There's the wrong way...

... and there's the Great Western way.

While we were in France Tom had his ninth birthday and, as one of the gifts, we gave him a small Hornby police box and a wee note that explained the full gift.

A couple of years ago I retrieved (was forced to remove forthwith or its going in a skip) my old Hornby trainset from my parents' garage. It must be 35 years old and hasn't been run for over 25 years. I gave it to Tom for his birthday along with the promise to get a board, lay out the track and get everything running.

Tom was very excited. We even had to hire a pedalo so that we could go to the middle of a very small lake with a notepad and plan possible layouts. He was most excited.

We got home at the weekend and dug out the old box with the stuff in it. It looks weary and the track, well, it looks like its been nailed to a board in a garage for 35 years. Luckily I was a spectacularly anal child (you wouldn't have spoken to me - honest) and all the trains and carriages still had boxes and are in goodish nick.

So Tom is on another grandparent visit this week and I promised him I'd try and get started by checking whether the stuff actually worked.

And with a wee bit of sanding the tracks, wiggling wires and jiggling connections it bloody does.

I've stopped playing now.

I might go back though.