LGB layouts, electrics & trackwork, buildings & kits, painting & weathering.

I started wth model railways in 1979 on my third birthday with a Hornby train set - GWR 040 no.101. My second train was a Hornby class 25 Diesel with two mark 2 coaches. My collection grew from there until I could fill the entire lounge floor waist-high with boxes of trains and train bits; a bit of everything - steam diesel and electrics all in OO scale British outline.

My modelling interests broadly stayed the same until I discovered Wargaming and roleplaying games. This opened up my interests enormously. As a result, I no longer consider myself a ‘Railway Modeller’ because I will build models of anything that takes my fancy, regardless of scale or prototype - from spaceports to the interior of my friends’ bedrooms!

My tastes changed next when I joined Gaugemaster in 2001, I soon realised the last place a modeller should work is in a model shop! Try being surrounded by gorgeous models of German stock, buildings etc. on a daily basis and see how long you can hold out! I made a move to modelling the current German scene in HO scale, with rolling stock from Fleischmann, Piko & Trix with a selection of wonderful Faller building kits.

The German HO scale was put on hold as a project when I was severely bitten by a bug called LGB (Lehmann Gross Bahn). Before I worked at Gaugemaster I’d never seen G Scale before and found it strange. I was quite a serious ‘OO’ British modeller and thought that G Scale sacrificed too much accuracy and detail with the aim of good reliability and was rather crude compared to the models I was familiar with. But the sheer presence of LGB had me hooked and I couldn’t hold out forever and early in 2002 I bought a ‘Work Train Start Set’ and a few extra sections of track. This was for novelty value and I soon had the train pulling ashtrays and coffee circling the bedroom walls. Soon after I bought a ‘Toytrain’ diesel for some variation.

The first decent summer that followed saw me laying the expanded oval on the patio. The domestic authorities seemed not too peturbed by the arrangement so the oval grew and sprouted sidings. Then buildings from Pola and Piko. Then more trains! I have been gradually upgrading from the small starter-set-sized locos and stock to the big swiss electrics and coaches. I bought a Gaugemaster 10LGB5 to cope with the bigger locomotives and a Gaugemaster M2 to power the newly electrified points.  I was unhappy with the sight of the bogie locos and coaches on 1st radius curves so the next step was to gradually replace these with radius 2, 3 and the new radius 5 curves.  I still have limited space so all points are 1st radius, so the run-around loops are as long as possible.

By Summer 2004 I had six locos and lots of stock so I went digital over a couple of months.  This did away with a huge mass of wiring and relays near the station throat used to isolate locos in the sidings.

I still have all of the buildings for the HO scale layout I never got round to building - a street of the excellent Faller town houses. When time and funds permit, all of these will be the centrepiece of an HO scale urban layout. I am also strangely unable to resist any of the ‘naughty’ premises that the Germans offer on a regular basis - nightclubs, houses of ill repute and adult shops!

On the slotcar front I have around 150 models, around 50 of these are used for friendly races and the rest are display models only. My motorsport interests include Touring and GT cars, Le Mans cars from the current era and the 1970s classic Le Mans Cars.