Who or How did you get interested in Railway Modelling

[Horsetan]

I have a cousin to blame for this. He worked for BR as a ticket collector at Cambridge, and then became one of the station managers there under WAGN and now FGE. For my 5th birthday, he gave me a Hornby goods set, containing a green Class 31, an oval of track, and various wagons, plus a battery controller that had to be mounted on top of one of those massive batteries.

 

1988 saw my first experiment with P4.

 

The rest is hysterical. I still have the Class 31 body, though it was repainted into Railfreight colours by a schoolmate in 1985.....

[Guest Phil]

Definately my dad.

 

He was born in Northampton and spent as much time as he could on Blisworth watching the full on WCML in all it's glory. In between terms at boarding school in Bembridge on the Isle of Wight. Although the Premier line was is fave, he also got hooked on all those green things sarf of Watford..

 

Our house in Coventry had a west facing window in the gable end of the loft, which had a somewhat compressed miniature recreation of Blisworth. Curving round on an embankment in front of the wondow, then striding over the Grand Union canal bridge, my dad cut "sixty foot" notches in the rails. You can therefore imagine my lasting memories of sunny summer evenings with the sunset throwing the trains into total silhouette as they clickety clacked over the Grand Union canal bridge past the window

 

I was hooked big style !!!!

[iL Dottore]

I had the usual "roundy-roundy" train set when I was a boy (although, to be fair, my Father and Uncle made a nice layout for me, even if only an oval with a siding). Unfortunately, little monster that I was, the train set and board gradually was "recycled" into other play area and faded from memory.... I then discovered "gurls" and "beer" and headed happily off into adolescence...

 

Anyway, many, many years later I was stuck in London on a weekend (I was between two business trips), having nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon I went to a model railway show at Ally Pally. I became infected with RMB and the rest, as they say, is history...

 

F

 

RMB = Railway Modelling Bug

[Gwiwer]

I became infected with RMB

 

Yeah - same here - I put it down to the warm sandwich from behind the buffet counter

[Guest 40-something]

I think it was to do with the fact that I grew up within sight of Eastfield TMD, Cowlairs carraige sidings and the Glasgow - Edinburgh mainline.

 

I remember receiving my first train set at christmas when I was about 4 or 5, a Black 0-4-0, 3 wagons, circle of track and a card tunnel, powered by a controller that was mounted on top of a big battery. Interest fell away when I was in my early 20's but came back by my late twenties.

[Southernman46]

Triang / Hornby "Freightmaster" train set Xmas pressie (1969??)

[SonOfMike]

With me I reckon it’s a simple combination of ”nature and nurture”. I’m a fourth-generation model railway enthusiast and started helping my father at exhibitions with his layouts when I was about 8 years old. I kind of think it was bound to happen eventually...

[Simon Moore]

Great thread topic!!

 

For me it was from an early age, My dad insisted on taking me everywhere from the time i could walk to all the great haunts Tinsley, Crewe & Doncaster being our main 3. I was brought up on the outskirts of Sheffield & visits to the city centre were frequent. To keep a young impressionable Simon quite the promise of a quick look on the train station at Sheffield Midland usually kept me from being a pain whilst walking around Sheffield centre.

 

Because of these trips to places like Sheffield & Crewe in my young mind the 2 trains that i thought were the best back then was the HST 125's & class 86's & when i was away from the railway i wanted my own trains to run. I can remember being around 4 or 5 years old begging my parents daily for 6 months plus to tell santa that i wanted the Hornby HST train set out of the argos catalogue that is all i wanted & seeing them each week at Sheffield got me more excited for that faithful day.

 

Christmas day came & i remember all the presents under the tree i remember looking & working my way around to the present i though was that train set. I'll never ever forget that day for one reason i opened the final box thinking this has got to be my hst & my heart came crashing down when i opened the box. The last present was a jigsaw puzzle of a hst so as you can imagine a 5 year old boy being rather upset.

 

I didnt throw a wobbler though i was upset but my mum said what is your dad doing in the dining room, so i walked in to find a 8 x 4 board with a double track going round with a lima western & a deltic going round with wagons, carriages stations & alsorts. The hst had completely gone out of my head i sat & played or should i say watched my dad play with my trains & it started there. I have had model trains now for around 20 years on & off there was a period when i was at high school where they all got shelved because trains wasn't cool with everyone but the plan was to always comeback & when the time was right i did & it's something i could not see myself not doing it keeps me busy daily.

