Trevor Cousens - RIP

 

I can't remember when I first met Trevor, probably at a L&WMRS exhibition many years ago when he'll have been sat behind a huge pile of etched brass loco kits. It was certainly a long while ago, so his sudden death last week came as a shock.

More to the point, I don't remember how it came to be that I started building a few kits for him. The first was a 7mm scale Barclay where my job was to assemble the kit so it could appear on the stand, and write some snagging notes so the etches could be improved. 

I was a bit nervous taking this first model to Trevor, but he was delighted and I soon found myself with as much work as I wanted. The deal was always the same - he supplied the complete kit and I'd get paid the value of this. If the model was to be painted, there was a small premium. This wasn't going to make me rich, but it was a fun sideline. 

Along the way there were some interesting projects.

Such as a conversion of a Mercian Barclay kit to the Swanscome Barclay for its owner. 

 

There was also a G1 Midland coach and a couple of G1 Ruston diesels. Who knew I'd be building in such a large scale! Back then my GR editorship was a long way from the horizon. 

The big kit was of course, the 7mm industrial Garratt

 

We spent a weekend at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry at the Garratt aniversary weekend. I'd built one for Trevor, and a second for a church (I think). There's one half built for me (maturing for a very long time) and another that was supposed to be built for someone else who has disapeared. Sorting that out is on the to-do list, although with no contact details, I'm not sure how. 

Trevor produced such a vast range of kits in all sorts of scale, it would be a major task to list them all. He was a good freind to all sorts of scale societies, willing to produce models to help them out in fairly small runs. 

Before this, I know he was involved with several model shops, but sadly can't remember many of the details. 

The last time I saw Trevor was at Guildex. We chatted about a 16mm kit test build I had on the shelf, and agreed we'd chat further in November. Sadly, this is now not to be. 

Many of the kits I built can be found on my old gallery page.