A tale of model railway evolution...

[emjaybee]

I'd like to tell you a story. It starts around 1972/73 and sort of finishes, or maybe not, in 2021.
It starts with my father buying a Hornby starter set for me. One green loco, two wagons and a 'guards' van (give me a break, I was four, I didn't know what a brake van was) and an oval of track.



It was pinned to a board, which slid under my sisters' bed, and gained a few buildings and some more wagons.

In 1973 a lot happened. I got another sister {harumph}, and my parents had an extension built on the house, behind the garage. I remember playing on the back lawn with the builders winding up our clockwork 'O' gauge train and wagons and setting it off around the small loop of track. I remember the pond being dug, the old oil tank going over the garage on scaffold planks, but the key thing was the extension.
My parents were heavily involved in the Boys and Girls Brigade, as officers, and this came with paperwork, craft stuff and a lot of 'stuff'. The extension was finished, approximately 8ft x 18ft. Down one side my father built a set of cupboards that went the full length and about 2.5ft wide.

Rather than the top of the cupboards just becoming a work top, he built a baseboard, with a lift up, hinged, top to cover it all. Over the next 40+ years, the starter set become a dogbone loop running the entire length of the room, with the end 'loops' being accommodated by lift off extra boards that were stored on top of the main boards, under the hinged cover. Sidings, engine shed, factory siding, farm, station, goods yard and even a narrow gauge serving a timber yard. A few years ago my father announced that he couldn't think of anything more to do to it without ripping it all up and starting again. Unfortunately, his back isn't up to that.

Hornby Princess Elizabeth used to belt round the dogbone at full chat, chuffing away, puffing out plumes of smoke hauling three Pullman cars taking minmum radius curves without derailing. It still runs well today, which is amazing considering the abuse a small boy gave it. And, yes, we still have the little green 0-4-0, which still runs well, and still has a glued on chimney following an 'incident'.










The underside of the cover also developed a life of it's own, becoming garnished with the souvenir's, ticket stubbs, pins, memories, and experiences gathered over a family of five's annual holidays that usually involved a visit to some sort of heritage railway. It also has two large crests. Genuine crests, rescued from the stores of Wolverton Works, mounted on boards painted with genuine LMS Crimson Lake.










I built my father a shunting plank during lockdown to give him something to keep him busy, a month later he'd produced this.




This is the tale of how I became infused with trains, railways and model making in general. I just wanted to tell the tale, as it could be that the large layout gets dismantled to make way for a building adjustment to accommodate old age in the not too distant future, and it, and my father have been a huge influence on my love of modelling and trains.


Why do I model N? Because I don't have a large extension available. If I had the space? Yeah, I'd be filling it with N!

[Bealman]

Thanks for posting this. 

It certainly brings back memories of Triang for me. I see that they still had the Freightmaster set in their catalogue in 72/73!

Which, incidentally is when I started teaching. 

Good to hear your father is well and still interested in model railways. 

[Gordon]

I started with the Triang 'Nellie' . I was born at home and the story goes that my elder brother (then 2) came in just after I had been born and asked if I 'could come and play trains now'...

[JulianO]

Yes, thanks for the memories and the photos of the OO system, which looks great.
Like you and probably many of us, I started with Tri-ang, but about 12 years earlier in my case at the age of 4 in 1961.
My Dad built me a system on a 6 by 4 board.
Possibly of vague interest is that my current N Gauge system is partly built on the frame and legs of that original 1961 board. And my current system started to be built in 1977 and is still nowhere near "finished," which may make me the slowest modeller of all time..

[Bealman]

No, I can assure you it doesn't. Snail's pace is the order of the day with my layout - part of which is still powered by my original 1963 P5 Triang transformer, incidentally. 

[GAD]

No, I can assure you it doesn't. Snail's pace is the order of the day with my layout - part of which is still powered by my original 1963 P5 Triang transformer, incidentally. 

How often do you need to stoke the boiler on the P5?