Cyrene, of course, is an ancient city of North Africa, whose ruins lie in the modern
state of Libya. However, given the North American habit of naming towns after the
great cities of antiquity (e.g. Memphis, Tennessee and Syracuse, New York), it seems
quite possible than a town in the United States might have been named after it (and
the United States navy did, in fact, once have a motor torpedo boat tender called
USS Cyrene). Quite where in the United States it is, we’re a bit vague about, but
certainly somewhere in northern Ohio - probably not far from Cleveland. It is served
by the New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad - far better known as the ‘Nickel Plate
Road’ - but there is also evidence of the Pennsylvania, New York Central, and Baltimore
& Ohio. All these railroads served the Cleveland area in the 1950s - and northern
Ohio was also a last bastion of steam on these roads, especially the Nickel Plate,
which continued to use its famed ‘Berkshires’ on its main line until 1958. The idea
is to capture the flavour of about two years earlier, with a great deal of steam
still in evidence, but many early diesels too.
Initially, the collection used MTH products only. Recently, it has been expanded
to include modern Lionel too (and one K-Line locomotive). MTH and Lionel both use
digital systems (DCS & TMC), but they are very different - so different, in fact,
using them on the same layout shouldn’t be a problem, as they don’t interfere with
each other! On Cyrene’s one-and-only outing, at the TCS Autumn show in November
2010, our lack of experience with DCS caused some technical issues, although hopefully
these were not too apparent! Knowing where we went wrong, this should not happen
again. But we also found that MTH products and the Atlas track we were using are
not very well suited to ‘loose-lay’ layouts, so we’re reluctant to do another layout
like this. A smaller display would, of course, be easier.
Reading was one of the four station names offered by Hornby 1937-41 (having replaced
‘Bristol’, only offered briefly in 1936, although again after the war). Although
the town was also served by the Southern, Reading was clearly intended as the Great
Western Railway choice in the Hornby range. Our ‘Reading’ collection is intended
to reflect the Hornby range of 1938, whilst ‘Wembley’ (q.v.) uses items from 1939.
In fact, there isn’t very much difference - many items were identical - so in effect
they draw on the same pool. But we only have one ‘Reading’ Island Platform E, and
as the range of available GWR items is also limited, it is not presently possible
to do a large scale layout using this name, although we have done a few smaller ‘Reading’
layouts.
