Cornwall model name plate collection saved from scrap heap

A vast collection of miniature train name plates have been bought by two professional locomotive model makers.

Former GP Gillie Hay did not know what to do with the thousands of intricate metal signs made by her late father Chris Watford, who kept them in his home in Truro, Cornwall.

Faced with sending them for scrap metal, she used her father’s business contacts to find someone interested in owning the name plates.

Hay said: “My father would go and take rubbings of the original plates, so the steam engines that are all in either private collections or railway museums, he would then produce the nameplates exactly in the right font.”

Hay said: “Dad started this business up about 40-50 years ago as something to do so that he could stay at home and look after us.

“He really liked model railways, there was a shortage of these beautiful plates and he wanted to produce something that absolutely precise for modelers to enjoy.”

Professional model makers Richard Pogson, from Camelford, and Michael Russell, from Truro, bought the nameplates for an undisclosed sum.

Pogson, who has been making model trains for 25 years, said the collection was too good to be sold as scrap metal.

The name plates provide the finishing touch to model trains, they said.

“It’s the final detail that everybody sees on the outside, and it has to be accurate,” said Pogson.

“I build for commission, so when people want a model building, I build it and use these name plates and number plates to decorate them.”

Russell has been a professional train model maker for more than 40 years.

“When you consider when British Railways was nationalised in 1948 there was over 20,000 engines, so potentially you’ve got 20,000 different sets of plates,” he said.