For those amongst us who remember:- "When I was a boy"!

Started by petercharlesfagg, November 09, 2014, 12:41:40 PM

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Newportnobby

I dread to think what H & S would have to say about some of the locations I got into in pursuit of trainspotting :goggleeyes:
Yep - my mate and I used to buy 5 Park Drive (he bought them 'cause he was taller than me) and then smoke them with gloves on so we didn't get nicotine stained fingers ::)
My first pushbike was my granddad's old 3 speed shonker with what seemed to me to be gorilla bent handlebars and painted silver wheels to cover the rust. I bought a combination lock for it when I started going to grammar school. Emerged from school one afternoon to find someone had nicked the lock and left the bloody pushbike :'(

Michael Shillabeer

I remember when the first you'd hear about a new loco from Grafar (Graham Farish went trendy for a while...) was seeing an advert in Railway Modeller when the model was available in the shops!!!

It then took 21 Saturdays of gardening for an old lady to pay for a Black 5 :) I still have it and guess it would run straight out of its box today.

Pocket money days = 100% disposable income! lol

Best regards
Michael

EtchedPixels

For me it was system 6 track initially then super 4 (as I acquired my Grandfathers layout when they moved to a small retirement home and he dabbled in N and other things)

But I started with a Tri-ang Hornby E3001 and a 2-6-2 tank from the same range that kept eating bushes and shorting. I spent a year saving for a Hymek.
"Knowledge has no value or use for the solitary owner: to be enjoyed it must be communicated" -- Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden

joe cassidy

My other hobbies as a kid were fishing and stamp collecting.

For fishing tackle, "mecca" was Turners in Whitley Street (I think) Reading.

For stamps it was Woolworths. Hard to believe that they used to have an entire department devoted to stamps. They had packets according to various themes, including "Red on the Map" for former British colonies.

Woolworths was also the place to go for Airfix kits. My pocket money was just enough to buy one Series 1 kit per week (about 2 bob).

Happy days - or were they ?


Joe

Agrippa

When I first got a Triang train set I didn't have a mains power unit , my dad fixed up something
to run it off a large battery, possibly a lead acid accumulator. Then later I was given a mains
transformer in a sort of mottled steel enamelled casing.

About the same time one of my pals had an uncle who came into a lot of money
and bought him a stack of Triang transcontinental stuff , colourful locos,boxcars,
gondolas, cabooses and a passenger tourist cars with observation domes.

Needless to say I wasn't a bit jealous, happy with an 0-6-0 tank ,2- 3 wagons and a guards van.
(believe that if you like)
Nothing is certain but death and taxes -Benjamin Franklin

silly moo

I started off with Lone Star Locos of the push along kind, I still have quite a bit left that managed to survive lots of house moves and the journey to Africa.

When I was six I had my tonsils out and was given a Playcraft H0 clockwork trainset for being brave. I also had Matchbox and Corgi cars, if only I'd looked after them and kept the boxes. The first thing we used to do was chuck the boxes out.

We used to play for hours in our dusty back garden in Zambia with Corgi cars. Lego and Britains farm animals.

I bought some Hornby Dublo recently, I never had it as a child but it is very inexpensive here, still runs and something about it appeals to me.

Veronica.

Trainfish

Quote from: petercharlesfagg on November 09, 2014, 12:41:40 PM
In my thread of "Four Firsts", it has developed into a reminiscences topic.

.......................Come on lads and lassies, what do you remember from 50 years and more ago?

Regards, Peter.

I'm staying out of this one as I was 'only' 50 in August of this year. This may be why I don't remember much/anything. I was still in my pram!
John

In April 2024 I will be raising money for Cancer Research UK by doing at least 100 press-ups every day.  Feel free to click on the picture to go to the donations page if you would like to help me to reach my target.



To follow the construction of my layout "Longcroft" from day 1, you'll have to catch the fish below first by clicking on it which isn't difficult right now as it's frozen!

<*))))><

railsquid

I might be a bit underage on this thread ;), but this thread got me thinking and dragging up some old memories I'd forgotten that I'd forgotten about. Which is a pleasurable process in many ways.

My first trainset was a clockwork steam locomotive. I'd totally forgotten about this until very recently; as far as I can reconstruct I must have received it for my 3rd birthday (or possibly the Christmas just before; my birthday is just long enough after Christmas for two rounds of presents  8) ) in 1976. I don't recall much about it, thogh details keep popping up if I don't think too hard. It was a tank engine, very probably 0-4-0, black with white lining and probably a single number (possibly 2 or 5). I don't recall what rolling stock it came with, if any; I'm pretty sure it came with a circle of track. Possibly it was from Hornby, but more likely from Lima; I don't remember having any Hornby track until the 1980s. Locomotive and any other stock vanished at a fairly early stage. I can kind of see images of the stock flashing on the edge of memory, no doubt it will come back.

Evidently I was enthusiastic about this little clockwork train, and for the next Christmas-or-birthday I got a Lima HO-gauge Class 33 (BR blue of course) with a set of wagons. My father nailed the track to a large piece of chipboard, which I remember discovering before I should have known about it - it was leaning up against the wall and I distincly recall seeing the rails. And I think my parents came up with a white lie that my father was making it for someone in the neighbourhood. I don't really recall much about the layout itself, it was probably an oval with a single siding. It did come with a Duette controller. Not long thereafter we moved across the country to a slightly bigger house, and my father (who is not really into trains) went to the trouble of creating a more permanent layout which consisted an L-shaped board with two overlapping ovals, one elevated. There was a link between them which - not to want to sound ungrateful - was a horrendous botch job - a 90 degree curve transitioning between levels executed using only two points and two 30 degree curves of not too generous a radius.

