Why Did You Choose to Model N Gauge?.

[Cols]

  Hmm... a good question!
  My first railway (train set) was given to me at Christmas 1951 - 0-Gauge Hornby clockwork featuring a 0-4-0 tank engine in BR lined black, which was added to during the following summer holiday in Paignton, Devon, with the gift of an 0-4-0 tender engine in LMS crimson lake livery. I had no layout (probably didn't know the word) and the track always had to be cleared away (off the carpet) in time for tea! But it was fun - I was hooked.
  The Hornby 0-Gauge went when I was eight or nine - I had discovered Airfix Kits (in bags, 2/- from Woolworth's), and am still a very keen 1/72 and 1/48 scale aircraft modeller (the current kit stash is almost 200 unbuilt kits) and in 1986, I joined the International Plastic Modelling Society, and, until a nearly three month spell in hospital in 2022, I used to exhibit at IPMS shows in exotic places such as Telford, Hornchurch, St. Neots, St. Ives, Billericay, Ipswich, Barnet, and the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon, among others. (I have written three books on three of the RAF's Commands during the Cold War period - on RAF Bomber Command, RAF Fighter Command, and RAF Transport Command. I became quite familiar with the National Archive at Kew and the Library at the RAF Museum!)
  When I was ten I was given a Hornby Dublo 3-rail set featuring A4 0016 "Silver King" and two tinplate - no glazing - Gresley coaches. which was soon joined by a BR Standard 4MT 2-6-4 tank loco. Although I liked it, soon I was discovering the countryside of Kent's North Downs by bike, and eventually the railway, such as it was, went, and soon came "O" and "A" Level GCEs and eventually a degree course at Bath Academy of Art.
  But I digress... After getting my BA in Visual Communication in 1969, I got married in 1971 (wife No.1), and discovered my interest in model railways was reviving, and so dipped my toe into the only practical gauge that was possible in a small maisonette, N-Gauge. We built a 9ft x 2ft 6inch, double track layout: mainly Poole Farish (three of their 94xx;  a couple of Minitrix diesels - the Warship and the Brush Type 2, the Minitrix 9F, Britannia, and Ivatt 2MT mogul which couldn't manage more than two Minitrix Mk.1 coaches.)
  I got divorced - and sold all my N-Gauge equipment through King's Cross Model Railways in York Way - remember them? By this time I had met the late Nick Campling who is well known for his superb scale drawings of LNER locomotives, and passenger and freight stock, that used to appear regularly in the Railway Modeller (Nick was my best man at my second wedding). Through Nick, I became very interested in 4mm scale EM modelling (and still have a goodly collection of kit-built GWR locos and rolling stock in EM) - I had also joined the Great Western Society.
  I became divorced (again!) in 2001, and moved to a flat, and, on spending a long weekend in Newquay in 2005, the urge to re-explore the possibilities of N-Gauge hit me on seeing Dapol's lovely 14xx and 45xx and Ivatt 2P tank engine models in a Truro shop window, and I bought them, and joined the N-Gauge Society. I've been hooked on N-Gauge ever since.
  I'm now building a 12ft x 17 inches(!) fiddle yard to terminus layout based on a joint Southern and Western Region station in the fictional North Cornish resort of Trewenn during the period 1959-1963. Progress has been glacially slow, as a move of home meant that it went into store for seven years, and it has gone through three thorough rewirings - it's DC. The last rewiring was very kindly and brilliantly completed by Martyn (of this Forum) a few weeks ago. All my section switches are concentrated in a single "box" which started life as the bomb-selection switch panel installed in the RAF's Memorial Flight's Avro Lancaster (PA474) - it was replaced by one in a rather better cosmetic condition and somehow the original came into my hands... The switches have a lovely positive "clunk" to them!
  Well, that's the story - so far! My apologies to all for rattling on for so long!

[AdeV]

Great story!

All my section switches are concentrated in a single "box" which started life as the bomb-selection switch panel installed in the RAF's Memorial Flight's Avro Lancaster (PA474) - it was replaced by one in a rather better cosmetic condition and somehow the original came into my hands... The switches have a lovely positive "clunk" to them!

Would love to see a picture of that!

I've got a few ex-RAF bits and bobs (randomly aquired in a bric-a-brac auction), they have some really cool switches and knobs and dials, which I'd love to repurpose to use on a model railway!

I've even got a real locomotive fuel gauge in a box too (from a Ruston I believe), which requires a really weird set of analogue signals to make it work...