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David Hunt 1947 - 2026 - from Adrian Tester

Brian David Hunt

25th April 1947 - 23rd August 2026

While we all knew him as Dave Hunt he was christened Brian David Hunt. The name change was to avoid confusion with a somewhat similarly named boy – Brian Lunt – in his form at the Liverpool Institute. While not a precise contemporary of two of the Beatles or Peter Sissons who also attended the Institute their times there did overlap.

At the time Dave lived in Formby and it was while travelling to and from school on the bus that he met Jill the love of his life. Not that long after leaving school and now serving in the RAF, she became his wife. They would go on to have two sons – Stu and Douggie and three grandchildren.

Despite owning a Hornby Dublo 3-rail layout and an Uncle Sid, who being a senior fitter at Edge Hill shed arranged footplate rides for his nephew on light engines going on and off shed, during his schooldays he was primarily an aero modeller – a hobby he shared with his father. Together they built and flew their creations on Formby beach. Uncle Sid later rose to assume a senior position on the East African Railways. He like Dave had a seemingly endless fund of amusing stories and the plan was for Dave to turn them into a book. The title was chosen – Lions and Locomotives – but tragically his uncle died before it could be written.

It was while based at RAF Wildenrath, Germany that his interest in model railway was reactivated – and some! The officers were encouraged to join and support at least one of the clubs and societies on the station. Dave joined the model railway club and very quickly became immersed in the hobby. They staged a couple of very successful exhibitions. These also provided an opportunity for Dave to demonstrate his great sense of fun. One of the members was rather proud of his model of a HST(or APT?) train. In front of the spectators an announcement was made that this train had failed but fortunately rescue was at hand. The train was perfectly fine but appeared pushing an Airfix model of the Rocket which suggested otherwise – said owner was not amused!

There was an initial false start in N gauge but Dave quickly turned to OO building a convincing Midland engine shed layout (vide Model Trains May 1981). Being quite a fast worker, he quickly assembled a small collection of 4mm scale models that included locomotives, carriages and wagons. Some of the engines were kit built while a few were scratchbuilt. The engines included several examples which he would reproduce in 7mm a few years later. All of these 4mm scale models were later donated to Tony Wright so they could be sold in aid of the cancer charity CRUK.

He was a 7mm scale modeller when I first met Dave, which was when I sat next to him at the second meeting of the Midland Railway Society in October 1981; on the other side of him was Pete Truman. In its early days the MRS had very close ties with the Matlock Bath Model Railway Museum – a large scale 7mm fine scale model started by David White. Dave built several locomotives which ran on this layout including a 0-4-4T, a Princess of Wales bogie single and a Schenectady Mogul. It was seeing the quality of these models that convinced me to move from 4mm to 7mm – initially fine scale. However, having moved up from 18.83mm working in a larger scale to poorer track/wheel standards rankled so after building a Maygib 378 class 4-4-0 I adopted S7.

Having, a few years later, convinced Bob Essery to adopt 33mm, Bob aided by Ken Cottle quickly founded the Scaleseven Society (I refuse to call it a Group after the way part of the GOG treated us in the early days) and also started work on his exhibition layout Dewsbury. Originally there were three of us, Bob, Ken and I but RJE quickly recruited further bodies including John Horton, Ray Hammond (electrics), with Bill Hudson and Chris Perry making buildings. Soon there was quite a team but Dave proved resistant to S7 despite my and John's efforts saying he couldn't face making another crank axle for the Single. The crunch conversation was when he and I sat facing one another on bar stools and I bluntly told him I couldn't understand what a modeller of his talents and abilities was wasting his time working in fine scale. Not long after, he called me something rather derogatory before adding, accompanied by a big grin, that he had obtained replacement Alan Harris driving wheels for the Single!

This assessment of Dave's modelling prowess was no idle exaggeration. His models of a Schenectady Mogul, Princess of Wales 4-2-2 and a Johnson Compound 4-4-0 Nº 2633 in as-built condition all won the Chairman's Cup in Gauge O Guild competitions while the Compound, which unlike the other two was S7 from the start, won the Carlson Trophy at the 1997 Guildex together with a gold medal and the H C Wheat Challenge Cup and the Crebbin Memorial Cup at the 1998 Model Engineering Exhibition.

Dave quickly became an important and stalwart member of the Dewsbury team thoroughly enjoying working on and operating the layout. A very pleasant side effect of this is that he formed long-lasting friendships with other team members. These included Ken Cottle, Andy Brown, Don Field, Peter and Kevin Turville, James Harwood, John Horton, Peter Kibble, Chris Perry, Fred James together with several more including of course Bob Essery. Several of these individuals would assist with other layouts and books.

Not long after the Princess of Wales Single Nº 21 became S7 a portion of Dewsbury was exhibited at a show in Alfreton. As this model is tender drive, echoing the Rocket episode, John Horton and I would tease Dave by just running the tender coupled to some rolling stock. John christened it The Tram. He and I found it hugely funny to see displayed on the hotel dining room wall a large photo of Derby Station forecourt with a tram standing there. We were sitting facing the picture, whereas Dave had his back to it and could not see what was amusing us. Our mirth increased exponentially when I went up to the photo and saw the number of the tram was 21! By now Dave had turned round in his chair to witness the picture fall off the wall! He always maintained this was a mystic interaction – perhaps it was but just maybe my jabbing at the picture had helped!

