My Collections: Tacking Dookie man's life-long journey

For more than 60 years, Ray has been collecting model trains — from dented 130-year-old French or German-made steam-driven models to shiny Czech-made electric locomotives and carriages fresh out of the box.

Ray’s Dookie home is packed with boxes of train engines, carriages, rails of different gauges, train station buildings and magazines. His collection has spread to four rooms — including his kitchen.

On any morning, Ray, a school cleaner, would be eating his breakfast on a table piled with boxes of train gear and display boards with tiny trees, glued sand and narrow-gauge rails.

At the last count, Ray reckons he has about 25000 train pieces, either in boxes or on display.

Ray doesn’t have much time for much else but trains.

‘‘I’ve got four TV sets which people have given me, but I haven’t turned a TV on in the last 10 years,’’ he says.

‘‘I would rather pull apart a train engine to make sure it’s running properly.

His trains come from across the world — Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, New Zealand and China.

He also makes and repairs model trains himself with a small lathe in his shed.

He has no computer and no internet, so if he needs a new part, or some technical advice, he refers to specialist magazines or his library with about 300 train books, or he chats to fellow enthusiasts at club meetings, including the GV Rail Club and shows.

In his carport, Ray has two trailers also packed with model train gear.

Ray uses one trailer to travel to model railway shows across Victoria — from Philip Island to Sandown — where he unpacks display boards with rails and dioramas and sets up his trains for people to enjoy.

Ray reckons he’s probably the only person in Victoria who runs travelling model train displays.

‘‘Kids under 50 run up to me to talk about trains — youngsters and older people are all fascinated by trains,’’ he says.

His train passion began when his father brought home a British-made Hornby clockwork train set when he was about eight years old.

He still has the trains, the keys used to wind them up, and the paperwork which came in the box.

‘‘As I grew up all I had was the clockwork train — but I promised myself I would get an electric one,’’ he says.

He now has about 30 boxed sets with electric, clockwork and steam engines — which he calls the ‘‘dribblers and piddlers’’ because of the water trail they leave behind.

His toy collection has grown beyond trains to include small working steam engines, miniature cash registers, dolls houses, biscuit tins, a pristine little pink typewriter, and a tiny washing machine for doll’s clothes from the 1950s — all of which can still be used.

‘‘Toys were made to actually work back then — they were replicas of the real thing,’’ Ray says.

From a glass case he pulls out a large chestnut-haired doll which he says was a ‘‘walking doll’’ — meaning it could stand upright and walk unaided, before its internal mechanism stopped working.

He says a teacher who was ‘‘downsizing’’ gave it to him for his collection.

Ray places the doll gently back on its Acme spring bed inside a glass display case.

Now 68, he has earmarked some of his collection for his four daughters and his grandchildren.

One eight-year-old grandson in particular is showing early signs of train fascination.

Why has his own 60-year passion for trains never gone off the rails?

Ray scratches his beard and looks around his crammed loungeroom.

‘‘A locomotive is the closest thing to a living being that man has ever made.

‘‘Each one runs slightly differently. Some train drivers hate particular trains, they say ‘this one runs like a stuck pig’.

‘‘They all have their own personality.’’

Inside Ray’s glass cabinet next to his collection of toy cash registers lies a small brochure from the 1950s aimed at parents of young children.

It carries the title: ‘‘What to do when there’s nothing to do’’.

Ray has filled his life with his own solution to this eternal dilemma — find a train set.