For Peter Hart it has been a “lifeline”. Since his wife died five years ago, the model railway painstakingly built over a period of 30 years at the Bo’ness and Kinneil rail heritage site has been both a refuge and a source of joy that has helped the 88-year-old retired plumber to keep going.
“If it weren’t for the model railway, I’d have nowhere else to go other than visiting my immediate family and I’d just be watching four walls,” he said.
It’s the companionship of the other volunteers that he cherishes the most.
“Most of the men look after me because I get a bit unsteady at times,” added Hart, a modeller since the age of 50. “I feel very fortunate, it’s like a big family.”
The model railway, based on a recreation of a rural station from the golden age of rail before the Second World War — the 27 volunteers call it the Glenauchter layout — has been assembled by hand and winds through two vintage Norwegian carriages from the 1920s and 1930s.
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Few who saw one of the heritage site’s most popular attractions could have failed to have been moved by the passion and ingenuity that went into creating such lovingly detailed scenes.
But the mainly elderly volunteers belonging to the Bo’ness Gauge “O” Group — Gauge 0 is the traditional track size used by modellers — were left devastated last week when vandals broke in, set fire to the carriage and stole or damaged large parts of the collection.
Although the value of the items stolen is low, the emotional damage of the near-destruction of three decades of dedicated work by a bunch of close mates has stunned the group.
“No one can replace all the hours that went into building this,” said Chris McDonald, the group’s chairman, a maths teacher whose great grandfather was a train driver and his uncle a station manager.
The project was conceived at the site in West Lothian in the winter of 1993 when club founder John Evans, then volunteering at the heritage railway, was tasked with disposing of the old carriages.
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Unwilling to part with the historic cabins, Evans, 80, who says he “grew up” in signal boxes alongside his railwayman father, resolved to recruit a band of modelling enthusiasts from across the central belt to build a permanent attraction within the carriages.
Over the next 30 years, the modellers invested thousands of hours, and tens of thousands of pounds of their own savings, into the project. From a hand-painted robin measuring just millimetres high to miles of electrical wiring, thousands of components have been crafted and assembled.
It was meeting place of like minds, a connected community where volunteers taught each other specialist modelling skills — such as wiring — while swapping anecdotes about their lives. Part of the fun was explaining how it all worked to their many young visitors.
As its social media pages make clear: “This group isn’t just about model trains — it is a creative outlet, a meeting place for friends and a hub of knowledge (and biscuits).”
All that came to an abrupt halt last week when volunteers alerted to the fire arrived to a scene of devastation.
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“I was horrified to see three fire engines sitting at the site and men with breathing apparatus on,” said George Davidson, 65, a retired railway engineer from Glasgow. “My heart sank.”
In the aftermath, the hardest part for some of the group members was seeing damaged models that belonged to members of the club who had died.
“That’s the one thing we had left of them,” McDonald said, “and we will be remaking them in their memory,” he pledged. “We will replicate what we’ve lost rather than buying something shiny and new because these friends and what they created were a central part of this whole project.”
The memories are not just the preserve of the creators and their friends. Their models of long-decommissioned trains spark memories among older visitors of playing with models as children or of riding their full-sized counterparts.
“It takes people back to something and it gets to their heart,” said McDonald. “People want to pass on their stories and others want to hear them and that’s where the conversations start.”
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The wider community is rallying in many ways. McDonald gestured to a box of models donated last week by a local man who had heard about the fire and was keen to share his “railway bug” with other current and future enthusiasts.
Within days of the fire, a Just Giving appeal for £500 had raised over £20,000 of donations with messages of support flooding in from across the UK, Europe and even Australia. Prominent companies such as Network Rail Scotland and Edinburgh Airport have offered assistance while children have offered their pocket money.
The modellers admit that they are overwhelmed by the public’s response to the vandalism. Two men, both aged 32, were arrested on Friday following a police investigation and made an initial appearance at Falkirk sheriff court.
“We’re just a bunch of guys who come to play trains at the weekend, without realising how much enjoyment the people who come to see our track get,” said Mike Trevett, 71, a former graphic designer who developed his love for the railways as a child in London. “Clearly, it’s touched a nerve with everyone from big engineering companies to ordinary folk.”
The unprecedented support has spurred Bo’ness Gauge O Group to go full steam ahead in rebuilding its model railway. A sense of duty to each other and to their rapidly growing fanbase has instilled in the men a dogged determination to restore and even outdo their previous track layout.
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The appeal for funds on the group’s Facebook page this weekend has the blackly-humorous “Keep Calm and Carriage On” message.
“With the overwhelming response we’ve had, we’re going have to up our game a bit.” McDonald said. “Whatever we come back with, it’s going to be brighter and better.”
