Pete Waterman – How railway’s Saved my Life
I read this article recently in the Daily Express Newspaper and having seen him recently when he came down to the Severn Valley Railway to sign his latest book “Just Like the Real Thing” which I really enjoyed reading I was very interested to read the article.
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AT THE age of 33, Paul Waterman died from a brain tumour and the only thing that gave his devastated father Pete something to live for was his passion for creating a perfect replica of a Fifties station.
“Model railways have kept me from some pretty dark places,” says the multimillionaire.
Close to tears as he sat beside the gigantic railway track he has built in a converted barn beside his beautiful Cheshire farmhouse, he says: “That 18 months after Paul’s death, if I hadn’t been able to come in here and immerse myself in doing this, God knows what may have happened.
“Paul and I started to build this model railway together and he would have wanted me to finish it. I used to take him to see trains three times a week while he was still in his pram. He wasn’t as keen on modelling as me but he liked engineering and it gave us something to do together. Railways were our bond.”
Paul, who worked for his father as a music producer, died at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London in January 2005. He had spent the last six months of his life in hospital.
Pete, 63, who made his pop music fortune in the Eighties with mega-hits with partners Mike Stock and Matt Aitken, had already suffered the trauma of his other son, Peter Jr, almost being killed in a go-karting accident in 1999.
The 19-year-old suffered terrible burns and was left in a coma for two weeks after the kart he was driving overturned, dousing him in petrol that set alight.
“I had two sons, one we expected to die but didn’t, the other, who we had no reason to think would die, did,” says Pete. “You think to yourself that you have to move on but you don’t understand how to cope with it.
“Railway modelling is a great therapeutic thing because you are with people who don’t want to talk about death, they just say to you, ‘We have a problem with the tracks’.
“I’ve got two daughters and they just think railway modelling is daft and to be honest some of the members of modelling clubs are weird but it doesn’t matter to me if people think I’m nuts, it doesn’t harm anyone.”
Pete, who has produced 200 top 40 hits for stars including Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Bananarama, Rick Astley and Steps, told how despite its stigma as being a hobby for nerds, many superstars from the music industry are keen railway modellers.
“There are people you wouldn’t believe who are into modelling but won’t admit it because of the stigma. I came out of the closet years ago,” says Pete.
“Rod Stewart has an English model railway at his home over here and an American one at his home in Los Angeles but Rod’s real passion is building miniature skyscrapers. When I see Rod we never talk about it, though. I know Roger Daltrey from The Who is also a great modeller.
“Modelling is better than getting Kylie to No1 because you have to use your brain and you are doing it with people who are as focused as you are.”
Pete and a group of fellow railway fans began building the model railway in his barn five years ago.
It is a replica of Leamington Spa station, where as a lad young Pete would spend hours after school and at weekends trainspotting.
So far, the model has 4,000 yards of track, 1,800 wagons, 300 locomotives and 250 carriages. Some of the engines, each built to a scale of 1/43, are worth £25,000 each and the layout is so complicated it takes 12 men to operate at full capacity.
The attention to detail is mind-boggling. Pete has even gone to Leamington Spa and knocked on the door of houses near the station to ask the residents if they have any photos of their home from the Fifties so he can make sure he has every detail just right on his model.
“Luckily people didn’t think I was about to ask them to audition for Pop Idol and they were really happy to help,” he said.
Pete and his model club pals, who include a pub landlord and a real train driver, spend entire days painstakingly pasting tiny pieces of mock shingle to the tracks, painting backdrops and making their engines look authentically dirty.
The grass banks beside the line are made from teddy bear fur they carefully burn with a blowtorch to get each tuft exactly the right length, before they paint it by hand.
Memory wire, a material that changes shape when an electric current is passed through it, operates the arms of the hand-built signal posts. The wire was supplied by a brain surgeon who is part of Pete’s modelling club; he normally uses it during keyhole surgery.
Pete has just written a book about his model railway called Just Like The Real Thing, hoping to pass on the tips and advice he has learned in more than 50 years as a model railway enthusiast.
“The first time I wrote a book on model trains no publisher wanted to know, they all said it was a rich man’s hobby and told me nobody would buy the book,” said Pete.
“Well let me tell you something, modelling isn’t only for the rich. Anyone can spend a small amount of money and build their own engine. I got a publisher in the end and the book sold 30,000 copies. My new book is already on its second print run. It’s a book about inspiration. I want people to see that if Pete Waterman can do this, a bloke from the pop music business, then anyone can.”
David slew Goliath, he did not kick the sh*t out of him.
