From a Hornby Gauge 0 train set with a clockwork locomot1ve as a Christmas present when I was 7 or 8 I gradually moved to serious model railways and interest in railways and railway history. In July 1956 I attended the meeting at the Ambulance Room at Euston Station which formed the Gauge 0 Guild to promote interest in Gauge 0 (any models in 7mm/1ft scale  or using 32mm rail gauge), which was in serious decline. After partial attempts at modelling in finescale Gauge 0   a fictitious Great Western and London and Southwestern station in British Railways' days because of holidays at Bournemoth, I realised in 1964 that I was not in position to build a layout but could begin to gather information, plans, drawings and photos, to begin making models for a replica of a real station or stations. I also liked the smaller railway companies that existed before the Grouping in 1923 into the 'Big Four'. Where we lived in Horton, we could see from the front of the house westwards over the fields to Salcey Station, long disused, on the former  Stratford upon Avon and Midland Junction Railway freight only line from Towcester  to Ravenstone Junction on the former Midland Railway's line from Northampton to Bedford, the steam locomotives  on which,  we could hear from the back of the house. And so the SMJ was my obvious choice and Byfield station in particular because it was the passenger interchange for the connection to the Great Central main line to London at Woodford Halse. I also chose the period of 1910 to 1914 because by then the East and West Junction Railway, from a junction west of Towcester on the Northampton and Banbury Railway to Stratford, had absorbed that company, and also its own extensions, under nominally independent companies, from Towcester to Ravenstone Junction and from Stratford westwards to Broome Junction on the Midland Railways line from Bromsgrove on its main line from Birmingham to Bristol via Redditch and Evesham back to the mainline at Ashchurch, and had changed its name to SMJR.

I joined the Historical Model Railway Society and went to a meeting of the London Branch and met Gordon Heywood who was displaying a model of one the several o-6-0s of the SMJ and had produced drawings of the SMJ's coaches and most of its wagon. I also gathered other drawings, including one of Byfield station, from the Model Railway News, and made my own from photographs, including Towcester station in the vain hope that one day I would have the space to model it. I also went to the Institute of Science and technology at Manchester to gather copies of the other locos of the SMJ which were built by Beyer Peacock, and made 7mm drawings of them. With Colin Underwood, also in the HMRS, and the help of other members I began to assemble a notable collection of information about the SMJ up to 1923. I am now compiling a Compendium of what I have gathered and other sources (some with notable errors) which will be given to the HMRS along with the drawings, photographs, timetables and notes, including ones of wagons of those of other railways and private owners and of GCR through or slip coaches which did or would have run on it.

After returning from Trinidad in 1988 I built 2 versions of a fictitious SMJ line via Woodford to Daventry in which an off-shoot from the GCR main line from north of Daventry to that town with a service from Rugby. But the attic was too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer, and so I have just managed to squeeze an accurate model of Byfield in our small back garden which runs from the garage and back again. and which I operate according to actual Working Time Tables, but cut short the longer intervals between trains: realistic operation as well as physical models. Four locos, including the ex Manchester, S. Junction and Altrincham 2-4-0 T for the passenger trains from Woodford, were built for me by the late Harold Gee, and five others by myself, all Beyer-Peacock and outside-frame 0-6-0s.