Why build this website?
Mark once mentioned to Kim in conversation that he liked the idea of setting up a Facebook group for modellers of the BR blue period. Just so happens that Kim was also considering such a thing. Such groups already exist, but without wishing to be critical or appear snobbish, we liked the idea of creating something where we could share information and ideas with a wider audience, rather than muddying the waters with “I’ve just spent £375 on a new class 47, here’s some photos” posts. We wanted the group to be interactive so people could post comments or ask questions, rather than a “show and tell”.
Both Mark and Kim run their own small groups on Facebook. Mark has his “Welby Lane RTC” group, and Kim hosts a very small group showing progress of his layout build “Atherstone Court” along with rolling stock build progress. It was Kim that suggested we build a little website where anyone can pop along, look at what we do and hopefully draw some inspiration and do a much better job than we can. We asked our good friend Richard King what he thought and he immediately said “I’m in!”. And that was that. Kim closed his website design business in 2019, so for him this feels a bit like getting the band back together and getting the guitar out of the attic!
Why Milepost 128?
The real Milepost 128 is located at Derby station, which was the local regular spotting haunt of the three members of the group during the BR Blue period of the 1980s. Richard came up with the idea and we all loved it.
Kim Durose
From a very early age, Kim was thrust in to the model railway world with a 6×3′ N-gauge layout built for him by his very talented grandad. Kim attributes his love of scratchbuilding squarely upon his grandad. He was, and at 99 years old, still is the modeller he admires the most. This is a man who built a class 58 out of plasticard before Hornby had a go, and converted a class 47 to a very convincing class 60 just because one member of the class shared its name with his bungalow…..
Kim’s earliest memories are wondering why his Lima 31 was so wide and tall and smelt so funny, and why the Lima Deltic sat a scale 4 feet above the underscale Mk1 coaches. As a teenager, Kim would jump on his BMX bike and pedal like mad to Constructeon Models in Ripley, Derbyshire to spend his pocket money and paper round earnings on Peco wagon chassis kits for scratchbuilding. He would like to apologise to Eon and Deirdre for the constant pestering to order more. Eon Bailey’s incredible work was second only to his grandad as to what to aspire to in those early years. It was seeing what grandad could do with plasticard and what Eon could do in brass that really spurred him on in those early days.
In 1989 Kim was asked to help a local model railway club, panic stricken in the build up to their first ever model railway show. What followed was nine years of layout building and exhibition touring with two people he counts as two of his closest friends, Richard King and Mark Pearson. The end of the club membership was pretty standard textbook stuff but the important friendships stood the test of time. Mark and Richard continued to be active in the hobby for the years that followed, whereas in 1998 Kim took a 23 year complete hiatus when he got married, had a family and just did other things. He even took up golf. Just don’t ever ask him how that went.
In 2020 during lockdown he bought his first FDM 3D printer out of idle curiosity and with the 3D CAD design skills from the day job as a packaging and print designer, started to design components for other modellers to use and enjoy. At this time he was approached by Mark with a vision to create a couple of 3D printed pieces for his RTC layout “Welby Lane”, namely the tilting APT test bed POP train in both “skeletal” and “Toblerone” forms. A carefully crafted ploy to get him back in to the hobby by means of an invitation to Richard’s house post-lockdown to “play trains” ended with him sulking like a child and wanting to build a layout of his own. Having missed the hobby deeply without ever realising it, he was hooked again and plans for his own 1970s BR Southern Region London layout “Atherstone Court” were drawn up whilst on holiday 400 miles away in Scotland. Where else?!
Kim embraces the use of new technologies to create his models, employing hybrid FDM and SLA 3D printing techniques, card plotter and laser cutting, 2D and 3D CAD, and inkjet technologies, along with more traditional modelling methods. He still gets the plasticard out every now and then, but its only usually because the 3D printers are busy doing something else. He has an unhealthy mistrust of enamel paint and a flashback-inducing phobia of Mek-Pak adhesive after a ‘full bottle groin spillage’ in 1987, which surprisingly did not stop him becoming a father to two wonderful young lads.
Despite being Derbyshire born and bred from South Yorkshire stock, Kim is in to anything BR Southern Region thanks to numerous National Express coach trips to Battersea Park with his train-spotting bus driver dad, and gets all misty-eyed at the sight of anything designed by OVS Bulleid. He still hasn’t worked out how his local line functions with only two rails and not three.
