'Just because they are sold with Toys, does not make them toys' say the old people of Britain as they banish Toy Trains to glass cases.
Contrary to the opinion of many, we are relatively normal here at BM. Or so we tell ourselves while rocking backwards and forwards writing this weirdness. We love Hornby, we prefer Bachmann because they look better, but we love Hornby. It gives us that warm glow that takes us right back to childhood.
The plight of Hornby is typically British in that it is struggling in this Facebook Live world were the realistic model trains are not running across our mobile device screens. They are actually out there in the big wide world. Even Digital Trains do not have the pull that a Flappy Bird does or the instant ability to tell the world we are laid across a dusty bedroom floor playing with 'toy trains'.
The real world, that scary world beyond childhood, where we take off the stablisers and internet searches become dodgier by each year we grow older, is much similar to our younger selves locked away in attics with the masses of Hornby layouts.
Except everything becomes much bigger in scale and we become much more envious of the friend who had the masses of Hornby trainsets, and didn't even like trains.
We were all at home with the roughest piece of brown MDF that could be found at the tip with your Uncle Knobheads old Smokey Joe battering it round a crudely made corner of Triang and Hornby track from the Car Boot Sale stuck together with one rusty connector per track piece. All powered by what looks like a nuclear generator held together with sellotape, electrical tape and paperclips.
But it was every bit as magic as that friends fully signalled, 'Peter Waterman' attic
In the 'real world' according to the ever thinner 'Steam Railway' magazine, we learn of John Camerons desire to plinth Union of South Africa in a barn in Scotland. It will bow out in style with everyone tripping over to be the last Railway or Mainline Tour to feature the famous 'A4'.
Yet again we are at the day where our Parents give us the call that they've given away your old Hornby trains to their 'friends little one' who loves Trains. The friends spawn of satan wouldn't know how to handle a Smokey Joe as much as they wouldn't be able to walk in an upright position. You already know that within minutes those wheels are off and the crude BR crest you'd put on the tanks of Smokey Joe have been scraped off and replaced with a Power Rangers sticker fresh from a Happy Meal.
It is happening all over again with the impending doomed future of the mighty A4 and it's stable mate 'K4', The Great Marquess. Except, again the real world of adulthood deals another fatal blow in watching the slow demise of two great machines. Two machines that could ride again if it wasn't to the decision of their owner. The owner who did save them, and has earnt the right to do what he wishes with them. Isn't adulthood boring when we have to say these boring things that make common sense.
Once again, we are lucky we have a hobby where we can say, without foundation, without any reasonable financial costings, without any strategic thinking, that they should steam again.
Why? Because we want our Smokey Joe back, the one with the crude crest, the one that hit the wall, the one we spent our childhood with.
Don't shy away from uttering the words, 'Steam it now'. Anyone who criticises that phrase is that friend with the attic full of Hornby train sets (and they weren't having as much fun as you)
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