NMRA British Region Forum

Nice idea Kathy.

My early inspiration was european based, and came from pictures of a 1978 issue of the Roco catalog. They had loads of very detailed model railroad photo's inside the catalog pages, much nicer than you would typically find, and it got me modeling in N scale , german / swiss border (I needed an excuse be be able to run a Swiss railway articulated loco the Crocodile, my all time favorite electric locomotive).
The hobby changed, my interests too, and by 1990 I had changed to HO scale, US,and do that to this date.

Koos

I started age 3 when my dad bought a train set he mounted on a broken down crate he obtained from work. My mum says I was the excuse he needed, Scalelectrix followed the next year! Model boats came later.
I started modelling from an early age, mainly scenery and buildings and was a member of a school model railway club.
Hornby catalogues were worn out many times over the years.
My first real layout on proper raised baseboards was at 12, I had the wood for my Christmas present.
I had always been interested in all thing North American, that was boosted by one of a series of childrens books on model railways where OO scale people were alive, it had US models over for a visit including a Bigboy.
At about 16 I changed to US models. At that age I started work so could afford to start buying US stuff, Athearn blue box etc.
At 17 I joined a local club, where I learnt a lot and started taking part in exhibitions.
My first visit to a US model shop, Victors, was at 19 and I haven't looked back since!
Another big inspiration was the Dobwalls Forrest Railroad, which was only a half hour drive, a miniature ride on model of the Rio Grande and Sherman hill routes I visited many times. Sadly now all gone (mostly to Australia).

After many years of Tri-ang Hornby as a child, It was David Jenkinson's excellent, if somewhat mis-titled book, "Modelling Historic Railways" that got me back into railway modelling when I came across it in an Exeter library in 1985. I borrowed it for six months on the trot, and read it from cover to cover many, many times.

He showed how to model a real place and make the trains have a purpose, a revelation to me, and something that immediately caught my attention.

All of the ideas contained in the book were so similar to a lot of the stuff that people like Allen McLelland, Bill Darnaby and Tony Koester were going on about in the US at the same time.

Following modelling a section of the Glasgow-Aberdeen route in N, circa 1964, I went happily to The Dark Side of American HO when we visited California in 2000.

A Tri-ang train set, with a Jinty, 2 wagons and a brake van as my combined Christmas and birthday present as a child, then a Tri-ang CKD Princess Elizabeth the next year, set up on a 6'by4' chipboard base with no buildings started it off.
Fast forward the video of life several decades now. My younger brother is to blame for my return to the hobby; he decided to appropriate my trainset for his son without so much as a by-your-leave so the spare room was given over to the layout. I joined the local MRC and was introduced to German stock but couldn't afford it, but bought some Athearn blue box kits and an SD45 at a show. The rest, as they say, is history

Hello, maineu18b,

Thanks for that.

It would be good to know who you really are, too!

BrianMoore wrote:Hello, maineu18b,

Thanks for that.

It would be good to know who you really are, too!

When I find out who I am, I'll identfy myself

Having loitered as "maineu18b" since signing up to the forum I have finally identified myself - it turns out that I am actually Alf Milliken, and hae amended my signature to more accurately identify both myself and my interests.

Hello Alf, nice to meet you

It all started with a Brittain's mayzak Jinty - a plain push along broadly to OO gauge/scale I guess. It was a present from my dad when my yiunger sister was born - to go with the Ian Allen ABC on LMR locos that my daytime carers gave me. I was 2 years and 7 months! There must have been something before that to have sparked my interest but I cannot remember anything beyond that day my mother was taken off to hospital to have my sister (but I suspect it was my mother taking me in the push chair alongside the railway line between Teddington and Strawberry Hill - there was a daily goods train then in the 1950s).

Clockwork O (Hormby) followed one Christmas not long after that plus Lonestar OOO and then in 1958 or 1959 my first electric train set - Tri-ang TT. Bec kits followed when I was in my teens but sold it all to pay for our honeymoon.....

Once married I got started scratch-building BR Southern Region coaches from drawings in magazines and my first loco, a Wills M7 from Bill Eaglesham at MG Sharp when they were still in Glasgow. US outline came along later in 1994 during a holiday in Florida. The rest is a slippery slope to where I am today, still buying tunnelmotors!