Trains in the Attic

I was probably about ten years of age when my mate’s dad proudly showed off his model railway collection. Both my mate and me were seriously fascinated by trains at the time and on this one occasion while we were playing trains at his house, my mate’s dad asked if we wanted to see his own trains. Naturally we said yes.

It was very much a look don’t touch sort of thing. I was known to be clumsy and my grubby hands spoke for themselves. But anyway. Box after box emerged from attic, and each box contained one locomotive or another in pristine condition. And not just trains, but wagons and carriages too. Station buildings and unbuilt kits of village churches and corner shops. He even had a large collection of minitrix, the road system that went alongside the trains. I was super impressed, and I decided there and then that when I grew up, I too would have an attic full of model trains and railway kits packed away never to be enjoyed.

Well. I am all growed up now, and with very little effort on my part, I achieved the dream. I too have model trains boxed away in the attic. But now that I have this, I’m not sure that its really what I want. Model trains are supposed to be enjoyed, not stored away until some distant descendant sends them to the landfill or job lots it all on Ebay once we’ve left the mortal coil. No. Its high time I had a model railway of my own.

Six years on from that epiphany and I’m still no closer to enjoying my collection of trains. Simple truth is, I don’t know what I’m doing. These things take a lot of planning. You need baseboards and electricals and plans and ideas. I’ve got none of that. All I have is boxes of trains, some of them are mint condition, still in the box. Some of them are massively in need of repair, having belonged to my own father when he was about the age that my youngest son is now. And that’s when it struck me. Before I begin my railway, I will need a fleet of working trains, and a lot of my trains need restoring.

This one for example. It used to sit in the siding on my old teenage model railway. Its one of two carriages that I never saw running properly. Having belonged to my dad, and being heavily played with by the looks of it, it was already in a poor condition when it was passed along to me. But I find the above image mesmerising, there is a sense of scale here that I scarcely believe I took the image myself with an inexpensive smart phone. I could almost step in to it, and climb aboard. It deserves to run again. It demands a restoration.

But what would it take to get something like this running again? The front coupler is knackered and will need replacing with something more modern. There are details broken off from bogies that will need restoring, its supposed to have a third rail contact shoe for picking up electricity from the power rail, I don’t know if the model even had one of those to begin with, but it should have one nonetheless. The buffers are missing. The whole thing is filthy, there is chipped and worn paintwork. By the yellow splashes on the window, I’m guessing that this has been touched up at some point before it came in to my possession, which would explain why it looks nothing like the other examples that I have found of it online.

And this is just the dummy car, the unpowered trailer.

The motorised car is in an even sorrier state. Its missing the motor bogie, and its missing huge chunks of the body. Part of the undercarriage has a hole burned through it, possibly as some sort of repair in the distant past. The roof is distorted, either by age or heat, and its no less filthy than the trailer car. Plus we’re also missing the glazing, and probably the interior detail, if this model ever had that to begin with.

This is going to be quite a project, and have some research to do.