How much was the giant one that someone bought me for Christmas in '54?
Probably the price of a detached house in Blundellsands or somewhere around Calderstones back then..
I had a mate who had some Bayko, but he'd lost half the poles so anything we ever tried to build was always incomplete.
I was quite jealous of him, though he also had a huge Hornby three rail set up complete with double track and diamond crossings, electric operated signals, the Terminus building too...though on recollection it was probably more for his Dad than him.
I had to largely make do with cereal box cardboard to make models of buildings.
Still, it taught me how to take a flat plan and construct a 3d model or reverse and look at a building and make a flat plan of it.
Only difficulty I had was cutting out windows with lines that would be true, lack of a scalpel, though it's probably not the sort of thing a kid of 8 should be wielding on the kitchen table...
These days, it seems keen modellers have all gone 3d printing, downloading the original plans in cad/cam and running it through the computer and the printer.
Some of the models I've seen are Museum or Exhibition standard, absolutely fantastic, though it does seem a bit like cheating to me.
