TerryB
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Memories,50 years of trains.How did you come to "get into" railways and rail modelling?
Heres my story .......
I s'pose it all started sometime in mid 1950's on a family holiday to North Wales ...my father bought me the Ian Allan book of LMS locos,I collected a few numbers on that holiday,and on my return I got into the habit of going down to the local Railway Station [the now defunct "Parkgate & Rawmarsh" near Rotherham ............some of you who follow the "UKsteaminfo" web pages will know it as "Aldwarke Junction" now]
The very first train I spotted through here was 70014 Iron Duke.
Most summer evenings were spent here and we used to get a good few Jubilees,Patriots,Scots & Britanias through on the LMS line,there was also an LNER line running about half a mile away,and this would treat us to the odd B1 and on rare occasion even an A1/2 [on even rarer occassion an A3 would be seen] ......oddly,we never got any A4's through.....8F's,9F's,Austerity's,Black 5's were all commonplace along with the more mundane locos.
Every so often we would buy a day return to Doncaster [this being the nearest point of the ECML to us] ..........here we would marvel at A4's,A3' V1's and virtually every other LNER class.
A day return to Sheffield would reward us with odd Coronation or Princess.
A treat for me would be to visit relatives at "Kirkby in Ashfield" [Nottinghamshire] ..........our relatives lived just over the road from the loco sheds [16B] .............I had an uncle who worked there,and I lost count of the footplate rides I had on 8F's [and other smaller locos]
Saturday Football Specials would depart from our local station,going into Rotherham & nearby Sheffield,these were always hauled by a B1 [and it was nearly always 61000 "Springbok"]
I never saw much of GWR locos,only on holidays in Wales ...........and Southern Region locos were just mythical beasts ...........I never saw one.
The 1950's drew to close and we began to notice more diesels,these took the form of "Railcars" [DMU's] and the newer "Peaks" [40/44/45's] ...anything from D1 to D3xx was a "Peak" .....we were'nt really interested in them ....the only new deisels we liked to see were the D9000/9021? "Deltics" [55's] ......by around 1964 these were becoming all too common and alas.........I lost interest and discovered "girls,pop music and motorbikes" ......and I found myself having to work for a living in 1965.
The last day of steam on BR went totally un-noticed [11/8/68] .......it was my 18th birthday that very day.
Throughout all this time,I had a Hornby-Dublo [3rail] trainset,it got put into the loft in my parents house when I lost interest in the mid sixties..
Around 1990,my wifes parents moved to Bridgnorth [near to the SVR] and the first visit down to see them in their new home saw me going along to the SVR out of curiosity ..................I began to take an interest in Steam Engines again ..........probably due to the first steamer into Brignorth Station being "Leander" [5690] ...........the Jubilees were always one of my favourite classes.
Around this time [1990/91] my mother also moved house,my old "Dublo" set was rediscovered in the loft,and I brought it home,cleaned all the locos up ..............and promptly put them in our loft where they stayed until 2004
In 2004 it was announced that I could take "early retirement" from the job I'd held for 40years ............retiring with a good "Golden Hand Shake" and a pension .....I began planning my retirement hobbies and decided that I'd take up rail modelling as a "winter hobby" .........I unearthed my Dublo set,bought a "Live Steam" Mallard set and a "F.Scotsman" set with a slice of my "payout" .............and I've just been adding to it ever since.
Happy Days 
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