Tiny trains suit lockdown

A hobby project that never ends is quite convenient during a nationwide lockdown, says a Marlborough model railway enthusiast.

Philip Hunt has been collecting the pieces to build a model railway for more than 20 years, so when a lockdown was announced, he only had to nip out to the craft shop to top up on a few supplies.

While he expected the project to last ‘‘several years’’, the hobby leant itself to life in lockdown, where half an hour, or two hours could be spent tinkering away in the room beneath his house.

The model railway was inspired by his mother’s hometown in Hampshire, England, and ‘‘fills a small room’’, extending about 4 metres by 2 metres.

Hunt was semi-retired and usually drove buses for cruise ship passengers when they arrived in Picton, but since the Government banned cruise ships, his model railway project had been keeping him occupied.

He put most of the track down last year, but since lockdown began, he had refashioned an old signal into three new ones, with the next job being to wire them up.

He was also working on building the ‘‘scenery’’, like signal cabins and station buildings.

‘‘It does work rather well for lockdown’’, he said.

‘‘I don’t need to go to the shop to buy anything, because everything I need I’ve already got.

‘‘I’ve been collecting it for 20 years.’’

Hunt had been fascinated with the concept since he was gifted a Hornby clockwork train set on

Christmas Day in 1953, but he believed his ‘‘particular persona’’ is what really drew him to railways.

‘‘I like tidiness. I have the tidiest man’s top drawer in the town.

‘‘I like the way railways are so formed, they work, it’s a functioning system.

‘‘A railway system to me, leaves a roading system completely for dead.’’

He had 28 models of steam locomotives, along with a diesel shunter, a large mainline diesel and an assortment of others.

It was a multi-faceted hobby, he said, which combined electrics, craftsmanship and an eye for detail. ‘‘It’s a hobby which is quite absorbing.

‘‘I’m modelling something I remember as a boy. When I see it finished, it will remind me exactly what it was like in the 50s and 60s.’’

Although he joked that ‘‘you’ve never really finished your layout’’.

In a couple of years, he might start taking the early platforms off and building better ones, and that process could continue.

‘‘It’s a hobby which really is very fascinating and you can drop it at any time and go back later.’’