While I was at University I got the itch to have a model railway in my room, but due to it being a temporary room it had to be something small and movable, so OO was out. With my limited knowledge at the time, this only left N-gauge, so I went out and bought some magazines and started looking at ideas of what I could do, then stumbled across a layout in the 'British Railway Modelling Annual 2009' which inspired me to a whole new level. The layout was called Tremeifion and was built by a man called Doug Scott in a scale called OO9 and I poured over the photos more times than I think was strictly healthy.
This layout had everything, the sheer scale of the end result, the scenery, so much character and, most importantly, small engines, so I felt like I could do part of it on my window sills as a mountain railway.
So skip forward a couple of years to a OO9 society show and on the trade stand I find the two engines from the photo above. Gladys was a bit scratched and dusty but in full working order and the back engine was just a body shell, but I knew I had to have them, as a little piece of the layout that started me doing this.
Gladys now (above and below); She has had new couplings fitted so she can pull stock on the layout, but is otherwise untouched. The colour was close enough and her number was vacant at the time, I have even left the scratches intact as I don't want to lose any of her charm.
I just wish I knew what happened to Doug, hopefully he was just moving an old project on?