 

 

Simon

[adanapress]

At one time East Anglia was run by three Managers who called themselves The Three Musketeers. Geoff Ford at Norwich, Terry Miller at Stratford, and Teddy Kerr at Cambridge. They were close friends, despite that Teddy Kerr was Gorton trained, and the others Doncaster Premium Apprentices under Gresley. They made Great Eastern go with a zing, and they were rightly proud

that their Region alone of them all, actually made money!. When Geoff Ford died, and Teddy Kerrs wife, the two widowed survivors then married, so the former Mrs Ford became Mrs Kerr. They all were close friends as I say. That Mrs Ford/Kerr was my Aunt and this led to me being taken as a guest to Mutual Improvement classes from time to time, and best of all to minor accidents in the area.. Morale amongst all the staff was excellent, and the Region really was humming. I think this was during

Gerry Fiennes time. All three got very fed up with endless 're-organisations' and endless nonsense from 'Head Office' and perhaps Mr Fiennes book has the flavour and detail of all that. It was and is quite clear that Civil Servants, are not the men to run Railways, nor indeed to be in command of men generally.. The area has never been as good since. Mr Kerr had a 5 inch scale live steam loco under construction in his shed, in Thaxted I wonder what happened to that.

[Guest Tom F]

For an early Christmas....must have been for my 4th or 5th...around 1989, I received a Hornby Trainset, was an 8F with a goods train, and had a firebox that lit up.

 

From there Dad built me a layout in my bedroom that ran through the wardropes, this lasted me for about 12 years until we moved in 2004. From there Dad and I built a 14ft-8ft layout in the garage of our current house, which we are no as it happens we are partially taking it down, to make a new layout from it.

 

Always been a steam enthusiast, and steam has always dominated my layouts....some random choices from the past....inparticial a Intercity 225

[Bill]

A great romance from my earliest of days - a station made of bricks - a trip to London by train from Three Bridges - jigsaw puzzles, many many jigsaw puzzles of steam engines - toys - ABC of the Railway book, other books - a Hornby 0 gauge tin wind-up train - an ancient prewar Trix 00 trainset with totally incompatible rolling stock given as presents by some dim adults - friends who had proper Hornby 00 layouts with the Duchess of Montrose - visits to garden railways - a large model railway layout in Swanage - more trips by train to and from Brighton and Sherbourne and London - Going to school and walking over the bridge at Shalford, buried in smoke and steam as a local train passed underneath - From age 11 in 1957 going to school by train and watching the Bournemouth Belle thunder through Woking station during the lunch break - it all adds up to a massive immersion in all things trains SR -

 

In 2004 it became apparent what great leaps in RTR models had and were being made and a destiny was born in an overwhelming fit of nostalgia. Thus began some serious modelling of my beloved Southern Region of the early 1950's.

 

But this hobby knows no limits and as all eras and regions and railway companies did and do totally fascinating stuff and as the manufacturers are willing to recreate and supply much of it, matters have expanded on all fronts. So now the current scene with a preservation railway (or two...) interwoven is what is beginning to appear..

 

So who knows where it is all going to end - for now it is producing an immeasurable enjoyment and satsifaction...

[AndrewC]

My dad is to blame. It started with him leaving me at Osborne's in Calgary while he went to the barber. (he was friends with the owner) They had a massive Lionel O layout which took up the whole second floor of the building. He worked for CP so I was lucky to have all sorts of treats that can only be dreamed about these days. Cab ride on the Canadian (FP7a) between Field BC and Lake Louise through the spiral tunnels. Countless cab rides on RDCs between Calgary and Edmonton. (the CP pass sure came in handy) The most fun of all were the switching Saturdays. One of his mates used to get a regular assignment switching the warehouses between 10th and 11th ave downtown. To all those that have urban shunting planks, I can smugly say, been there, done that in 1:1 scale .

 

My first train was a Marx O-27 3 rail. That was soon replaced with an ever expanding range of Triang Transcontinental.

[Talltim]

It's my Dad's fault too, here's me reading his Railway Modeller, and my son at about the same age. Can anyone identify what book he is reading?

[Zomboid]

I can blame Rev Awdry. By the time I was 2 I was a Thomas obsessive. Apparently I knew some of the stories word for word.

[Wolseley]

I suppose it was my father's interest in railways that was transferred to me.  My father was born in Brechin and grew up in a house in Park Road with a bedroom window that overlooked the station yard and his Sunday School teacher was an engine driver who sometimes took him for footplate rides from Brechin to Bridge of Dun and back.  Hardly surprising that he became interested in railways then, I suppose.  I was interested more in cars than trains, but my father bought me a basic train set when I was about 8 or 9 and then he proceeded to build it into a permanent layout hinged to the wall of my bedroom.

 

When I became interested more in in scale modelling than watching trains go around, initially my interests were British outline OO, then Australian (NSWGR) outline HO and then I eventually lost interest.  I never really had any sort of layout to run anything on so, for most of that time, I have had static models that were capable of movement rather than a working model railway. Then I lost interest for ten years or more.

 

Recently for some reason or other, my interest was rekindled, but took a rather different direction, when I purchased a Hornby Dublo Bristolian 3 rail set and followed that up with four more WR coaches, a BR Standard Class 4 2-6-4T and four tinplate goods wagons.  Subsequent locomotive purchases have been an LNER (post-war) Sir Nigel Gresley, a Duchess of Montrose, four N2 0-6-2-tanks and a rather scruffy Duchess of Atholl.  The collection of trackwork and goods and passenger rolling stock is slowly growing too.

