Back once again to the modeling bench.

I used to love model railroading, as a child I spent hours poring over the Hornby catalogue and I still remember those old Bernard Cribbins TV adverts...



I never had the big Hornby set of my childhood dreams, times were hard so I had to make do with a cheap Lima set of continental equipment painted BR Blue!   I eventually bought a large lot of secondhand Hornby and Jouef trains and as I got older Lima began to release some very nicely detailed OO engines and I amassed a large collection of detailed models and joined the local OO railway group in my small town.

Then at the Glasgow train show one year, I bought a few bits of cheap American outline equipment made by 'Athearn' some company I'd never heard of.  They were very cheap and very solidly built, and once I put them on my layout and fired them up... well the UK OO models very quickly looked dull and uninteresting next to these powerful interlopers.  I was soon seeking out more US engines to add to my collection.

For the next few years, my collection continued to grow until I had amassed a modest collection of Athearn locomotives and a number of boxcars and other wagons, and my loft layout was reconfigured as a West Coast desert run.

After I left home to Study, the model railroad went into boxes, and then into the garage, and finally all my equipment was sold off.  I didn't expect that I'd be going back to it again.  Even when I found a few leftover wagons a couple of years ago, I just ebayed them and forgot about it.

Then a few weeks ago, a new model railway shop opened in Guildford where I work.  I was passing on lunchtime and there in the window was an Athearn train set!  I went in and got talking to the shopkeeper, and I nearly bought the set there and then.

So after browsing ebay for a while, I quickly found myself making purchases, and now I've got a whole mess of Athearn on route from various parts of the globe, as well as some Cannon & Compnay detailing parts, a Bachmann DCC control and even a Sound Decoder.  Things could get out of hand!  :)

I'll be updating with more soon, but in the meantime, here are some pictures of my newly purchased Athearn 'blue box' kits.  These are my first train purchases in twenty years, and direct replacements for some of the kits I used to have.