Section Members
Mike 'Moose' Stent
Mike joined the section in 1999, and has now become the section electrician, despite never wiring a layout before. Mike's main interest is HO Canadian, which leads to some rather lost looking trains on the section's Colorado-based layout. Mike is currently the section rep and co-organiser of the Alton Limited.
I've always been interested in railways (full size and model) for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest recollections was of owning a Hornby No 1 Special tank locomotive when I was about seven years old. The main thing I remember doing with this was laying a long stretch of straight track with a level crossing half way along it and staging high speed crashes ! (this was on the grass in the front garden). Dinky toys and Meccano were also around at this stage, so Binns Road must have done quite well out of our family !
Then came the Christmas morning when I found a Hornby Dublo 3 rail LMS 0-6-2 tank set at the bottom of my bed. I put it all together and ran it, then put it all back in the box (well, it was half past two in the morning !!) and went back to bed. This set was added to over the years, although I never had any permanent track laid down. In due course I discovered motor cycles and the train set was sold, unmarked (I'd got past the wrecking stage) in its original boxes, for a fraction of what it was worth - sound familiar ?
Around this time I went to a model railway exhibition in the now defunct RAE Assembly Hall and an Uncle of mine was there operating a layout (British outline) and late in the afternoon when the crowds had moved on, lo and behold, what should appear but an American streamlined diesel, Rivarossi I think, pulling a string of brightly coloured bogie freight cars - I think that this was the moment I became hooked on American equipment.
Fast forward a few years to around 1966, said Uncle, a cousin and myself went to the Model Railway Club annual exhibition, then held at the Central Hall Westminster. There I made the acquaintance of Victors of Islington with a stand piled high with American equipment. All HO in those days - none of those other strange scales ! I bought a Rivarossi 0-4-0 switcher (shunter to you) and a couple of freight car kits, all of which I still have - really must finish building that flatcar kit sometime.............
The following year I got married, so model railways got put on the back burner, although I did get busy with the camera recording the last months of Southern steam on the mainline through Farnborough. Boats then took over and we used to have a boat on the Thames and spent some enjoyable years on it, often in sight of a railway line, Western Region unfortunately, still you can't have everything! Early retirement (well redundancy really) came in 1992. Now with more time on my hands, the garden acquired a greenhouse and I spend quite a lot of time in there raising houseplants and growing-on cuttings taken from the garden. We did do some sailing mainly in the Solent and across to the Isle of Wight (never too far from SOUTHERN STEAM), but we found ourselves using the boat less and less and as we were essentially fair-weather sailors and owning a boat has been likened to standing under a (cold) shower tearing up pound notes - the boat was sold.
We are now up to 1996 (or thereabouts), I began to gather my thoughts regarding modelling. I have a cousin in Canada, model railroader needless to say, who has, over the years, sent me a lot of photos and literature relating to the Canadian National and Pacific railroads. Things came together, Canadian railroads it had to be, set in the mid fifties with mainly first generation diesels. From then on I started acquiring freight cars and the odd loco to run on the layout I am surely going to build one day
After many reminders by my wife telling me it was about time I put the accumulating rolling stock to use, I looked around for a club that had a North American section and having seen Pine Bluffs Depot at various exhibitions, I made myself known, came along to the Group and was duly invited to join. My rolling stock now began to see the light of day - what bliss ! As the Group layout is set in Colorado it requires a stretch of the imagination to believe that Canadian railroads run as far south as this - still that's what it's all about isn't it ?
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Section Members
Meet the men behind the legend - the members of the AMRG American section
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Danger: Men at Work
The section work on many things at once - find out whats going on at the moment
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Alton Limited
The section runs an all american meet in july every year
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