Continued from the Home page.............

Apparently, the railway continues in a converted public toilet somewhere.

Yep! John Hart was the man; that short article about him doesn't mention his mother (an ancient lady to my young eyes in 1960) who had to live amongst his hobby, with a railway station in the kitchen! However, I never witnessed a train with a fried egg on its roof.... though, a sausage on a low loader could have been acceptable perhaps! I used to run all the way to 26 Surbiton Hill Park, a distance of about a mile, to take part. Sunday was usually the operating day and there were several different timetables which could be worked to the speeded-up clocks at each station. I don't know how he kept them all in sync' in those days. Maybe they weren't linked. I suppose in hindsight he was the very reason we got into timetables and bell-signalling for our model railway at 'Mimosa' wasn't he? The only station names I can recall were Heatherton (the main one) and Polehampton which was the end of the line around the garden in my day. I can't remember the others or the name of the terminus in the kitchen. Can you? I think the layout continued to grow considerably in the years afterwards as I recall visiting it in my later teens (c 1966) when I felt a bit more self-conscious about being labelled a railway buff! In some ways I'd love to build one here.....the garden has terrific possibilities, but I couldn't stand the knowing looks..... or the cost! Good find!

Wow! I'm struggling to remember the station names. I remember Heatherton, Polehampton and Westhaven and I think the main station was Broadway....but that one in the middle??

You can see the name Broadway in the photo (which I think I remember as being above "your station" right?).

Yes, you're right. Heatherton was the first one on the garden and Polehampton the last. Westhaven was in the kitchen cupboard....but the one on the middle I can't recall.

Well I have finally finished the next step. This involved working on each of the 100 images in Photoshop (cropping, enhancing levels and sharpness, etc.) and then uploading to our website and then placing each one in the right place and making it open in a fresh tab when clicked on (each image placement took 26 keystrokes!!). I am dead pleased with the finished page. I really hope you like it and it brings back some great memories for you. How amazing is it that we can now look at these images of a time we thought was long gone and that we believed we would only ever be able to see in our minds?

Wow! Well done for tracking down this little (!) library of photos. It brings it all back indeed! I remember quite a lot of the locos, the EMU which used to ply between Westhaven and Broadway, the Adams 4-4-2 radial tank which was quite new then. The No 10,000 diesel, the Midland Railcar (which was an unknown vehicle to me in real life), the Lancs and Yorks 0-8-2, the Great Central Director 4-6-0, the Midland 4-4-0 and, of course, the Green Southern coaches and the unrebuilt Bulleid Pacific.....which was very new then...and very exciting for me because the real things were still running on the mainline then.

It looks like the layout was tweaked a bit at Oakleigh and when the photos reach Polehampton...well I'm stunned. It had seemingly turned into a huge complex industrial station! When I operated it, it had two platforms and about four storage sidings. The controller's position was perched on two posts beside a tree next to the fence...20 yards away from anyone else; quite a lonesome outpost on a dull damp Sunday afternoon, but running the timetable was the all-important absorbing interest. I certainly didn't realise it grew to the dimensions shown in the photos. I imagine the timetables must have got very complicated.

Glad you liked it. The photos are great when you click on them, aren't they! I could only get to a session if I happened to be staying with you for the weekend so didn't manage to get to many. Even so, I was surprised by how much I could remember. I recall a few of the locos, especially the Metropolitan Electric engine and Oakleigh, Broadway, the bridge from the kitchen and the general garden layout which from memory didn't go far beyond Polehampton which, as you say, was a two-platform station when we were there! In fact, isn't that Polehampton in the black & white photo above of John Hart with one of Jack Ray's engines circa 1966?

Sorry, I'm afraid it isn't. Polehampton was located in a corner where two fences met. Also, it's a different house in the background and the track bed is too high. Polehampton was barely knee-high from the ground, you had to step over the track to get to the controller's box....oh,.and John didn't have anything as sophisticated as a green trellis...cripes! He was supposedly an engineer after all!......erm... not a gardener! Hee hee. Must have been taken at Jack Ray's garden layout then. Ooops! Sorry, I was looking at the colour photo. Doh! Yes, the black and white photo may well be Polehampton...though I don't remember there being a bend in the platform tracks.

I have to say I am still stunned by this unexpected development of our joint histories!! That's why I keep revisiting the website to see if there are any other lines of investigation I can pursue. This one worked out better than I could have hoped for! There are also two DVDs on their way to me. I wonder what they will contain?!

Does anybody know what John Hart did (supposedly) for a job if he had time for work?

I'll see if anyone in the Guild knows what he did.

(later..) "According to Jack Ray, John was a professional model engineer, building and repairing models. He and a colleague built a display railway at Chessington Zoo. I got that from my copy of "50 Years Along the Line" (my copy autographed by Jack Ray)" - Chris Simpson (Gauge 0 Guild Librarian)

So that was his whole life then really! That last photo of him sitting at the fireside gives a good impression of how the house at Surbiton Hill Park was inside (as I recall it from my one venture upstairs). It was quite dark but cosy, the old lady (John's mother?) was not to be seen and, apart from a 1950s radio, looked exactly as it must have when built. Just a little bit eerie to a 10-year old though.

It must be very surprising for you to see that "time and place" again? How do you feel about it?

I got involved quite by chance when I first realised the railway was there, I started to go and watch the trains on quite a regular basis although I can't remember if it ran every Sunday or on alternate Sundays.

After a few weeks, John Hart obviously began to notice I was always there leaning on the metal bar watching what went on and he chatted with me a bit. Then one Sunday, it drizzled with rain all afternoon. Undaunted, I remained watching the trains and getting ever more wet (it wasn't a sheltered position in front of the garage) although due to the weather the railway was running an indoor timetable only. I must have looked a sorry sight as John obviously took pity and invited me into the garage to dry off....and from there I was slowly accepted into the 'Club' and allowed to help operate the trains.

The only occasion I had to go into the house was when I turned up on the wrong Sunday one week and John happened to see me loitering outside(!) and invited me upstairs to watch him soldering up a new loco....as you can imagine it was an Aladdin's cave of modelling paraphernalia....and truly an eye-widening adventure for me indeed!

Of course, when we got into our teens, model railways gave way to models (of a different kind) and I lost touch with the whole scene although, as I mentioned, I did come across an open day there (whilst courting girlfriend number 1) somewhere around 1966/7 and briefly saw much of the new extension(s) that had been built; though not John himself.

Then, much later, I heard via the local newspaper that he had sadly passed away....so one moves on. They were good days and the model railway was a welcome diversion from other childhood activities which broke up the school routine.

That's a lovely summary, Trevor. Thanks for taking the time to let me know. It's important to remember and record that stuff. I have to say I'm looking forward to us getting together once you retire for what they used to call "a good chin-wag"!!

The book arrived yesterday and the chapter on John Hart is interesting (and the rest of the book looks worth reading, which is a bonus!). Here are the relevant four pages. Click to open and zoom in to read.

I've just had a quick read and it is indeed an insight into and a reminder of the man I knew as a youngster. It does reflect what I remember of his manner. So the mysterious 'old' lady was his nanny.....wow! Like an Agatha Christie character lurking. He never actually mentioned her directly although I sensed her presence and occasionally caught a glimpse of her through a gap pottering in the kitchen.