Memories

 I am an avid reader of James Hilton’s blog Paxton Road. When some folks are checking Facebook first thing in the morning or checking the news. I read James’ blog. Every day. There are updates every day, and I want to make sure I don’t miss anything. The entries are always interesting, often thought provoking  that stimulate discussion. Some, like Monday Jan 8th  cause a flood of memories and nostalgia.

James and I must have grown up in that British Rail Blue period of the 1980’s and 1990’s because we both seem to have a nostalgic affinity for it.

It’s the period that I started trainspotting in. So I do have a fondness for it, even though it was a period of rundown neglect. The DMU's were scruffy and sometimes quite unreliable. Though the trains always got me where I wanted to go, and the all over blue colour wasn't very attractive, even when clean. Things did look better when the livery developed into to the two tone blue and grey. But this was still a very run down period.

So James' proposal for a layout from that era struck a chord with me. I've been designing micro layouts from that period for the longest time.

These are from what I call my DSM phase, (that's Dark Satanic Mills). They were inspired by the mill cities of Yorkshire and Lancashire. You can find a couple of posts about DSM’s in the history of this blog. I found those vast factories with their sooty brick and stone walls irresistible from a design point of view. I even started a layout based on the first two sketches. A SLT (single line terminus) that had been a busy suburban passing station in the golden age of railways, but in the 1980’s was no more than a run down, single track unmanned terminus that may only be a few years from final closure. 

It was a grand atmospheric scheme, heavy on the Inkerman Street influence, but the Dark Satanic Mill in the background took so long to build that it sapped my enthusiasm for the project and it silently faded away into memory. I even found the station entrance under the rail overbridge a few months ago tucked way in an old box of things.

Still, I wasn’t done with layouts inspired by my Trainspotting days…

Then there was St. Mewen - Trenarren branch platform. Blatantly inspired by the Looe branch platform at Liskeard. The big feature of this layout was that you would be able to watch the train come directly towards you. It’s a view not often seen on layouts, and fascinates me. Alongside the station was a rundown P/W yard for some locomotive interest. This too got started, and got well towards completion. The scenic, unused mainline in front was actually laid as P4 track because I had (and still do have) several yards of Exactscale permanent way. But the layout reached a stage where I had problems getting the track over the baseboard join and into the fiddle yard. So I took a break from it for a while. Then out of the blue we were presented with an offer we couldn’t refuse from a property developer. This involved us moving house pretty quickly, so the layout went into the skip/dumpster with many others. This one, upon reflection, I probably should have kept on with. Who knows? Perhaps I should dig the DMU out and start work on it again.

Maybe, maybe not. I just enjoyed the nostalgia today.