Model railway fans gather for SECC show

FROM Ayr they have come; from Bishopton, Clackmannan, Dunoon, East Kilbride, Falkirk, Grangemouth, Hawick and Irvine; a whole alphabet of fanatics and obsessives crammed into two halls of the SECC for the biggest model railway show ever held in Scotland.

This is the only place to be if you are loco about locos and stokers get you stoked.

The queues begin early – Model Rail Scotland draws around 14,000 people over Friday, Saturday and today – and the half hour before the show opens is a nervous time for the exhibitors. Some of the dioramas on display are very large, and have been transported here by lorry or van. Inevitably, delicate parts get damaged in transit, and so there is a terrific last minute gluing of trees and touching up of paint on station walls.

Intense, slightly perspiring greybeards with lights strapped to their foreheads bend over tracks, trying to locate the source of short-circuits. A man unpacks tiny coal trucks from a cardboard box, laying them out like a jeweller showing exquisite diamonds to best effect. Some of these model trains can cost hundreds of pounds, but their true value is the amount of time the modellers have spent working on the layouts. Many carry the warning “Fragile – please do not touch”, while an admired few sport the nonchalantly boastful, “As seen in Railway Modeller”. One display uses working models of the locomotives from Thomas The Tank Engine, customised to be Scottish. Thus, Thomas wears a See-You-Jimmy bunnet, and Spencer, a rather pompous express, has “The Eejit” emblazoned down his side.

The atmosphere, at this early hour, is jittery. We are, essentially, backstage at the theatre waiting for the curtain to rise. “The guys are a bit tense at the moment,” explains Douglas Boyle of the Clydeside Model Railway Club, “but when they have their lunch – and perhaps a small refreshment – they’ll be fine.”

Boyle, who is 75, has a white moptop and a neat white moustache. In his garden in Paisley, a train set meanders through the flowerbeds. His club, which was established in 1957, has its premises in Glasgow Central, in an arched vault beneath the tracks, and as they work on their models each Tuesday and Friday, they can hear the trains rumbling overhead on the way to Auchinleck, Gourock, Kilmarnock and all the other -ecks and -ocks. The Clydeside modellers, however, have their minds on more exotic routes. Their latest creation, Codgers’ Pass – a joke on the elderly membership’s qualification for free bus transport – is a vast representation of the American desert, all red rocks and cacti. It looks so authentically parched that many members of the public lick ice-creams while admiring the trains winding through its canyons.

“My own story goes right back to my father, who was a great train enthusiast,” says Boyle. “In fact, in 1934 he introduced model railways to India. He was a construction engineer, and wherever the family went around the world, the first thing he would do was build a model railway. I suppose it rubbed off on me.”

They are not especially demonstrative people, these railway modellers. They are, it seems to me, quiet men who like to focus on minutiae. Even their physical movements appear constricted and stooped, a result no doubt of spending so much time in box-rooms and attics. One man, impressively unafraid to conform to type, strolls around in khaki shorts, brown socks and sandals. Another, in a burst of sartorial patriotism has on trews and tie in matching tartan. Many people wear polo-shirts bearing the logo of their particular model railway club, of which there are 34 in Scotland, from Aberdeenshire to the Borders. Another common sight are patches bearing the elaborate crests of long-vanished rail companies, such as the Caledonian. These are worn with the pride an old soldier might feel for his Black Watch regimental badge.

Although the railway modellers are united by a common interest which amounts, in its intensity, to a sort of religion, there are also distinct sects within the faith – the different gauges, or widths of track, which each modeller favours and which he considers superior to all others. Certain gauges, such as OO and N are very popular, but others are much more obscure and niche. Members of the 2mm Scale Association could be regarded, perhaps, as the Wee Frees of railway modelling – proud of their history, convinced of their righteousness, and disdainful of the compromised mainstream.

Enduring passion is the keynote at Model Rail Scotland. Alex Cunningham, a bus driver visiting from Hawick, is wearing a maroon sweater – with, naturally, a picture of a train on it – tucked into a kilt. Like many of those here, his love of model trains goes back to a formative experience in childhood. “As a kid I lived within sight of a railway – the Potterhill branch in Paisley. Steam trains were a daily event in my life and I used to see the coal truck going by every morning.” For Christmas, 1958, he was given a Hornby clockwork train set, and that was him hooked. “I’ve got it yet, and what’s more it still works.”

