Market Deeping Model Railway Club chairman Peter Davies looks back at how he fell in love with the hobby.
About 60 years ago, on a visit to Hamley’s in Regent Street, I fell in love with the model trains that ran round on the tracks at (if I remember correctly) first floor level.
Trains of all sorts. Passenger and goods trains, trains from the north, the south, east and west all ran around the tracks.
Even more were stacked on shelves in boxes awaiting purchasers. Hornby Dublo, Tri-ang and Wrenn as they were then. Blue, red and grey boxes with magical pictures and labels on. Books of track plans and magazines abounded.
Train sets were sold too. However, as some folk may have discovered this Christmas, a train set is just the start.
It enables the set up of an oval of track for the train to go round and round. That can get boring and frustration can quickly build. You want to expand, do more things such as experiment with gradients, crossovers, sidings and loops. You’re hooked! A lifetime of happy modelling lies ahead with only (hopefully temporary) family and work pressures to take you away.
My first train set was a Christmas gift. It was a Hornby Dublo goods set with a Southern Region green steam tank engine, some trucks, a guards van, an oval of track and a controller. (And, yes, I still have all but the track and controller. They “died”.)
Living in Vauxhall with Waterloo just up the line, it seemed a natural choice for my parents as Southern coaches were soon added for my birthday only a few months later. It was a joy to run and I was given space for a simple layout.
It had to be able to packed away occasionally so nothing apart from track could be fixed. I added buildings (Airfix – now Kitmaster/Dapol – plastic kits were favourite, though now Metcalfe or Superquick card kits and ready built buildings of all sorts are widely available).
I ‘needed’ another locomotive. To this day, I cannot explain my choice. My childhood was spent in south Wales (moving to London aged 10). I regularly watched or travelled on trains of the Western Region with its chocolate and cream or sometimes maroon liveried coaches. All those wonderful Castle, Manor, King and Hall class locos were very special with their polished copper domes and chimney bands. After all, they pulled long trains all the way to London. With my Southern goods set added to with Southern liveried green coaches as my models, why I picked a “streak” I’ll never know. It wasn’t until years later that I started buying Western/GWR stock!
More properly known as Class A4 Pacifics and powering the East Coast Mainline (ECML) trains, the design and shape of the “streak” was like nothing I’d seen before. Mallard, to this day holds the steam engine world speed record of 126 mph (attained between Little Bytham and Essendine).
Streamlined, highly efficient by steam standards, powerful and fast certainly, my choice would have seemed extremely odd to any purist modeller. “An ECML loco hauling Southern stock? Never!” I didn’t care. I still don’t, if I’m honest. That sort of thing happens regularly on preserved railways up and down the country now. Golden Fleece became my second loco, purchased in Hamleys for the sum of £3 14s 0d (£3.70p - about £90 today after inflation).
This loco was powerful, pulled many carriages up and over inclines, through stations and tunnels and past all sorts of buildings. I designed a layout (without the aid of Anyrail), purchased more track, points, buildings and experimented with different methods of control. Of course, DCC (digital) control wasn’t even dreamt of then. It was all about cab control, sections and siding isolation. Electric point control was beyond my pocket money, though with a radio shop next door, I was never short of wiring or advice!
The trouble is that whatever works on top of the baseboard, requires cabling underneath. And, not having ‘gone digital’ (and now never likely to), my current layout control panel (after some 60 years of off / on development from my original train set) has 326 different wires to make it all work. Yes, it’s all colour coded, labelled, with track plans so that I can identify any faults quickly. But that’s a frightening prospect for anyone starting out now. DCC is far less complex but still needs careful planning.
Starting in the hobby now, would I be ‘analogue’ (ie not digital and with power delivered at 12v DC) or would I go DCC (powered at 16v AC)? Bearing in mind all the possibilities of sound, motion and control and now knowing that railway modelling skills are developed over a lifetime, there’d be little discussion. I’d go DCC without a doubt. With tablet or mobile phone control possible over either WiFi or Bluetooth, computer-aided design and 3D construction options all now available, there’s no contest.
But, having spent half my professional life in education using computers as a consultant, developing systems to extract and graphically portray data of all sorts and because my two locos have been joined by a few more over the years (all of which would have be ‘chipped’ to work on a DCC layout), I’m glad that I don’t have to use computers in my hobby. My layout, based on memories of boyhood holidays in Shropshire, is analogue and will stay that way!
I can ‘go digital’ at Market Deeping Model Railway Club. Mitchell Junction is under construction and will be partially complete in time for our show, sponsored by TC Harrison, at Stamford Welland Academy, May 16-17. If you want to try tablet or phone control of a layout, do get in contact or come along.
Advance on-line tickets are available via www.mdmrc.org Happy modelling!
