This is my son George. He is 9 years old and quite likes trains, certainly not as much as me but he likes to be invovled. So I try to encourage him and this is the result. It’s a simple oval of N gauge track with some sidings and a hidden siding under the hill. It’s his layout, Freemakers Lane.
This picture was taken during the N Gauge Day held by Great Eastern Models. They know George well and cope wonderfully with his quirky manerisms. As much of what you can see came from GE Models, they knew that this layout was being built and graciously allowed us both to come to display the layout, if nothing else, as an encouragement to children and people who’ve never modelled before.
As you can tell from this blog, not a lot of work has taken place on George’s layout so I thought we needed to put this right. Out came the layout and I tried to think what we could do.
The three little cottages on the hill were purchased on the day of the N gauge show and may have actually been stuck there while we were in the shop, but that’s the last time anything got done to it till yesterday and today.
I decided we should concentrate on the area around the cottages so laid down a stone country road and some bushes. When I said I did this, I really mean George did it so you have to put aside any comments about quality and realise that an autistic 9 year old is wanting to do something himself, and autistic 9 year olds want to get cracking without listening to instructions. So here are some pictures from last night and today!…enjoy.
A LITTLE LANE AND PATHS TO THE COTTAGES IS THE IDEA!
Well that went quite well and George was certainly every excited about working on his layout again. His was very anxious about getting this work on the blog so if you never care about sending me a message, I’d love you to send him a comment about his layout!
By the time George had got home from school, I had got some more grass out from my garage and was ready for him to do the next stage – the grass bushes around the cottages and the road. This is a picture of it all everywhere before the lose material was sucked out of the way!
Well, that’s as far as we got. I added a little more grass around the factory area and had a play with the BR Blue class 25 (well what did you expect from me) and a few wagons. We now need some more buildings and tree. But that will be for another day I guess. I will need to get my OO gauge layout into the house soon to get it ready for some exhibitions in August.
I guess the main point of this blog today is that we have to encourage the young ones if there is ever going to be a hobby in years to come. If there isn’t a younger generation interested in trains then there will be no clubs and no shows. This year this is no Southwold show. So this is not a made up opinion. This first class show couldn’t go one because those involved were getting too old to manage all thats required for such a show.
Let’s try to get a younger generation invovled so that our hobby lasts for many years to come.
Princes Street Station 