 

For the time being all I am doing is assembling some track on the dining room table for when our grandson comes over. He's only 16 months old, so something fairly simple will interest him for some time yet. I settled on plan number 4 for now, partly because it fits nicely on the table and partly because it's the sort of plan that I currently have more than enough track for at the moment. If you are prepared to do some non-prototypical reversing from time to time, it offers a few more operational opportunities than I thought at first. Small beginnings I know but, given a bit more time, hopefully something bigger, better and more permanent will arise. I have started accumulating locomotives and a bit of rolling stock for when that eventuates.

[Nearholmer]

0545: I was born.

 

c1630: My father came home tipsy, carrying a HD "Silver King" train set for me, under his arm (he managed this on a Sunday, because one of his pals ran a shop, and had an HD agency)

 

Unsurprisingly, I can't actually remember either of these events, but both proved to be important to me, in the long run.

 

Kevin

 

PS: my father never had the slightest interest in railways, nor modelling, so I can only put this purchase down to an outburst of paternal feeling; it was actually my mother who fostered the interest, with her tales of the Hayling Billy, and of her grandfather, who was a first class model engineer, and who brokered the passing-on to me of her youngest brother's 0 gauge tinplate, when he turned instead to Velocettes and girls. I played with the big tinplate trains, well before I could actually manipulate HD with confidence.

[caradoc]

Unlike so many others, my Dad wasn't interested in trains, my family had no history of railway employment, and I grew up in a house 3 miles from the nearest line ! However, I was given second-hand Triang models in the mid-60s (my loco collection was a Jinty, Princess and L1) and it just developed from there. When I started at secondary school in 1971 there was a thriving Railway Society which expanded my interest in (or perhaps obsession with) both model and full size railways, to such an extent that it was inevitable that I would join BR on leaving school in 1978. Sadly, despite my best efforts, my son has not followed my hobby/career. 

[Guest]

As a former train driver, I had about as much interest in the railway outside of the job as a eunoch has in knocking shops. Then, a brief stint as an apprentice to an architectural model-maker got me into model towns. Adding trains was only natural I guess.

The one thing that is rapidly eroding my interest in railway modelling is the sheer number of pompous stuffed shirts who have done everything you and I have done, only better, and they don't want you to forget it. Not you lot, of course... you're lovely.

[adb968008]

Great Grandad worked at Horwich, Grandad at Gorton, Metro Vick (he had all manner of electrical bits - a light switch wasnt just a light switch in the house he wired himself during the war !), But it has to goto my Dad.. he scrapped GT3 (and gave away its builders plates !), went into railway preservation for 20 years before spending a further 20 as a sales rep for a well known model railway manufacturer, retired 3 years ago.

 

I had trains in the attic, under the bed, wardrobe, Kitchen, Lounge, Car, in the office anywhere but some place to play with them. Any trip (from the supermarket to a family holiday involved a stop at a model shop somewhere). Every evening was either phone calls, or printing letters to arrange his next shop visits... As for mileage, as a kid on school holidays travelling the country in a car full model trains was an interesting way of seeing the country from Scotland to Cornwall and every nook and cranny in-between (I also got to know the locations of a lot of Chip Shops, Cafes and Pie shops.. which my waist line never recovered from). When he retired, my mother was somewhat relieved at getting several rooms of the house back and not having as many scratches to the walls / doors as boxes came and went every sunday & friday. He's glad not to be driving 1000miles a week any more.

 

you could say I was surrounded by it, no escape... as an adult.. I decided not to work in this industry, but the skills as a 10-16 year old at the time fixing broken bits or just taking them apart and putting them together again, making up bits for him to demo, has been invaluable in all sorts of things (career, domestic and pleasure in the 30 years since). Now I'm settled I've rediscovered the hobby and teaching my daughter what lies underneath Thomas's body, how to dismantle it and why dad likes class 40/50/52 & 55s and why grandad is only now putting numbers into his 1960's abc from train trips he did in the early 1960s !

[Tangoman69]

As a 6 year old, i came down at Christmas (a good few years ago) to find a 6X4 layout in the front room, with a Triang Jinty & A1A (class 31) with a whole host of wagons & coaches.

The interest thrived as a child, but maybe because my Grandfather was a retired signalling inspector and my father was high up in RES!

In my late teens and through my twenties, the hobby was curtailed a little, as i was flying round the world curtesy of HM Forces.

 

For the last 19 years, being a divvy and relatively settled, my interest again thrived, i joined the local club and now on the verge of my biggest project so far a 4.5M x 3.5M dual level based in the North. It was going to be NorthWest where I was from, but now i live in the North East. A recent trip to the NRM at Sheldon meant my stock levels increased with the purchase of the HST40 special edition, so maybe it will influence the location modelled?

 

Unfortunately, my son didn't follow me into the hobby, he did attend Bolton club for a short while, but the bug didn't seem to bite too hard.