From left, model train buffs Ross Bates, Graham Leabourn, Ken Le Prou, Brian Larkin and Norm McPhee. Photo / Doug Laing
From left, model train buffs Ross Bates, Graham Leabourn, Ken Le Prou, Brian Larkin and Norm McPhee. Photo / Doug Laing
An icon of Napier amusement attractions run by volunteer enthusiasts aged up to their mid-80s is at risk of running off the rails unless it gets an infusion of new members to help keep it on track.
It's the Hawke's Bay Model Engineering Society which runs the miniature ride-on railwayover an 800m track at Anderson Park, Greenmeadows.
"We're all over 70," lamented club member, train driver and retired builder Brian Larkin, at the track last weekend with president Ross Bates, a model trains enthusiast who came to the club from New Plymouth about 24 years ago, vice-president, retired-engineer and longest-serving member Graham Leabourn, longtime secretary and treasurer Norm McPhee and club loyal Ken Le Prou.
Larkin's tried his bit with the grandkids among the regulars, one of whom at the age of 14 was likely to be pressed into service this week bringing things up to the times, with a Facebook page.
"But," he says, "we could do with some new young blood."
Most of the veteran crew have been involved since days when the track was on the Westshore Beach reserve, where it had opened just before Christmas 1961 after a couple of enthusiasts finished building miniature steam locomotive model Maid of Kent.
With Westshore Residents Development Association member Cedric Alexander at the forefront, a track was built with rides raising funds for the association, the enthusiasts in return having a track on which to run their own engines.
Numbers were rarely big, and with beachfront erosion a problem in the area the days of the track became numbered.
A former Marine Parade bus shelter recycled as the Anderson Park model railway train station. Photo / Doug Laing
It closed in 1994 and was pulled up and placed in storage, but it was far from the end of the line. The following year it was resurrected and the railway was established at Anderson Park, former site of horse races staged by Napier Park Racing club.
But the rolling stock of both the society and its members was increasing, as was the number of society headquarters, first in a Westshore hall, later in refurbished railway carriage at Clive and now council amenities which were once part of the racecourse's stabling complex.
For the first few years the station was a tent, but the modern track is a tribute to the initiative and who-you-know approach of a few years ago.
It has a station fashioned from a former Marine Parade bus shelter, a pond bridge mixed-and-matched from decking found at the Pan Pac mill and sides from the Whakatu meat works, a tunnel built using a former Waitane mill oil tank, and a lamp stand from Ormondville, not to mention about 500 cubic metres of soil from former winery land off Thames St, trucked-in and spread with the help of long-time Meeanee firm Dudding Contractors.
Leabourn has been on the scene since 1963, but he is out-clocked by the Maid of Kent which, after a couple of boiler replacements and other maintenance and repairs, steams on heading for a lifetime journey of 50,000km.
The society has four engines of its own and for a busy day, as life had been on the days of the park's Teddy Bears' Picnic before it moved to a more distant area of the park, it can, with engines owned by members, muster up to 10.
It has had days with more than1000 rides, and as a special effort operated for 24 hours one weekend in 2010 and raised $4000 for the needs of a disabled child.
The volunteer and service spirit remain, and on Sunday, while operating its usual three to four-hour Sunday schedule for the general public, it will provide free rides for children of Heart Kids Hawke's Bay, which services about 180 families with children suffering heart conditions.