Kim is also the owner of 12A Models, a one-man operation making 3D printed components, conversion kits and full kits for railway modellers.
Richard King
Richard’s fascination and interest in railways started at a very early age, with family holidays in the South West cementing an early passion for all things Great Western and BR(WR). His first model, a Hornby ‘Kneller Hall’ was presented to him on Christmas morning 1980 followed a couple of years later by a Hornby ‘High Speed Train’ set, these must have clocked up many hundreds of miles negotiating the 6′ x 4′ oval of track, which formed the basis of his trainset in those early years.
During evenings and school holidays an unhealthy amount of time was spent trainspotting, as evidenced by entries in his battered old notebooks, usually at Bennerley junction, in the shadow of the now famous Bennerley viaduct, on the Erewash Valley line, with occasional forays out to Toton depot, Derby station and beyond.
He joined the local Model railway club during his mid teenage years, being aquainted with Mark, shortly to be followed by Kim later on. It soon became apparent that their approach to railway modelling was closely aligned, with a desire to do things differently and to raise the standards of the club.
For various reasons they all departed from the railway club scene, and in those pre mobile phone/internet days, maintained an arms length friendship which has remarkably stood the test of time.
A re-aqaintence after a 20+ year gap, sees a close friendship with that same desire to move standards forward with a mutual interest in modelling the BR blue diesel and electric era.
A career Railwayman, Richard has spent the last three decades working around the East Midlands area, and has formed a close alegience to the former London Midland region of British Rail, second only to his beloved GWR.
Mark Pearson
Like most young boys of the early 70s, Mark was presented with a second hand Triang clockwork set. He was told that if he looked after it, it would be swapped for an electric train set soon. As his Dad was a keen railway buff too he knew this would happen. Soon enough he was presented with a large Triang/Hornby Dublo selection that had been gifted to his Dad from various Uncles and friends.
The next few years were spent designing various trackplans in various rooms of the family home. In later years his elder sister moved out, enabling planning permission to be granted to knock a tunnel mouth sized hole in a partition wall, thus creating a large track run between two rooms, which was useful, as by now he had acquired a Hornby H.S.T and the then newly released A.P.T .. He kind of knew he was going down the diesel electric route by now …!
Regular visits to local second hand/junk/ model shops at the time with little pocket money to spend taught him to buy, repair and make something useful from, something he still does today.
With a keen desire not to have what everyone else had, he started to learn how to paint (badly at first) and detail locomotives, moving onto to simple kits. His first kit was a Q Kits LMS 10000, a resin blob that despite many rebuilds never quite looked or ran right but taught him valuable lessons!
Mark and Richard were founding members of the club which Kim joined later. With these two and others he had a great many years building /rebuilding/ repairing club layouts, attending shows, drinking beer and experiencing life!
Mark moved away to Scotland in the early noughties and enjoyed many years there helping to form the Scottish Diesel and Electric Group (S.D.E.G), a dedicated group specializing in the modern (well post 1970!) railway scene with quite a few well known and highly regarded layouts on the exhibition circuit. He still has a strong connection with the group now despite the clubrooms being 300 miles away!
The life wheel spun again and he moved back to the midlands and picked up the modelling thread with a few friends.
As a small boy, he remembers standing on Derby station and a silver and blue snake like train stood there making a funny noise… His dad said it was the train of the future…. glancing across then to the right he remembers lots of red and blue coaches at the RTC….. and the seed was planted.
After a home visit, Mark acquired what has now become Welby Lane R.T.C from Richard and had recently pre-ordered the Rapido APT-E.
Quickly releasing that the layout would need expanding, he set to, so the layout bears little resemblance to the small diesel shed it was originally designed to be.
Nearly 10 years on and with a rather extensive RTC fleet, cutting, shutting, filing, priming, painting and building, he is slowly turning his attention to more normal 70’s and 80’s stock to run on a future home layout build. Watch this space…
Kim and Richard are, and will remain Mark’s lifelong modelling buddies, bouncing ideas off each other and often challenging each other to push their modelling boundaries. By his own admission, Mark is quite “old school” modelling, happily chopping up plastic with a razor saw, mini drill and file . All the modern high-tech 3D Printy stuff he leaves for other people on here…!
