My Dad was a trainspotter and was building a big layout in his parent's house when he suddenly went off and married my Mum and forgot about it!
Now there's just a ruin of a never quite completed railway in my Grandparent's house in Llanrumney Cardiff, where we come from.
Years later, after they had my sister and me, moved to Switzerland, had two more girls (my younger sisters - obviously) when I was about ten, my Dad started planning to build a model railway for him and me in the attic of our flat in Zurich.
He bought me my first loco - a GWR King Class (in BR green).
That railway didn't get past the planning phase though, as we moved house twice in the following three years.
Then my Dad had a very ambitious plan for a massive layout in are much larger holiday house in the Bernese area.
He bought loads of locos - GWR of course! (a Castle Class, County Class ["Denbigh County" I believe], Saint Class ["Saint David"], a Class 2800, a few Prairies, a Dean Goods, a few typical GWR Panniers and a lot of other engines.
Loads of coal trucks (Berthlwyd, Kilely, Bute, Evans&Bevans, Tradegar, etc) which we made nice and dirty and filled with our own "coal" (cardboard with cork "gravel" that we painted black)
Quite a few passenger coaches (for all are GWR express locos) and one autocoach to go at the front of a little suburban train.
He got everything digitalised, soldered a chip into every loco he bought.
He planned all kinds of things. A siding with a slate quarry (he partially completed that - with real Welsh slate from just north of Tanygrisau!!!), a coal mine (obviously!!!) for which he bought a fully functional sort of coal transporting cable car!, of course beautiful hills with sheep!, and we built quite a few big girder bridges (sprayed them iron and made them nice and rusty in places).
He'd already completed the main trackbed, put down the cork and the track for main line, put in gravel ballast (cork) and had already put in the spirals for the trains to climb to the higher levels, built most of the first hill with a flock of sheep and some trees (looked really nice!)...
Saddly the whole project was too ambitious, and eventually progress came to a standstill (especially when we started renting our holiday house to holiday makers from Britain, some of whom would sometimes damage the railway)...
My Mom got more and more tired of it, and three weeks ago, my Dad, after years of resisting, took it down. I'm glad I wasn't there.
After we started renting our house in Berne out, I lost interest in the railway (to keep myself from desparing is my theory) as it was making backward progress.
Since then I haven't really been very interested in railways much.
Until I got to know my girlfriend's younger brother better.
He's a total railway enthusiast (Swiss of course), actually runs scale 1:5 (or something) steam locos just outside of Zurich (and once a year in the old city centre!!!), has a garden railway (LGT), an N gauge railway (Swiss mountains!) and some H0 (AC) and H0m stock.
His Dad is building a nice long stretch of H0m Rhaetian Railway (famous Swiss 3tf narrow gauge) and is putting a great effort into detail. It's just single track (except for the one station), built into modules, and looks extremely like the real thing! He's even soldered the overhead electricity wires!
Anyway, all this is cool, but wasn't enough to get me back into modelling...
Then his (and my girlfriend's - obviously) parents wanted his English to improve, so they wanted me to try and persuade him to go to my relatives to learn English (funny Swiss people sending their kids to Wales to improve their English!
)He didn't want to, but I, being Welsh, found my argument.
During our "Walk across Wales" with my Mum and Dad I'd been on the Ffestiniog and The Talyllyn. I'd also been on the Brecon Mountain Railway, and knew Wales had a few more.
I made a little advertising brochure, advertising Wales for Tourists particularly interested in Steam Trains.
On Wikipedia I learnt there were loads!!!
In the end him and me started getting really excited, especially about seeing Double Fairlies and Garratts!
I made some inquiries with relatives, and booked flights.
Then I started looking into Arriva Trains to Portmadog...
More and more often I found myself browsing the Hornby website at work.
When I showed my young friend (my girlfriend's brother) the Live Steam locos on the Hornby website, we got totally excited and bought one ("Seagull" - I like the garter blue A4s but everyone has the "Mallard"!!!) online!
We couldn't wait till it arrived.
In the meantime, we found out my Dad (and the rest of my family) were to be home (in Wales) at the same time as us, and when my Dad heard of my rough plans for North Wales, he got very interested too, looked into it, and got planning!
In the end we had a really cool, well planned trip (with lots of possibilities for spontanious trip alterations) in North Wales, starting off with a five hour trip from Cardiff to Porthmadog (Arriva - the freedom of Wales pass is so cool!!! But man, I can get from Zurich to Paris by train in 4.5 hours!!!) then Porthmadog to Blaenau and back, drawn by "Merddin Emrys" (passed "DLG" in Minffordd). We visited Boston Lodge to get some photos too.
Next day we caught the bus to Llanberis, were pushed up to the third highest stop (too windy to go higher) by "Enid" (like all Snowdon Mountain Railway steam engines built in Winterthur!), where we stayed to take photos of the next few engines. Then we climbed almost to the top (wasn't worth going to the top and being stuck in a freezing dark cloud again like five years earlier!) and ran down the Snowdon Ranger path to catch the WHR train an hour earlier than planned. We took NG/G16 "87" to Dinas where we took a look at "K1", "137 Milleniwm", a few NGG15s and another NGG16 in pieces. "Vale of Ffestiniog" was there too.
Stupidly I got a piece of sharp coal grit in my eye on the return to Beddgelert and couldn't see anything (with either eye) until it was removed at Ysbyty Gwynedd, Bangor!
Next day we still had some time in Porthmadoc so we took a ride on the WHR Porthmadog's "Gelert" (very cute line) and took a look in their museum (massive Romanian giants!). I hope they'll be able run trains on the finished line from Porthmadog to Beddgelert!
Then, on the return journey to Cardiff, we stopped at Tywyn, took a ride on the Talyllyn ("Tom Rollt") and visited their museum.
My girlfriend's brother and I visited some more Steam related sites throughout Wales (Pwll Mawr and Blaenavon Railway) and England (Swindon Works and "Rocket" at Science Museum) before returning home, but especially the Ffestiniog left marks (the WHR left a mark on my left eye!)
Later that year it was my young friends confirmation and I wanted to buy him something special - I looked everywhere for a ready to run model of a double fairlie...
When I found none at a sensible price in a sensibly small scale I found the 009 kits at Backwoods. I bought him one as I knew he'd already built himself a Live Steam Garden Railways engine.
Then I bought my Dad one for his birthday two weeks later.
I didn't realise they'd be that hard! Ooops!!! What a newb I am!!!
Ah well, I'm confident they'll be completed, at least my friend can! It'll just take time.
Eventually, I couldn't resist to start on 009 scale as well, and got myself some simpler whitemetal kits and N Gauge chassis.
I've started building stock now (FR), and am forming plans for my first layouts (extremely simple ones, having learnt a lot from tragedies!) in my head.
Will post status of my stock and eventually layouts as follows...
