I was born in the mid-1960s and inherited an interest in trains and model railways from my father. He grew up in the Stevenage/Hitchin area of Hertfordshire and went to school on LNER trains. Because of this I have chosen to model the ECML but in BR days so I can run diesels as well as steam.
I had a layout of sorts when I was a kid. It was in an outbuilding on the farm where I grew up and never really worked very well. Because we were relatively poor I had a motley collection of secondhand OO stock. I have fond memories of a little Dock Shunter with a light on the front and a Wrenn 8F 2-8-0 made of solid metal (it was so heavy). The track was a mixture of different types of old Hornby Dublo that didn’t fit together properly and the trains never ran satisfactorily on it. I did get a decent H&M Duette controller and just before my interest switched to girls and music I got a Hornby Zero One controller. This was way ahead of its time and in many ways the forerunner of today’s DCC. From what I remember it had a chip in each loco, allowed individual control and simulated different train momentums just like DCC.
When I went off to college, subsequently started working, then got married and started a family most of this was left in a box in the loft. When I decided to restart the hobby I decided to start completely afresh and sold or binned it all.
I’ve worked for over 30 years in IT in various government/civil service departments and I enjoy fiddling around with computers at home as well (sad I know!). Part of the reason for my return to railway modelling is the numerous ways computer control is now used.
I still work full time (doing 12 hour day and night shifts) so I don’t have huge amounts of time to spend building the layout. I don’t tend to go up the loft as much in summer as there is usually other things that take precidence like gardening, holidays, trips, family, etc. I also don’t have a huge amount of spare cash to spend on the layout.
My two sons have grown up now so it’s time to get back to my roots and move from an estate in a town to somewhere more rural. This will mean dismantling my current layout but I hadn’t got too far with it anyway (no scenery yet for instance).