers of my youth and ordered a trainset. The rest is geometry; trying to fit the biggest circles I can in the small rooms of my house! I can state unequivocally that I could quite easily have gone mad in lockdown without my model trains.

 

So: Sir Terry got me back on the right track.

[Il Grifone]

On 14/05/2022 at 23:29, Halvarras said:

omisis

Considerably cheaper than DCC sound! 😁

 

And probably better from what I've heard!

 

On 14/05/2022 at 23:29, Halvarras said:

omisis

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 -

 

What's football ??????

 

I can't recall what sparked my interest (possibly living in a house that backed onto the GWR/LMS line to Avonmouth?), but it must have been very early, as I received a quantity of Hornby 0 gauge for my third christmas in 1949. I was really too young to look after it properly... (I've been trying to atone for this ever since with a collection of the stuff.... I've managed to acquire most of what I had or a reasonable equivalent.*)

Dublo followed in 1951. I still have most of this!

 

* For example a 1924 LMS 0-4-0T instead of a 1948 one (she still goes too! How many of today's toys will be around in 2120?)

 

EDIT

Rethinking (it was rather a long time ago) I realised that can't be the case as we moved there in 1950. (Love/obsession for trains must have come built in!

 

Edited July 11, 2022 by Il Grifone

[Reorte]

4 hours ago, Il Grifone said:

* For example a 1924 LMS 0-4-0T instead of a 1948 one (she still goes too! How many of today's toys will be around in 2120?)

 

I'd assumed that companies back then would still carry on producing the same for years, so acknowleding Grouping by 1924 would be rapid.

[w124bob]

My Dad dabbled with model railways when we were kids in the early 70's, so there was always a layout or two with the usual Triang Hornby Jinty, Dock shunter and class 31. By the time I was 14 I would cycle the 5 miles to Cadeby to see the GWR layout built by Teddy Boston and go to a model railway club affiliated to BT in Leicester. Ironically my interest in models and train spotting stopped when I started work, why build a layout when I'm being paid to work the real thing!

My interest was rekindled when I discovered the house we'd bought was just a 5 miniute walk from the Manchester Model railway Society clubrooms, I drifted into US ho and along with a few other members back around 1990 we built a modest exhibtion layout. Early retirement and the increasing difficulties of getting US ho has led me back to model the era of my spotting days, D numbers, two tone green and the run down remenants of the steam era infrastructure. 

[peach james]

It all starts from my memory, in about the winter of 1979, when dad took me to the Toronto Society of Model Engineers show at Pier 6 in Toronto, where Art Ellis had the (2nd) circle of track set up, with a 2-6-4 T in 3.5" gauge (I think !), with a lovely chute that dropped the coal into the firebox, rather than using a shovel.

I mean, I'd been around steam my entire life- I think I was the dummy in the pram when dad took it for a stroll pulled by one of his 3/4" traction engines (His Lordship, in showman's guise, BL engine...).  There's cini film of it somewhere- not sure where (!) it is, but one of us has it.  I certainly had experience with being a passenger behind the roller
JPRoller80 by Peach James, on Flickr

Before that, my sister had con'd my dad into giving her "Louis money" ( I assume a 1 pound note, with a cat on it)  and getting the Faller railcar seen here:


There's a bunch of extra track in that- I know the photo is taken in the house we were in 1980-82, and the track would have come from John's Photo and Hobby in Toronto.

At that point, dad didn't have any railway engines at all in Canada- there was a loco in the UK that he had sold on when we moved (and I don't think I have any photos of it) in 5" gauge, as well as some Triang that was left with his mum.  (Lord of the Isles, Rocket & a dock shunter).  

On the other side, Raymond Gordon Collins (my grand-dad) had a fair collection of stuff, had been involved in some of the Liverpool area clubs in the 1945-50 timeframe, then his collection was "donated" before I came along.  I later got a box of stuff ex Rodrick Collins, my uncle who passed from Cancer also well before I came along.  There's some Riverossi euro coaches, which are tat, but I'm loath to dispose of them.  Total of stuff from RG Collins is a pair of Lord of the Isles, and a milk tanker...that's what had escaped being in "the shed" to be donated/disposed of.

I think that the OO railway stuff started to be accumulated after about 1984, 



Because the US stuff that I got was...um...ick.  It would have had XF4 couplers, and they don't do anything well.  They didn't auto couple, they didn't stay coupled, they didn't uncouple.  At least tension hook stays coupled !.