There are lots of trains for sale here, of course, and every other accessory or bit of kit one might conceivably need. What looks like Frank McAvennie’s hair in a bag turns out to be artificial grass for use in landscaping. Another stall offers tiny metal models of everything from mods and morris dancers to hookers and horse-drawn hearses; the very specific “Gouty old man in bath chair with nurse” can be yours for £5.60.

You can also buy, should you wish, a wide range of DVDs of trains in motion. Titles include: Big Freight; Carry On Clagging; and Diesel And Electric Blue 6, which possibly isn’t as racy as its name suggests, highlights listed on the back including “a visit to Cohen’s scrapyard at Kettering”.

Happily, many – in fact, most – of the layouts on display are wildly impressive. The best draw big crowds, punters pressing against the crash barriers, wee ones howked up on to shoulders for a better view. Kenneth Fulton, a 59-year-old electrician from Paisley, has come prepared with a small stepladder to save him having to keep lifting his four-year-old grandson Ryan, a lad whose devotion to Thomas The Tank Engine is evident on both his shirt and flag. Fulton is here with two grandchildren – the other, Max, is just six months – and hopes to win both to the model railway cause. His granddaughter, he remarks with horror, has lately become more interested in dancing.

We, the British, tend to laugh a bit at railway modellers, dismissing them as anoraks and geeks. But there is a counter-argument, I would say, that these layouts are a kind of folk art. They are elaborate, intricate, imaginative, sometimes witty and often beautiful. They are also the result of skills – electrical work, carpentry, engineering – which, as our economy has shifted from manufacturing to service and leisure, no longer find an outlet in the public sphere. The mostly retired men who build these things grafted, often, in the powerhouse industries of Scotland.

Eric Barr, for example, 74-year-old president of Ayr Model Railway Club worked in the railways from the age of 16. His father had been a train driver, and he himself started his apprenticeship as a fitter in 1958 at the old St Rollox works in Glasgow. There’s something rather moving, I think, about these dignified old men revisiting in miniature the skills and trades which made them a living in their youth. Barr had enjoyed model railways in his childhood, but lost interest in the hobby as he came to maturity; then, as he puts it, “once I decided not to grow up any more, I went back to the trains”.

Ayr MRC are here with a display called Anvilton. All the dioramas have names, most of which are quite mundane. The best name, and perhaps the most honest, is that given to a fictitious East Ayrshire station – Dreich.

The layouts vary from the size of a desk to the size of a bus. The biggest is a scale model of Paisley, complete with abbey, town hall and the old jail which was demolished in 1967. This is the Paisley that Gerry Rafferty might have recognised from his youth. There is a tendency, within railway modelling, to depict nostalgic and idyllic scenes. Often, the point is to recreate stations or branch lines which no longer exist, as if attempting to spite Dr Beeching through sheer creative energy. Nobody seems interested in showing the reality of contemporary train travel. There are no goods trucks covered in graffiti, no metal thieves making off with copper cable, and certainly no Big Man chucking fare-dodgers off at Linlithgow.

There is, however, tremendous attention to detail. Authenticity and verisimilitude are the important values here. Old photographs and blueprints are studied. Eyewitnesses are consulted. In the religion of railway modelling, pedants are the high-priests. The real obsessive sticklers are known as “rivet-counters”. Nobody admits to being a rivet-counter, though. Most folk roll their eyes at the mention and recount a run-in with this particular breed. “Oh, it’s unbelievable,” says Ian Brown, a 63-year-old modeller from Bonnybridge. “They’ll point to a little lamp at the end of the coach and say, ‘Hang on, that’s not a British Railways lamp, it’s London Midland.’”

By 6pm, the trains are stilled, the modellers packing up. It has been a long, fascinating day, and I shall give the last word to Tom Rout, 71, a retired engineer from Ardrossan, as he attempts, finally, to explain the appeal of railway modelling . “Och,” he says, as if it’s all very simple, “we just like to get away from our wives for a blether.” «