Life as a train driver lured Graham Mann away from modelling, but a change of job rekindled his passion for modelling, culminating in the creation of this tribute to the present railway scene.
FOREST GATE PARKWAY
Graham Mann
FACT FILE
Layout Name: Forest Gate Parkway
Scale/Gauge: OO
Size: 19'6" x 2'
Era/Region: Contemporary - fictional West Midlands to Welsh borders
Layout Type: End-to-end
Power: DCC
I remember my first trains were the transcontinental set made by Tri-ang, this was followed by a grey and blue Pullman set and so I was hooked. My dad had made me an 8' x 4' baseboard and I filled it with tracks, buildings and a big hill with a tunnel. At 16 and about to leave school, I told the careers officer that I wanted to be a train driver to which he laughed and told me to think again, so at that point I showed him the letter I had recently received telling me I had an interview in October at Western Tower opposite Reading station.
In the meantime, it was off to the job centre to find some work to fill the coming months and there it was, the perfect job, putting together kits for a small family business called Mallard models in Camberley - these were '00' and '0' gauge kits in etched brass and white metal castings and, as I recall, covered mainly Western Region stock.
October arrived all too soon and I caught the train to Reading. After a couple of tests, usual stuff - train B leaves at such and such time 15 mins after train A has departed, what time and where would they pass- then there was the interview panel where I was told that the Western Region was only taking on half a dozen drivers assistants this year and all would be sent to Old Oak Common. Well my luck just got better and better- provided I passed the medical, I was in. 1978 was all class 31s, 47s and 50s, steam heating and overnight paper trains. Well, needless to say, as my career progressed, so did my love of the model variety waned. It was left languishing in my mum's garage so, as is the way of things for an 18 year old, everything was sold to make way for motorbikes, girls and rock and roll.
After a move to Reading Depot, then Woking as a secondman, as we were known then, I finally got my Driver's job at Dorking before moving on to Staines. But the shifts were all about rush hour and after about 7 years of either very early starts or clocking on late afternoons, the fun had worn off, and then there was the management who seemed to be always on your back and hell-bent on putting train drivers down. After all, who would appoint a former Red Star parcels manager to take charge of Network South East, South Western drivers? Time to leave and to pursue a career where I would be the boss.
Well, it took some doing, a variety of jobs from site labourer to working in a direct mail warehouse stuffing leaflets into magazines and even a couple of years as the warehouse manager of a major motorcycle accessories distributor - some very hard graft, but some 20yrs later, business is doing fine.
OK, so where does Forest Gate Parkway fit into this tale? Well, with a garage full of industrial climbing equipment, a box room for an office that was spilling out onto the landing, and me working 24/7, it was time to move the business. Once the dust had settled, my wife suggested I get a hobby - an idea that stayed on the back burner for a couple of months until one Saturday afternoon when my wife announced it would be a nice idea to go the Pump House down in Cardiff. OK, well I quickly browsed the antiques and had pretty much covered the whole place when I saw a small door with the words 'Lord and Butler' emblazoned above it. Entering this Aladdin's cave, here were the familiar names such as Hornby and Peco along with a couple of brands I had never heard of such as Bachmann and Dapol.
One thing led to another and it wasn't long before I had a tail chaser (Forest Gate Junction was born, a name given by my wife on account of the amount of trees it had on it) all laid out on an 8' x 4' ft baseboard (just like the one I had as a kid all those years ago). Hornby track and points were laid on foam underlay, then pulled up in favour of Peco track with ballasted underlay, scenery was added, 2 and a half circuits of the board were dropped to 2 with a passing loop, buildings popped up then were demolished in favour of scratch-built structures, and so this carried on for the next 10 years or so.
A constant re-building and re-modelling exercise, giving me a chance to improve my modelling skills and try out new ideas I had seen at various shows.
Roll on to November 2011 when, bumping into some of the lads from the Ponty club at Warley, I casually announced that I was going to build an exhibition-style layout and it was going to be DCC sound. "Well we know our exhibition manager is looking for new layouts," they said in unison. So, Sunday morning it was up to local B&Q with a timber list and sizes to make three boards - two scenic and one for the fiddle yard, plus trestles to stand them on. Once the two basic 6'6" X 2' boards were completed, it was time to mark out the lay of the land.
Using the plan I had in my head, it was time to set about them with the jigsaw, router and various other power tools. Upon completion, I had a road and canal under the station throat, a largish hole, which was to be the subterranean level of a new build office block, and a dive under into a tunnel mouth at the other end of the layout.
Next came the track laying. Using Peco templates, it was just a matter of making sure none of the point work ended up over the joints of the boards, though the diamond crossing did end up at a change of angle of the track levels and caused a few problems. Next, the sides of the rails were painted a rust colour and the track was ballasted and weathered.
Next on the agenda, I wanted buildings. Some would be based on existing structures, others would be a complete fabrication loosely based on structures I had previously worked on - and, in fact, in some cases still am, but more of that later. The factory started life being modelled in mount board, then plastic card corrugated sheet was cut into scale sheets and stuck on one piece at a time - quite laborious, but I'm pleased with the result. Next came the building site. At first, it featured about three portable cabins but knowing sites, this was no way near big enough for the team of workers a site like this would require, so there is now a stack of seven that have been shoehorned onto the site, one of the only structures not scratch-built.
Next came the tower crane. This I knew had to look like it is of modular construction and I think it works quite well, it has the look that it could be dismantled and taken away on a fleet of flat beds to another site. And so onto the station. I wanted something modern and decided it had to be mainly glass sitting upon a steel structure. I wanted lifts, I wanted stairs, I wanted a concourse, I wanted a building that an architect sitting in his office would be proud of, but most of all, I wanted a station building that is totally inefficient, costing a fortune to keep cool in summer and warm in winter, a building incapable of dealing with the sheer number of people it was built to serve, especially during rush hour, and bearing in mind this is billed as a parkway, even the car park is way too small only being at best able to handle 20 odd cars. Lastly, there is the office block and hotel /apartment block - sadly both have yet to feel a footfall, did someone mention a recession?
Ok, so those of you who have stuck with this tale must surely be wondering what my business is - well, I am an industrial abseiler and me and my team spend our time up close and personal with some of the most iconic structures whether it be the 330mtr long railway viaduct in Kidderminster, abseiling off the masts of the Second Severn crossing, climbing the towers of Cardiff's Millennium Stadium to name a few or putting right an architect's dream that hasn't quite lived up to its billing and, many years after completion, still leaks like a sieve. It's a job that when you're stood on the roofs of some of the tallest buildings and structures in the country really does give you a sense of scale.
Well, there have been a few minor changes and one major extension, and there'll probably be a few more... So all that left is to thank my wife Andrea for giving me support and encouragement when I needed it, Brian Tucker for his excellent weathering, Lord and Butler for inadvertently re-kindling my interest in all things model railway and to some of the Ponty lads who have helped me operate the layout at shows so I can grab a bite to eat.
ADDITIONAL IMAGES
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