Mags your lot! Shedload of angst as 57-year Newport collection reaches end of the line

He bought a copy of Trains Illustrated as a teenager in January 1960 and it was the start of an unbroken 57-year, four-magazines-a-month, journey which has led to him accumulating a huge collection.

But he and wife Judy are now looking to create more space in their garden, which means the ageing wooden shed and its store of railway magazines has to go.

"The shed is now 30 years old and isn't in the best of health, construction-wise. We have decided we want to downsize the shed once it's empty and have a little extra garden at the back. So I made the decision in about May that I wanted to get rid of the magazines.

"Plus the fact that the shed was sinking - whether that's because the foundations are not very good, or because of the weight, I don't know," says Ian, 72.

As he has never thrown any of his magazines away, his family has reacted with incredulity.

"All the family were 'you what? We'll believe it when we see it.'"

But it is definitely true, and Ian and Judy have started work in earnest, sorting the magazines into yearly bundles and bringing them in the house ready for onward travel.

"It will be a wrench, but there are other things in life."

Trains Illustrated, Railway World, Steam World, Steam Railway, Hornby Magazine, Railway Modeller... anybody would think that Ian is interested in railways. Which, of course, he is, and has been ever since being very, very, small.

"My mum always reckoned the first words I could say, before mum and dad, were chuff-chuff, or puffer, or something like that," said Ian, whose childhood family home was in Haybridge Road, Hadley.

"My uncle, my mum's brother Tom Picken, was a driver at the Wellington sheds and always used to call in and have a chat on his way home from work, and I was fascinated by his overalls and grease-top cap - the engine drivers' hats were called grease-tops.

"And then when I was about five he took me around the sheds. Of course that's where the bug was obtained, so to speak. I was just hooked on steam."

He was in his teens when he started regularly buying railway magazines from Haybridge News, a newsagents run by Peter Edwards in Hadley. One or two didn't go the distance. For example, he cancelled Trains Illustrated because it was "getting too much diesel in it" and ordered Steam World instead.

"I just carried on taking them, never throwing them away, and Judy started moaning because I was not only having four magazines a month, but I was also amassing a collection of hard books on railway matters. They were all over the place in our previous house in Muxton.

"This is where the shed comes in, 30 years ago. I had a model railway in the loft, but when we moved here the loft is unsuitable because it's such a shallow roof and you can't stand up. I decided to buy a 12ft by 8ft shed and put the model railway in the shed."

The railway magazines also went in there and when he finished with the model railway the shed continued to fill up with magazines.

Perhaps surprisingly, Ian never pursued a railway career. A steam enthusiast, he could see in the early 1960s that the future would be diesel and electric trains, and had no interest in being on the footplate of them. His future was decided when his lifelong pal, the late Gerry Charlton of Hadley, told him he was thinking of joining the police.

"He said 'Do you fancy it?' Across we went to Wellington nick and, on a whim, it was the start of 30 years service in the police."

However, he is a volunteer on the Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway and a shareholder on two locos on the Severn Valley Railway, and has driven both under supervision.

The magazines are going to be sold, either as a job lot or in yearly bundles of 12. He has seen individual magazines on eBay with an asking price of 90p, but thinks his collection would probably work out at something like 30p a copy. Anybody interested can ring him at 01952 820016.

In all, he reckons he has about 2,500 magazines, some of which he has occasionally dipped in to to re-read for nostalgic reasons. Although he has never knowingly thrown any away, there are one or two gaps, where he has maybe mislaid one, or perhaps loaned a magazine to somebody who did not return it.

Ian is going to get rid of all of them up to this year's, but will not be having any withdrawal symptoms, let alone withdrawal subscriptions, as he still takes a dose of four a month - Steam Railway, Steam World, Hornby Magazine, and Railway Modeller.

And will he be cancelling those subscriptions?

"No, no, no, no, no!"