Page 22 - September October 2017

I became interested in American model railroading when
I was seven or eight and had a jigsaw puzzle of a station. It was not a station immediately familiar to me. One track was occupied by an orange diesel with a bulbous nose sporting two large radiator grills. Behind the diesel was
a train of similarly coloured coaches. On other tracks massive steam locomotives simmered away. Skyscrapers towered above the station. I was absolutely fascinated by the scene which I thought must be somewhere in north America.
Despite my fascination with the trains depicted in the jigsaw my first model railway set was a Hornby Dublo A4 Pacific, Sir Nigel Gresley, and two tin plate teak Gresley coaches. My early interest in modelling has continued into later life. I focussed on modelling the railway as I remembered it, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in and around my home town of Ipswich. In the 1980s I con- structed an 0-guage terminus in a garage with a return loop in the garden. At that time etched kits of locomotives were coming into the market and I was able to construct all of my favourite locos. I also scratch built numerous Gresley coaches.
In the early 1990s I attended a Gauge O guild meeting. On one of the stands I noticed some very large etches. On closer inspection they turned out to be etches for a Gauge 1 Great Eastern J69. I also learnt that further kits were planned, including a Britannia. I decided to trade in my O-gauge collection and scale up to Gauge 1. At that time we had moved to a house with a double length ga- rage so I repeated my theme of a terminus with a return loop in the garden. The track for the terminus was laid but the return loop was never constructed. Why you may ask?
I used to travel to a model shop in Sawbridgesworth,
on the Liverpool Street to Cambridge line, to stock up with Gauge 1 parts and kits. On one such visit, in the late 1990s, the proprietors said to me, have a look at this. It was a Proto 2000 B&O F6 A and B unit consist.
It was beautifully detailed and crawled away when put on the track. Memories of the jigsaw flooded back. I was hooked! I also realised that my days of kit and scratch building were over as you could buy beautifully detailed
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22 ROUNDHOUSE - October 2017
locomotives and stock. All you needed to do was open the box. I resolved to sell my Gauge 1 collection and move to American model railroading.
I joined the NMRA and learnt about such things as the huge range of brass locomotives available and the ad- vances in DCC. With the help of other NMRA members, in particular Martin Boyask and Ted Smale, I started to acquire a range of B&O DCC equipped steam and diesel locomotives. At that time, in the early 2000s, we had moved yet again. The new house had a double garage. At the time of the move the garage was full of my daugh- ter’s furniture. This proved a blessing in disguise as I had a lot of time to plan my new American layout. I do not re- member exactly when the first track, of what has become the Paquettin Division of the B&O railroad, was laid but it was sometime in 2003. Since then the layout has grown to three levels and is essentially fully scenicked. None
of my British railway based layouts were scenicked as I spent most of my time building locos and stock!
Perhaps the biggest difference between the British and American approaches to modelling railways and model railroads is operations. No more tail chasing or pushing wagons up and down a yard for no particular reason. Once or twice a month we have operating sessions using Timetable and Train Order to run the trains. Using two way radios a dispatcher, sitting in the kitchen, dictates train orders to an operator in the garage. The operator passes train orders onto the engine crews who run the trains. There is a timetable and extra trains must not interfere with the path of the superior timetabled trains. The engine crews report their progress to the dispatcher. We use a car card system so there is a reason for cars to go from one destination to another. This I think brings the layout alive as we are simulating (in part anyway) proto- typical operations. Ironically I have noticed that people can be so engrossed in operating the layout that they do not notice the parts that are unscenicked!
So that is the story of how I became interested in Ameri- can model railroading. Incidentally I think my jigsaw depicted Chicago Union Station with a UP M1001 about to depart for City of Portland.
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