Hi everyone. Just wanted to open a thread relating to how we got into this hobby. If it has already been covered, then my apologies in advance. My love of model building started with my Grandfather way back in the mid 60's when I first saw this fantastic piece of magic he had scratch built sometime around WW2. It was kept in a special sun room forbidden to young children. Quite wisely. Pa was a ship's engineer and must have lifted lines and plans for this ship and scratch built the whole thing. It was about 1.5 metres long and unfortunuately has gone missing many years ago. I inherited it when I was 16. I moved from a place and left the model with my cousins and when they moved, their haste and lack of care ended up in this lovely ship being "lost," presumed stolen by someone who had seen it. He made the frames from timber and the cladding of the hull was done in heavy cartridge paper due to materials shortages. He took a long time to build it. Many years. The centre section could be taken out and it would have made a superb R/C ship if it were reclad in timber. My father was a merchant seaman in the War in many theatres - Africa, Mediterranean and Atlantic and he brought back a 2 cylinder steam engine from England at the end of the War and it would have been the perfect power unit, also gone missing when my step mother did a clean up without permission. I try not to think about it now but at least I have the memories and this picture to look at from time to time and models to build myself.
