The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Fast track to ratings glory
As TV programme makers reveal they want to build a model railway across 74 miles of the Great Glen, Michael Alexander asks if this could be the next big craze for viewers
It’s a hobby that has been maligned as the dull cousin of trainspotting and the last refuge of middle aged men tinkering in attics and spare rooms. But model railway enthusiasts could soon be portrayed in a whole new light as part of ambitious plans to lay a miniature track along Scotland’s Great Glen.
The scheme, to be filmed for a TV show – working title The Biggest Little Railway in the World – involves laying 74 miles (119km) of line from Fort William to Inverness.
Love Productions, the programme makers, hope the “slightly bonkers” undertaking will be as popular as its Great British Bake Off, which made a star of Perthshire’s Flora Shedden.
Enthusiasts, engineers and construction workers are being sought for the project, which is planned for two weeks over the summer and will be filmed for Channel 4.
Producer Charlotte Armstrong says the new show will celebrate Brits’ longstanding love affair with model railways.
She said: “It’s massively ambitious. We want to bring together Britain’s model railway enthusiasts and all the different skills they have, but also local volunteers, engineers and people with construction experience.”
It’s all too easy to mock enthusiasts as obsessives who while away their time building tiny tracks so they can watch tiny trains zip around them.
But pop along to any of the model railway exhibitions staged in public halls across the region and you’re likely to come away with a whole new respect for the level of detail that goes in to these model landscapes – from the buildings, streets, bridges and signal boxes to the intricately painted papiermache hills.
The hobby has also been given credibility by celebrities in recent years with the likes of Rod Stewart, Jools Holland, Roger Daltrey and Pete Waterman admitting they enjoy building and playing with model railways in their free time.
Victor Burne-Jones, 73, chairman of Dundee Model Railway Club, reckons he and his pals are all too often unfairly portrayed as “geeks”. However, he is sceptical about the Channel 4 proposal.
“I think the programme that’s being talked about is just daft,” he declared yesterday. “That length of model rail track just wouldn’t work under ordinary circumstances.
“James May off Top Gear did a 20-mile model railway a year or two ago, and they had to plug in car batteries every so often to make it possible. And even then the trains kept stopping.”
And that’s just the beginning of his concerns.
“In my opinion, a 74-mile track could never be described as a model railway,” he added. “Where would they plug in their soldering irons for a start? The salt air would also oxidise the track. I would have no interest in getting involved.”
Victor and his colleagues pride themselves on planning and researching their sets in meticulous detail. They are building a detailed scale model of Arbroath Station and are researching a model of the former Lochee Station.
“For me, the hobby is a sort of follow-on from being a kid and wanting to be a train driver 60-odd years ago,” added the former Dundee jute mill spinner. “When the steam trains disappeared, the only way to still see them was to recreate them in model form.”
Perhaps the time is ripe for a model rail revival.
Mike Hughes, marketing director for the British branch of the National Model Railroad Association (NMRA) insists it’s a “hobby that transcends generations” and encourages people to nurture a wide range of skills as problem solvers.
“They’re anything but toys these days, with digital command controls (DCC) and such things,” he added.
I think the programme that’s being talked about is just daft. CHAIRMAN OF DUNDEE MODEL RAILWAY CLUB VICTOR BURNEJONES