The disease started when I was around six years old and I was presented with my first train set - a small German TRIX 3-rail set. It was mostly plastic, but the locomotives moved like the proverbial shit off a shiny shovel. In fact they moved way too fast for realism and always rolled off on the curves.......but isn't that part of the fun?
A few years later I was presented with another train set, this time a second-hand Hornby Dublo 3-rail outfit. Now, I believe there was an ulterior motive behind this, in the shape of a father who was besotted with steam trains, but didn't want to admit he liked playing with them.
Hornby Dublo turned out to be the 'Bees Knees' of collectors train sets and it didn't take many seconds to work out why.
It ain't plastic - it's absolutely solid!
I traveled miles with my father. Trundling down country lanes in rural England, visiting old men in tiny cottages, who had decided to part with their own lifetime collections. Some of these places were better than museums! They had decided to a man that they couldn't take their trains with them to heaven and with no-one to whom they could leave them, decided to send them to new caring homes. Sad....really sad.
.....and now it's my turn. Yes, I am a sad git for being soft in the head about trains in the first place, but now it's my turn to pass them on. I don't feel that I am going to pop my clogs any time soon, but my own lifestyle has changed to such a degree, that the chance of ever having the space and time to lay the whole shebang out on a board once more is remote to the nth degree.
Now it's someone else's turn to enjoy it. If you are interested in buying it as a lot, let me know. In the meantime I will set about the task of cataloging and photographing everything and slowly laying it out here in the ether until it's complete.
.....and then i won't want to part with it!
A few years later I was presented with another train set, this time a second-hand Hornby Dublo 3-rail outfit. Now, I believe there was an ulterior motive behind this, in the shape of a father who was besotted with steam trains, but didn't want to admit he liked playing with them.
Hornby Dublo turned out to be the 'Bees Knees' of collectors train sets and it didn't take many seconds to work out why.
It ain't plastic - it's absolutely solid!
I traveled miles with my father. Trundling down country lanes in rural England, visiting old men in tiny cottages, who had decided to part with their own lifetime collections. Some of these places were better than museums! They had decided to a man that they couldn't take their trains with them to heaven and with no-one to whom they could leave them, decided to send them to new caring homes. Sad....really sad.
.....and now it's my turn. Yes, I am a sad git for being soft in the head about trains in the first place, but now it's my turn to pass them on. I don't feel that I am going to pop my clogs any time soon, but my own lifestyle has changed to such a degree, that the chance of ever having the space and time to lay the whole shebang out on a board once more is remote to the nth degree.
Now it's someone else's turn to enjoy it. If you are interested in buying it as a lot, let me know. In the meantime I will set about the task of cataloging and photographing everything and slowly laying it out here in the ether until it's complete.
.....and then i won't want to part with it!
