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| Stoney Hill Yard on display. |
This summer I took down the M & M Sub. It prompted interesting conversations with
other modellers who have either taken down their own layouts, or know they need
to some day soon. Like this update from Chris Round in Great Britain, who shared
about taking apart his first foray into Canadian modelling.
After visiting southern Ontario in 1994, I became hooked on Canadian
railways.
Living in the United Kingdom, we do not have the space for large
basement railways. As a result, I had become a dedicated N gauge modeller and
had produced several successful layouts of the British scene.
But Canada in HO scale quickly had me hooked, both for more interesting
operation and for much smoother running of the actual models.
By 1996 I had completed Stoney Hill Yard, a portable exhibition layout 16-feet long with a fiddle yard
at the rear. It was very successful and had many invitations to exhibitions.
As built, it was a stub end yard, but I had allowed for expansion. By
2000 Stoney Hill West had been produced as the other end of the yard with an
extended staging yard to make a complete oval.
The combined layout was 29 feet
long.
I took it to several shows, but both transport and size limited the
number of exhibitions it could attend.
Subsequently, Stoney Hill West was made into a stand-alone layout, and gradually
became the main layout I exhibited.
In 2017 Stoney Hill Yard was exhibited for the last time. After that, it
gathered dust in my father-in-law’s garage since space in my workshop was taken
up by my new layout, Atherley
Narrows.
I have a lot of affection for Stoney Hill Yard. It took a lot of effort
to build and attracted a lot of favourable comments at exhibitions.
It was difficult
to think about letting it go. But a number of factors came together which made
me finally decide to dismantle the layout.
First, a couple of fellow members at our model railway club recently
died. I helped their wives dismantle their layouts and sort through a lifetime
of collected models, books and other railway paraphernalia.
The sheer amount of stuff made it difficult for the wives and I thought
that I would not want my family to have to sort through all of my possessions
in similar circumstances.
I was also struck by the large number of uncompleted or even unopened
boxes of model railway bits and pieces we all keep.
It caused me to start
getting rid off anything which used to fall under the category of “I’ll keep
it, it might well be useful sometime.”
Second, my father-in-law is now 90 years-old and mobility is an issue
for him. The layout in his garage was an additional obstacle to manoeuvre
round.
I won’t pretend making the first move to demolish the layout was not
difficult. But now that it’s gone, I do feel like a bit of the burden has been
lifted.
In the end, it’s better not to hold onto everything. We need to let go
and move on.
Plus, I still have two exhibition layouts and a workshop full of stuff,
and hopefully at least 20 years ahead of me to slim it all down—so my family is
not faced with sorting out a complete mess when I go.
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| Chris watching a train on Stoney Hill Yard, which is still going strong. |
