When I was in single figure years, a visit to one set of my grandparents meant one thing (amongst other advantageous things for a grandchild), and that was trains. Across the bottom of their garden was a train track, so occasionally you would get a close-up view of a train going by. But upstairs was the real treat; in their bedroom was a door to what most would have used as storage, Granddad used it for something else (as well as some storage).

Upon stepping through the door you would enter a space that ran the length of one side of the house, but was the width of a corridor, there were no windows and it was lit by a series of bare lightbulbs. It always felt, to me, as a secret or hidden space, and inside was the largest model train layout I’ve ever seen in person. A tabletop ran along the wall, the full length of the house and was about 2 foot in depth. The back wall was covered with paper backdrops showing rolling hills etc. The area was fully contoured with hills and rivers and over and around these were roads and, of course, train tracks; snaking back and fourth across the landscape and even passing through a thin dividing wall to a store room via tunnel entrances. The landscape was covered with cars, boats, houses, shops, churches, everything you need. I could have watched it all for hours.

After my Granddad died, Nan moved nearer to us and the trains were boxed up. They were then inherited by my parents when she died.
My Dad intended to build his own layout and started with a table getting as far as the basic layout of the terrain, but life (as so often) gets in the way and the trains stayed in their boxes for years, until last year… or so I intended.

Dad had retired, and I thought it’d be a good idea to kick-start him back into the hobby if I pulled out a train and gave it a fresh lick of paint with my new found skills.
However, we couldn’t find the trains. Dad was sure that they were in the loft, many of the buildings and the track were found in the garage, but no sign of the trains or their rolling stock. In the end we had to assume that one of the many contractors that have been in the house over the past decade or so, laying loft insulation, installing solar panels, etc. had stolen them. They were all gone, and what we were left with was worthless without them.

You will have seen the small hut I painted up at that time and nice as it is, it felt a bit worthless as it was never to be used with the trains I intended it to be used with.

Until last week;
Mum and Dad were away and I decided to track down another abandoned project of my Dad’s, a cast resin chess set. I knew we’d found one piece while looking for the trains previously, so I just had to dig it out of the garage, clean it up and paint it (with a view to sculpt future ones to create the set; the moulds have long since degraded and been thrown out).
What happened while I was looking for that?
I found the trains.

All 19 engines, all their rolling stock, more buildings, some other larger scaled trains, and all the vehicles and little people for the terrain.
The plan changed and the birthday present became this, a display base for a single engine and the news of the found trains, thought stolen.

The morals of the story?
If you are looking for something, look for something else.
If you can’t find something where it should be, look for it where it definitely shouldn’t be.
If someone says that what you are looking for is in 2 boxes, ignore them and look in any and all containers.