Roamer: Powdered grime makes rail tracks look like the real McCoy
A red clockwork train darts round its circular track amongst dozens of multi-coloured Thomas the Tank engines, watched over by George and Margaret Hillock from Four Winds.
“Our grandson Lewis started collecting them around the time his dad died ten years ago,” Margaret explains, “and he’s selling them now to pay for driving lessons!”
Belfast’s Cooke Centenary Church Hall was the venue for Cooke Model Railway Club’s biannual fair last Saturday. Nostalgia harmonised beguilingly with technology!
“Most of the trains run on standard 12 volt direct current,” fair organiser Chris Hill told me, “and there’s digital stuff too, microchips and computers.”
The 40-year-old car salesman, also a member of the Ulster Model Railway Club, watched the trains pass his childhood home off Shore Road when he was four. “That, and my big fascination with Thomas the Tank, the two went in tandem.”
Chris’s dad built him a train layout “and it just went from there. That was it. It snowballed!” the self-confessed ‘serial collector’ admitted. Chris listed some of the fair’s displays - “vintage models, start-up sets for five or six year olds. All generations are catered for.”
On cue, an elderly gentleman walked past clutching a miniature railway station!
Cooke Club’s approximately 16 members meet in (yes, in!) and around an 18 ft by 12 ft layout in the Church Hall. Chris called the layout “a duplex setup, with overpass and tracks underneath, about eight or nine running loops and two stations.”
There’s countryside and a mountain with a ski-slope - “we’re trying to get model skiers at the moment,” Chris continued, “there are five trains now but when it’s running at full capacity there’ll be nine, towing carriages. Round and round, up and over, passing each other on the loops.”
And the drivers? “We have two control points at the back and three at the front,” Chris explained.
Enter David McCartney, alias Sparky, an aptly nicknamed retired electrical engineer and member of both Cooke and the Ulster club. He showed me his “N-gauge basic layout, about half the track size of double-O gauge. Quite small little trains.”
Two were running on miniature railway lines, side-by-side in an elongated elliptical double-loop. “With this gauge,” David specified, “you can get more layout, twice the amount of the double-O gauge, and you can have it more sophisticated.”
David built the rural and urban layout with the late, great, Professor William (Billy) Thompson, emeritus professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at QUB, and Ulster Club Model Railway enthusiast.
“It’s about 15 feet long, including both the countryside and the town; there are bridges, roads, a quarry, houses with lights and an industrial area.”
When he was an electrical engineer David survived a 6,600 volt electric shock. This is very different! “It’s all low voltage,” he explained, “there’s a resister which you turn up, which changes the voltage from 12 down to maybe nine, making the train go fast or slow. And there’s a switch for backwards or forwards. There are two methods of building layouts. Analogue is one train with one controller while digital control allows as many trains as you want!”
And as much detail as you want!
“I’ve grass effects and all aspects of scenery for all scales of models,” said Joe Barlow from the North Down Model Railway Society. His display included self-adhesive cobblestones, tiny trees and hedges made of seaweed, real Cotswold and granite pebbles and numerous models.
Joe owned the legendary Modellers Nook in Belfast’s Winetavern Street for 32 years but sold it when he was diagnosed with Parkinsons disease. He now raises funds for Parkinsons UK with his models and equipment.
“The aim is to always make things look like the real McCoy,” emphasised retired principle scientific officer Armstrong Hewitt, secretary of the 58-member Ulster Model Railway club.
The grandson of a Lisburn signalman, Armstrong has a multi-level layout in his loft with four separate lines, 40 or 50 engines and “a rake” of carriages and rolling stock. “We weather the buildings,” he told me, “and we’ve dirt and grime on the tracks to make sure they look correct. You can buy dirt and grime powders, made to measure.”
Ditto water for rivers and lakes, which is “resin melted down and set into the scenery,” added Chris Hill, “the sky’s the limit in terms of what can be achieved!”
For further information on the clubs and events visit their Facebook pages.