At some point I also received a 2nd trainset, also Lima, consisting of a 0-4-0 steam locomotive and three coaches in what was evidently supposed to be "Southern Railways" livery, but apart from being green there was no resemblance to anything that ever ran on the SR - loco and coaches were definitely based on some continental prototype. The coaches are most primitive - plastic shells with no interior decoration, not even any "glass".

A bit later - 1978 or 1979 - I received yet another trainset, the best one yet - a Mainline OO standard class 4MT 4-6-0 and three crimson'n'cream MK1s. The 4MT tragically took a fall from the aforementioned connecting curve, though it must have been pretty robust as the only damage was a broken cab window support and it continued to run for many years.

Not too long after that there was another move, and this time I ended up with the layout on a 6x4 board hinged over my bed. I got enough extra track to make a three-loop layout from the Hornby Trackplans book, around which point I was on my own as far as construction went. Unfortunately being hinged up against the wall was not conducive to any kind of scenery construction; I think it languished with only occasional use until around the time I got a bunkbed, started trainspotting (Birmingham New Street was a 30-minute train ride away) and was trusted with power tools, which caused me to attempt an over-ambitious layout which went right around the room, with hinged sections. Also I spend too much of my meager earnings from newspaper delivery on locomotives, and never really got it beyond the baseboard stage. Another house move and shifting interests around the age of 15 put an end to any railway ambitions, though I've hung on to most of the rolling stock through multiple moves in three different countries.

And then 25 years later (or about 3 months ago), after finally settling down I purchase more-or-less accidentally a single Japanese N-gauge car and realise I have enough space for a reasonably sized layout, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Footnote: I saw a Farish 5MT on offer at Hattons, so was going to order it and a couple of cream/crimson MK1s to pick up from my parent's house when I visit the UK last month; my father ended up ordering on my behalf, and when I mentioned that it was "replacing" the Mainline OO set which I still had, he was pleased I still had it so I ended up with an early Christmas present.

Geoff

I remember having a hornby Dublo train set with one point and could my dad get it to run on the slip could he hec and all I had was a train set that went round in circles, some one told him how to sort it out but he said sod that, then one day when I wanted to play with it, the train set had disappeared my dad told me he gave it to my Uncle, that was my train set not his.  :veryangry:

Every night I got home from school I had to go to the co-op and give the number for divi, hated the Co-op also had to play out after my tea and could not go in until I was shouted in, I could not have any posters on the wall in my bedroom the  fact is  I was not allowed to breathe, there was a sign in the house and it said little boys should be seen and not heard.

I always enjoyed watching the Steam Trains, they were massive giants puffing out steam it was a brilliant site, I would like to say they were the best days of my life but I would be fibbing, the best days of my life are now and truth be had about things I am more happier now than then.

Why was life so strict, I do respect everyone now where I do think some young people now do not respect there elders, like one young man said to me respect has to be earned, yikes I said come back in time and then you would respect your elders or get your back side kicked.

So where a lot of you had plenty of happiness when young I had to go home and say nothing and do what I was told or I got the wrath.

enough said cos my story is just starting.
Geoff

railsquid

Quote from: Trainfish on November 10, 2014, 02:34:17 PM
Quote from: petercharlesfagg on November 09, 2014, 12:41:40 PM
In my thread of "Four Firsts", it has developed into a reminiscences topic.

.......................Come on lads and lassies, what do you remember from 50 years and more ago?

Regards, Peter.

I'm staying out of this one as I was 'only' 50 in August of this year. This may be why I don't remember much/anything. I was still in my pram!

railfish, I like your moniker  :beers:

petercharlesfagg

Quote from: railsquid on November 10, 2014, 03:37:15 PM
Quote from: Trainfish on November 10, 2014, 02:34:17 PM
Quote from: petercharlesfagg on November 09, 2014, 12:41:40 PM
In my thread of "Four Firsts", it has developed into a reminiscences topic.

.......................Come on lads and lassies, what do you remember from 50 years and more ago?

Regards, Peter.

I'm staying out of this one as I was 'only' 50 in August of this year. This may be why I don't remember much/anything. I was still in my pram!

railfish, I like your moniker  :beers:

Spoilsports!  :P
Each can do but little, BUT if each did that little, ALL would be done!

Life is like a new sewer pipe, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it!

A day without laughter is a day wasted!

joe cassidy

Quote from: Geoff on November 10, 2014, 03:31:34 PM

Every night I got home from school I had to go to the co-op and give the number for divi, hated the Co-op also

Can you still remember the Co-op divi number ?

Best regards,


Joe

silly moo

To Geoff, I'm glad you are making up for lost time. We have a notice we stick up on our club layout when we go to exhibitions that reads " It's never too late to have a happy childhood"  it's very true, that's what all of us are doing in a way.

:NGaugersRule:

Geoff

Quote from: joe cassidy on November 10, 2014, 06:10:08 PM
Quote from: Geoff on November 10, 2014, 03:31:34 PM

Every night I got home from school I had to go to the co-op and give the number for divi, hated the Co-op also

Can you still remember the Co-op divi number ?

Best regards,


Joe

4007 it was drummed into me  ;)
Geoff

joe cassidy

Quote from: Geoff on November 10, 2014, 03:31:34 PM
I would like to say they were the best days of my life but I would be fibbing, the best days of my life are now and truth be had about things I am more happier now than then.

I'm with you there Geoff. Although I allow myself to wallow in nostalgia I'm much happier now than when I was a kid. Train sets, stamp collecting and Airfix models are fine but nothing beats the freedom to be who you want to be and do what you want to do (within the limits of the law and your finances).

Best regards,


Joe

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