So now I have everything from T- 7.x live steam...and I make a living with steam, having gotten my EOOW ticket in the Royal Canadian Navy for a "21000 shp cross compound steam ship" :)

My grandmum (Molly Collins) was going to the UK on a regular basis, and started buying stuff from a 2nd hand store in Morecambe, as she had a school mate who lived there.  Georges' Trains in Toronto also figures, as they had 2nd hand UK stock as well as a limited amount of new stuff.  1985, and the Thomas range, particularly Duck- $87, which I saved on my own to buy !


 

[Il Grifone]

On 11/07/2022 at 14:09, Reorte said:

I'd assumed that companies back then would still carry on producing the same for years, so acknowleding Grouping by 1924 would be rapid.

 

IIRC the tank engine was  a new model (OK toy), but I think they did a revamp of the tender engine about the same time.

The County 4-4-0 got the (then) new GWR logo about 1935. The snag was that the real Counties had all been scrapped by then.

That's not my experience of the standard transatlantic knuckle coupler. It has its faults, but works OK. Spring tension is crtical though. It has to be just enough to keep the things coupled. It's true that said spring is usually a thick chuck of plastic and needs thinning down. The real solution is of course Kadees....

That's the trouble with tension locks. The wretched things won't uncouple. I've had whole trains end up on the floor a cople of times.   Once is chance! Twice is coincidence! Three is enemy action!

I avoided three by banning the horrors and using Peco/HD instead. (Knuckles rule!)

 

Edited July 29, 2022 by Il Grifone
Missing U in corse. Something to do with our neighbouring island?

[SteveyDee68]

I blame my late father…

 

Steve S

 

 

Edited July 17, 2022 by SteveyDee68
My response had turned into an RMWeb version of War And Peace!

[choo1choo]

 

 

My interest was sparked when my parents moved from the West Country to Sussex when I was quite young. My father commuted to London daily and I can remember the Brighton Terrier in Improved Engine Green trundling around Brighton Station.

 

We then moved to a house adjacent to the Portsmouth Brighton line. Highlights were seeing various pre grouping engines coughing along on the Steyning Stinker,The Lancing Belle and various other duties.

I also remember various Bulleid Pacifics hauling all sorts from 2 or 3 coach local services to express services to Southampton and beyond.

 

My modelling interests lie in LBSCR circa 1900 but can really appreciate anything modelled with craftsmanship and /or enthusiasm.

 

Craig.

[Adrian Stevenson]

Back in my teens in the 1970’s I had a OO gauge layout in the spare bedroom which was accessed via stable type door. I also made Airfix kits too at the time having a big interest in WW2 military history. This really took over when I was 16 and began to earn a wage and so began my lifelong interest in militaria and collecting. So model railway’s got left behind. But I began 1/100th scale war gaming about 10 years ago as my next door neighbour was interested too. Sadly in 2018 I lost my Mum which hit me very hard. By now militaria had become my job working for a leading UK auction house. I felt the need to not be doing military stuff 24/7. A holiday to Egypt saw me pick up a copy of RM at the airport for something to read on the plane. My wife said I never put the magazine down all holiday. Lez said why don’t you start to do model railways? My neighbour had now moved so the war gaming and the associated model making had stopped. Lez felt I needed something different to take my mind off things. So I went to several shows and was amazed at how things had come on. Initially I was going to do OO gauge but having seen the range of rtr O gauge I really fancied trying that instead. I was at Warley and rang Lez to say how about O gauge and she said go for it! This was in Nov 2018 and I have not looked back since!

 

Cheers, Ade.

[Binky]

I grew up around model railways as my dad and uncle were both into them, we had a OO layout in the "train shed" in the garden and I can remember copies of Railway Modeller and Hornby catalogues always being around for me to flick through for inspiration. When I showed an interest as a kid I had my own locos and stock bought for me so I could run them on the railway in the shed and on the O-16.5 layout that would later be built in the garden.

 

Fast forward to 2020 and during lockdown model railways was one of the things I researched again whilst looking online at things I'd once had an interest in.

[aureol40012]

I was born into a Hornby Dublo house in 1970, so the bug was always there. My dad also loved Deltics, so I did too!  
 

I had my own layout by 8 (4 if you count BIG BIG Train).

 

Real trains took over from 1981 to 1988, full blown obsession. I was a 40 basher first and foremost.

 

Went to Uni in 1988 and junked all trains (sold layout) for sex, drugs, and rock n roll.

 

At 28 my interest renewed due to the “end” of the 37s, and the promise of main line 40 action again.

 

Started collecting models again around the same time. Not looked back!