Credit: Rail-Online.co.uk

McKinley is the culmination of the lifelong dream of owner David Townend to recapture the days of his youth watching trains in his native west of England. He was fascinated not only by scheduled passenger trains moving in and out of Bristol Temple Meads, but also by not knowing where the other, non-timetabled trains were coming from, and going to. Decades later we can now all enjoy this dream together as passenger and goods trains travel all over Britain in OO scale.

David was intrigued by the potential of the Hornby Trackplan book of his youth, but plans 1-14 were, for him, on a rather limited scale. He always dreamed of something bigger and settled on a future layout which would be Trackplan 18 (something Hornby never produced). These days it’s more like Trackplan 99 as the dream has grown and grown!

Trains in Bristol back in the 1960s were all well and good, but young David wanted to see more. Sneaky trips to South Wales and London were amazing experiences with new locations and rolling stock to enjoy. He recalls an empty St Pancras, the majesty of Paddington station (later the inspiration for McKinley’s London King’s Park) and the station shed at Kings Cross with its army of Class 55 Deltics - a huge beast of a diesel locomotive not seen in the west of England.

But the 60s was a decade of great change for Britain’s railways and not always for the best; not least when you’re a young man and your favourite Hydraulics are taken out of service, never to return.

But departures also meant arrivals, and David remembers with awe the advent in the mid-1970s of the High Speed Train, with its screaming front and rear power cars which would form the backbone of British intercity travel for the next four decades.

One glaring omission in David’s formative years was the absence of steam locomotives. He never saw one operating in British Rail service until 6000 King George V in October 1971, and that was on a Bulmers special!