StevieD71

Years ago I probably would have kept my interest in railways and railway modelling to myself, but now, at the ripe old age of 47. I don't care who knows or what they think. When I was at Sheffield Poly i'm sure the other metal heads I was hanging out with in the Wapentake pub and at gigs were totally unaware that I spent a lot of free evenings walking from my digs over to Beighton yard to catch freight moving through and to take crap photos of said freight, or that my favourite shop to visit was Beatties. Working in "Nerd Central" (Maplin) for the last couple of years has probably made me more aware that it's ok to talk freely about my rediscovered hobby. It actually has been helpful in making sales of small components, solder, tools etc and on more than one occasion i've ended up spending time with customers showing them photos of my layout on my phone and looking at photos of their model railways,cars, boats, planes, spaceships, dollhouses.......the list goes on. It's even helped me sell Google Home speakers when I tell people I have one in my shed which I use for listening to Planet Rock radio while i'm working away. I was quite surprised to that see one of my neighbours had liked a few of the photos I'd put onto the British Railway Modelling Facebook page. Once people realise that you are talking about something more involved than Thomas on a circle of track on the living room carpet, they tend to be more interested than scornful.

The customer services team are an elusive bunch at the minute. We have trouble getting hold of them from the shop. They keep sending emails about procedures through, so they are still there.

We will exchange faulty items but there are NO refunds. That is the instruction we were given. If you need a refund you have to take it up with PWC. We have cards with their number.

Our Manager used one one the redundant poster boards to prepare a "helpful" FAQ for customers:

Just to clear up some of the confusion about the prices in store which have come up here, and also with customers in the shop. When the company went into administration it effectively became owned by PWC. This meant that all current Maplin offers became null and void, and prices were reset to the RRP. Inevitablty this resulted in some items going up in price, even with the new discounts. Hope this helps.

Probably. There are drawers full of the bloody things!

We have hundreds of different types of resistors in stock. No problems there!

In our store the standard stock level for many of the components which would not be regular selling items is 2. Free home delivery is usually 3-5 working days (usually quicker on the mainland) Store to store transfers were available prioer to administration, but because that is quite expensive for the individual store there was a lower limit of £20 set on it. We have on occasion ordered lower value items for customers. I have read a lot of nonsense on social media over the last week or two (some of which has been quite nasty and hurtful), and I know there were things that needed changing in the way the company worked, but I do believe there is still a place on the High street for a Maplin type store (where else are you going to get that odd resistor you need to finish a project at 8 o'clock at night!).

Battlefield 1 features trains quite heavily. There are armoured train behemoths on several maps which appear when one side is behind by a certain amount. There also destroyed trains and train yards to fight in.

80 class DEMU

Sounds a bit like a Northern Ireland Railways 80 class. It would be interesting to see one in BR colours since they were built by BREL but never adopted for use on the mainland.

A Cardiff bound service is glimpsed sitting at platform 3 in Hafan Craig from the neighbouring factory yard.

Well, the closing down sales have started and the estimate is 8 to 10 weeks until total closure, although the general opinion among my colleagues is that our store will be closed by Easter. Looks like it's time to dust down the CV again. The venture capitalists have destroyed the company.

I have battled with depression for a long time. This time last year I finally went to the doctor at the insistence of my wife who was getting really worried about me. I was prescribed anti depressants and found that within a few weeks I was sleeping better and had more energy and focus. This then prompted my return to railway modelling after a break of 30 years (with a half hearted attempt and few years ago). The shed was cleared and I now have a running layout which I am starting to do scenic work on. I find that even half an hour in the shed, building a kit, doing some scenery or even just playing trains is a great tonic for mind and soul.

I'm a Maplin employee and today is a sad day. Hopefully a buyer can be found because there is still a place in the High street for us. Some issues, such as pricing do need to be addressed. I can't speak for other branches, but if you come to Coleraine you will find a friendly, knowlegable and enthusiastic team who are interested in getting the correct solutions for customers, rather than just processing sales (of course that is important too).

Continue work on my shed layout. I've progressed far further than I thought I would by this stage when I cleared the shed to start work back in July, but there are a lot of ideas spinning round in my fevered mind that need to be made real. Buy some cheap rolling stock to learn how to weather properly.

I'm coming back to the hobby after a long time and several aborted attempts to build layouts, and the layout which is currently under construction in my shed is going to be set in North /mid Wales. I've chosen the name Hafan Graig (Rockhaven in English) for it. This is because every year we go to one or more of the Hard Rock Hell events held at Hafan Y Mor (near Pwllheli), so it seemed natural to pair the haven and rock up to give a plausible sounding Welsh name.