On one occasion while setting up Dewsbury at an exhibition, Dave's Compound with a train composed of Ken Cottle's superb Clayton carriages was accidentally started with nothing to prevent the train from crashing to the floor at the far end of the layout. In successfully racing to the far end to save it he probably qualified for a place in an Olympic sprint team. One last story about Dewsbury concerns its operation. It employed a simple technique in which once a fiddle-yard operator had assembled a train a light was illuminated on the main panel advising the operator a train was available to accept. For reasons unknown Don Field always interpreted this as he had to accept the train there and then. When Dave and Andy Brown were operating the two fiddle yards they took great delight in assembling trains faster than poor Don could cope putting him in a fine pickle!

Inspired by the enjoyment they had with Dewsbury on the exhibition circuit, Peter Kibble suggested building another layout called Severn Mill. Dave, Andy Brown Bob Essery, Don Field and one or two others helped build and operate it. After appearing at a number of shows it was reduced in size with the intention of it being more attractive to exhibition managers but the operators were not convinced. Peter then rounded up this team to produce a replacement layout known as Little Severn. This was another popular layout with the public attending exhibitions and featured in the model press Modelling Railways Illustrated (September 1996).

Dave's Schenectady 2-6-0 was a frequent performer on these layouts but it was all too frequently wrongly identified by the public as one of the Baldwins. Poor Dave, he found it quite exasperating at times correcting them. This culminated on one occasion with one person refusing to accept Dave's correction saying to the effect he knew he was correct because he had a copy of the book American Locomotives of the Midland Railway, to which Dave replied through gritted teeth “I know the book – I wrote it!”

It was around this time (1999-2001) that Dave served as Chairman of the ScaleSeven Society for a few years, he was also our Trade Liaison Officer – I am grateful to Andy Brown for confirming some of these details. More recently he was greatly pleased when he was invited to become the Society's Vice-President.

Following his move to Market Drayton, Dave had a large purpose designed building constructed. Colloquially referred to by all as The Shed, it was intended to house his magnus opus. This was to comprise a junction station on a continuous two-track main line with a branch line. Full details may be found in Society Newsletters Nº 47 & 48. Tragically while good progress was made initially the project had to be abandoned because it was anticipated that he and Jill would be moving. Everything was dismantled for the move which in the end never happened with the sad result that Dave lost his railway modelling mojo. Instead, he returned for a while to aeroplane modelling once again with his father and entered a new field of writing books and articles.

In truth this is not strictly new since he and Pete Truman had worked together to write Midland Portrait published in 1989. He also wrote a number of authoritative articles that appeared in Midland Record and LMS Journal but his greatest literary claim to fame was the series of books that Wild Swan published on LMS and Midland locomotives in the Locomotive Profile series. While several individuals are credited, Dave was solely responsible for the text, which is why they read so well. He also insisted on thorough research such that these books have gain an enviable reputation for accuracy and just the sheer quantity of information they contain. They serve not only as the go-to references for any modeller wishing to make a miniature replica of one of the classes covered but those charged with maintaining preserved examples also make considerable use of them.

The contacts he developed in writing these books plus the knowledge he gained resulted in him being asked to help a number of manufacturers of 4mm and 7mm scale locomotives by providing them with drawings and other information. Our current Chairman being just one recipient of the assistance provided by Dave.

After spending over ten years writing these books and aero modelling his interest in railway modelling proved irresistible and a start was made on his final layout. He produced what he called a working diorama – a fictitious Midland locomotive shed inspired by Hellifield. Departures caused by space constraints and the adoption of buildings from elsewhere prompted him to call it Westfield. In a way this layout represented the wheel turning full circle because what he produced was a larger and much improved version in S7 of what he had produced in OO nearly half a century before. He described the layout together with the reasoning that lay behind it in Model Railway Journal No.306.

Now with his passing no longer after a day spent participating at an exhibition, working on Westfield or whatever, may we sit of an evening, sipping select single malts, chatting about our modelling plans, putting the world to rights, reminiscing and just relaxing. It was during just one of these moments that Dave and I proposed setting up an S7 area group nominally covering west Wales and the west Midlands. Conscious that S7 modellers are comparatively few in number we deliberately chose a wide (unlimited!) geographical area and aimed for a social type atmosphere in preference to building a layout. We were able to arrange for our new area group to enjoy two visits to Market Drayton and see Westfield in action – March this year and last. On both occasions Jill and Dave were most considerate hosts – his lemon drizzle cake (he enjoyed making cakes) along with Richard Ough's bara brith were irresistible.

Dave was a committed Christian and as well as regularly attending church he put that faith into practice in his everyday life. Many are the instances that I have witnessed of it being demonstrated. Without doubt, David was one of the kindest, most honourable, loyal, honest and generous men it has been my privilege to know and I am very proud to say he was a dear friend. Quite how generous he was I would not fully learn until my wife and I visited him and Jill soon after his second stroke when he made his wishes known. Tragically, between April and July, David suffered a series of four strokes, the last of these, closely following on from the third, left him very incapacitated with no real prospect of recovery. A situation compounded by the discovery, following his first stroke, of stage IV lung cancer.

Dave's life was one that was well-lived and perhaps unusually for someone who spent his early career with his head very often in the clouds, he always had his feet fixed very firmly on the ground. I'm sure that everyone who came in contact with him will agree with me in saying it was an absolute pleasure to have known him and be in his company. Rest in peace my dear friend – the world is very much a poorer place for your passing.

I would like to conclude by extending my heartfelt condolences to Jill, Stuart, Douggie and his three grandchildren - Eve 16, Leila 14 and Daniel almost 13.

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