Hi All,
Thanks for letting me join, I thought I had already done so some years ago but evidently not.
I'm sitting typing this in the ticket office of Ham Street Railway Station near Ashford in Kent, where I've worked for the past 8 years, sweeping up leaves and selling the occasional rail ticket.
In case anyone's interested, the regular passenger service consists of an hourly train from Ashford to Eastbourne and vice versa, worked by class 171 Turbostars; these were usually 2-car sets until the pandemic and are now 4-car sets...which is interesting as most of the stations between Ashford and Hastings only have 3, 2, or even 1 car platforms!
Otherwise there are nuclear flask trains from Crewe Coal Siding to Dungeness, hauled nowadays by
pairs of 68s, when I started they were 37 and occasionally 20 hauled, also various infrastructure and test trains (usually 66s or 73s though 69 001/2 were on test earlier this year) and sometimes diverted gypsum trains (more 66s and for a few days a 59) and finally various movements of tampers etc. and the ubiquitous MPVs on RHTT duties.
I've been a railway modeller since Dad bought me a Hornby-Dublo Deltic the day I was born, though the first loco I chose for myself was a more humble Dock Authority Shunter. Exposure to Martin Brent's "Arcadia" (the first time I saw a layout in reality that I'd read about in a model railway magazine) got me interested in EM which I've been tinkering about with for the last 40 years while carefully avoiding producing a layout!
I also do odds and ends in a variety of scales from N/N-6.5 through to a bit of 7mm (including a sewage works layout in 0-14) and have dabbled in 1:32 narrow gauge in the past. 009 is another thing that I keep returning to.
Some may remember that I posted the beginnings of an N gauge BR(W) layout built to fit in a violin case on the Finescale Model Railway Workshop forum years ago; this lay dormant for a while but I'm slowly accumulating stock suitable for the 1960s to run on it, I'll see if I can sort out posting some photos.
All the best,
Simon Hargraves.
Thanks for letting me join, I thought I had already done so some years ago but evidently not.
I'm sitting typing this in the ticket office of Ham Street Railway Station near Ashford in Kent, where I've worked for the past 8 years, sweeping up leaves and selling the occasional rail ticket.
In case anyone's interested, the regular passenger service consists of an hourly train from Ashford to Eastbourne and vice versa, worked by class 171 Turbostars; these were usually 2-car sets until the pandemic and are now 4-car sets...which is interesting as most of the stations between Ashford and Hastings only have 3, 2, or even 1 car platforms!
Otherwise there are nuclear flask trains from Crewe Coal Siding to Dungeness, hauled nowadays by
pairs of 68s, when I started they were 37 and occasionally 20 hauled, also various infrastructure and test trains (usually 66s or 73s though 69 001/2 were on test earlier this year) and sometimes diverted gypsum trains (more 66s and for a few days a 59) and finally various movements of tampers etc. and the ubiquitous MPVs on RHTT duties.
I've been a railway modeller since Dad bought me a Hornby-Dublo Deltic the day I was born, though the first loco I chose for myself was a more humble Dock Authority Shunter. Exposure to Martin Brent's "Arcadia" (the first time I saw a layout in reality that I'd read about in a model railway magazine) got me interested in EM which I've been tinkering about with for the last 40 years while carefully avoiding producing a layout!
I also do odds and ends in a variety of scales from N/N-6.5 through to a bit of 7mm (including a sewage works layout in 0-14) and have dabbled in 1:32 narrow gauge in the past. 009 is another thing that I keep returning to.
Some may remember that I posted the beginnings of an N gauge BR(W) layout built to fit in a violin case on the Finescale Model Railway Workshop forum years ago; this lay dormant for a while but I'm slowly accumulating stock suitable for the 1960s to run on it, I'll see if I can sort out posting some photos.
All the best,
Simon Hargraves.
