About Us; Ken Cooper, Peter Bakke, Barry Lawrence, Peter Coulter and Henrik Laurell.
My interest in 18 inch railways started some 50 years ago, listening to intriguing stories of the railway that ran behind the large wall at the Woolwich Arsenal, at that time the workers that I spoke to were sworn to secrecy about anything to do with their work, but I knew there was a small gauge railway, and that one day I would learn more.
My modelling of narrow gauge started with 16mm replicating stock and locos from the Ffestiniog and other Welsh sites but this soon faded when I discovered 7/8ths, and a whole new way of looking at the subject but as my approach was to use 32mm track, 18inch gauge it was.
I am fortunate in that whilst I moved away from the Woolwich area in 1970 the last 5 years I have been working back in that district at a site that is built on part of the Arsenal grounds, recently one of the original bogie vans was returned to stand outside the Heritage centre and I was able to measure it up, I was also able to make friends with the curator of The Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey who is planning the restoration of Woolwich & Carnegie both ex RAR.
My modelling endeavours revolve around “Merton Works” a fictitious spur off of the Surrey Iron Railway which supplied 18inch gauge equipment to estates, industrialists, and the mining trade often using redundant ex military equipment refurbished in the works.
life-long interest in narrow gauge railways led me initially into G-Scale in the late 1990s. However, I was never quite satisfied with the G-Scale scene since my prototype interests were in smaller, often industrial, railways rather than the metre gauge 'mainline' railways modelled by LGB.
I therefore soon found myself into 16mm scale, where I was much happier with the prototypes depicted. However after a while, I found that I could never quite 'blend' 16mm scale models, whether of rolling stock or lineside prototypes, into the garden. The smallest available ballasting chips seemed to be the size of 16mm scale footballs, and fencing made from lollipop sticks looked like....well, lollipop sticks.
At about this time, a local model engineer friend (Malcolm Wright) lent me Smither's book on 18\" gauge steam railways. I hadn't been aware that such lines existed until then, and that railways with such a narrow gauge could retain the appeal of being 'real' railways.
A few enquiries led to me being put in touch with Charley Lix in Nevada, who had pioneered the combination of 7/8\" scale and 32mm gauge outdoors to model 18\" gauge railways. His photos showed how models in this scale could blend so easily into the garden, whilst retaining a common gauge for which wheels and motors were already available. The combination was irresistible, and give or take the odd hiccup, I have been happily modelling in 78n18 now for nearly 7 years..
I was born in England in 1946 and by age 6, my dad had built a small electric HO scale mainline railway. This was the start. During the next 10 years we built this railway into a larger and larger mainline layout until it finally occupied the entire spare bedroom. When we moved we donated this railway to my younger cousins.
Then as fate would have it during my apprenticeship with British Telecom I was seconded to the telecoms maintainance section of the Explosives Research and Development Establishment (ERDE) in Waltham Abbey yes, the Gunpowder Mills. My life was about to change, again.
During one of my lunchtime onsite ‘wanderings’ I discovered the remains of some track and some wagons. This was the start of my lifelong interest in very narrow gauge industrial railways.
Fate would play its part again when my wife and I visited Jamaica for the first time and ‘discovered’ the Appleton Estate railway. During our visits over the following 30 years we have walked most of the islands 2ft narrow gauge from Kingston to Montego Bay, via the Appleton estate of course. The Chinese government has announced it intends to rebuild this entire 2 foot railway during the next 10 years. I look forward to riding it again.
Through time, I have modelled these two railways in HO, On30, 16mm, 7/8th and 1/12th, but after much soul searching my modelling is now focused only on the Jamaican sugar cane industry modelled in7/8th scale and running on 45mm gauge track representing 2 ft gauge, and the Royal Gunpowder Mills in Waltham Abbey modelled in 7/8th scale and running on 32mm gauge track representing 18 gauge.
How do we get involved with model railways ? For me a love of trains, both real and model, was almost inevitable. I was born within sight and sound of the old Cheshire Lines Railway ( or to give it it's proper title the Cheshire Lines Committee ) with it's frequent passenger service between the cities of Chester and Manchester, and constant freight traffic, especially the heavy trains of limestone from Derbyshire bound for the chemical plants at Northwich.
However, my earliest childhood memory was being taken to \" Drinkwaters \" timber yard close to our family home. Here I was lifted onto the trolley which ran on rails into the sawmill, and was pushed up and down the \" line \" by my parents and the sawmill staff. Even at such a tender age I already had my own \" train \" !
At the age of around three I received my first train- set, an \" OO \" gauge Princess pacific and two coaches with the usual oval of track . This was to develop over the following years into a large layout which continued to be used until my mid-teens. During this time my family moved to Northwich where I spent my school days, and here was a train-spotter's paradise, for not only did we have a large and busy engine-shed to visit, but the West Coast Main Line was just a couple of miles away. After-school visits to Northwich Shed, and hot summer Saturdays by the busy main line meant that my loco-spotting books were certainly well used !
But then I discovered young ladies......
The trains were abandoned for several years, replaced by college studies, and then working in London in the jewellery manufacturing industry, and of course, settling down to life with my better half Glynis. London, however, was not my natural habitat, and Glynis and I moved back to Cheshire - back to my old friend the Cheshire Lines - and suddenly trains returned to my life.
As a now self-employed jeweller, I had my own workshop where I produced castings in gold and silver, but occasionally the odd brass casting appeared for the few models that I built. ( The casting process is just the same, but the materials are considerably less expensive ! ). However, other modellers began to ask for castings and I found that somehow I was producing more and more model parts and less jewellery, so eventually the decision was made - abandon the gaudy baubles and make the model components instead. So \" Talisman Jewels \" became \" Talisman Castings \", and so it is today, as I take the view that \" playing trains is much more fun than working for a living ! \"
I have been interested in trains since I was a teenager. After I started with a märklin 3095 steam loco, it took many months until I could afford track and wagons. In 1978 a friend and I did visit Ohsabanan with my dad and I was hooked on narrow gauge for life. In Sweden, real narrow gauge mostly means two-foot gauge as are Ohsabanan and FMBM, so I made a new superstructure on top of my 3095 loco in 1:36 scale. Sad to say, the frames and superstructure and the other stuff I made at the time have long since been sold.
Eventually girls, motorcycles and computers took over and I was transformed to a armchair modeller for many years with a few exceptions in several different scales. Started to really build models in the year 2000, first model boats, then trains in G and Gn15 scale, then 16mm and finally switched to 7/8in scale in late 2004 after reading an article in english Review magazine. At first I was going to model two-foot gauge by using 45mm tracks, but somewhere along the way I did get in contact with Ken Cooper via the \"7/8in Scale Trains\" group on Yahoo who introduced me to 18in railways (meaning 32mm tracks in model, same as for 16mm scale).
No current railway but working on an indoor layout with a simple loop on top of the workbenches and a sideline down to a waterfront (along the wall). Main facilities will be a match factory and a small mine, plus the harbour (all buildings as flats against the wall or scenic dividers).
I prefer building in brass and wood, even if most materials could be used, but brass just gives that shiny heavy look. I am also very fond of military light railways, so RAR equipment will run on my track as well.