Western News: February 11, 2021
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10 Thursday <strong>February</strong> <strong>11</strong> <strong>2021</strong><br />
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz<br />
WESTERN NEWS<br />
Full steam ahead in Bill’s backyard<br />
• By Susan Sandys<br />
BILL STANLEY, 67, has created a<br />
model train lovers’ fantasy land in<br />
his backyard.<br />
When he and wife Maggie<br />
moved to their new home in Canterbury<br />
five years ago, Stanley saw<br />
“a blank canvas, just waiting for a<br />
garden railway layout.”<br />
He set to work, and today has<br />
eight model trains which run<br />
on more than 200m of track, set<br />
amongst a 27m diorama of buildings,<br />
settlements, fields and bridges.<br />
The trains pass through all sorts<br />
of activity amongst the Playmobil<br />
people, vehicles and buildings,<br />
including a wedding outside<br />
Lincoln Union Church, fields being<br />
harvested, and a quarry being<br />
mined.<br />
Some of the buildings, including<br />
the church, Stanley has made<br />
himself, learning first through<br />
the Canterbury Garden Railway<br />
Group of which he is a committee<br />
member, and then teaching himself<br />
along the way.<br />
The track and its impressive<br />
setting, at the couple’s home in Lincoln,<br />
is complete with a pond and<br />
real goldfish. It has been a labour of<br />
love, and one that has its origins in<br />
Stanley’s childhood.<br />
“Trains just fascinated me as a<br />
child and they still do, we have<br />
been from LA to New York by<br />
train,” he said.<br />
His grandfather William Stanley<br />
gave him a Hornby double O<br />
railway set when he was about<br />
five.<br />
William had worked on the<br />
railways, and Stanley has inherited<br />
the whistle that William used<br />
in his job, believed to be as an engineer,<br />
and keeps it on his garden<br />
railway key ring.<br />
Stanley kept the passion for<br />
trains and railways moving<br />
down the generations; he and<br />
Maggie bought their 29-year-old<br />
son Richard his first engine when<br />
he was a baby.<br />
They continued to add to the<br />
collection, and always incorporated<br />
train travel in their overseas<br />
trips. These were for professional<br />
purposes in earlier years<br />
as Stanley travelled as part of his<br />
job as a pharmaceutical company<br />
director.<br />
The trip through the United<br />
States was in the 1990s, while<br />
they also lived in Thailand for<br />
five years to 1998 and travelled<br />
extensively through Europe.<br />
“You can set your clock by the<br />
trains in Switzerland,” he said.<br />
While trains in Thailand at<br />
the time were substandard in<br />
comparison, they had been just as<br />
enjoyable to travel on as the country’s<br />
elephants and longboats.<br />
Stanley sometimes has groups<br />
come and view his backyard<br />
garden railway creation, and it is<br />
a hobby he enjoys with others in<br />
the garden railway group, which<br />
will be hosting the National<br />
Garden Railway Convention<br />
in Christchurch on Waitangi<br />
Weekend.<br />
He said setting up the train<br />
track, which runs from a purpose-built,<br />
life-size shed, takes 90<br />
ALL ABOARD:<br />
Bill Stanley has<br />
transformed his<br />
backyard into a<br />
garden railway<br />
enthusiast’s<br />
paradise.<br />
PHOTO:<br />
SUSAN SANDYS<br />
minutes each time.<br />
“It’s quite a lot of work to have<br />
them running to precision, it’s<br />
quite common to have derailments,”<br />
Stanley said.<br />
Obstacles such as stones or<br />
grit on the track, or interception<br />
by creatures such as the Stanley<br />
household’s pet cats or dogs, were<br />
the cause of such frustrations.<br />
One of the biggest challenges<br />
had been securing the track in<br />
ballast that wouldn’t move when<br />
a blower is used to remove pine<br />
needles which have fallen down<br />
from nearby trees.<br />
Free<br />
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