Unsung Hero

[Julian Roberts]

Scalefour News No 200 brought welcome news to members of the West Scotland 4mm Group. Our long time member Allan Goodwillie had been awarded the Unsung Hero award at Scaleforum 2016. Yet it took until last month for his colleagues and friends to find this out from a third party, the Snooze.
We don’t know who nominated Allan or who made the decision but what we can say is that the reasons given for the award reflect the actual help, advice, and non-elitist support mentoring that Allan has given to us and many others over years, particularly in his “Starters” informal group sessions. Since 2010 readers of the Scalefour Forum have been able to share our learning from Allan’s experience, expertise and knowledge through his extensive tutorials there. More recently Allan has been running his Layout Construction Starters group and people from across Scotland have been helped to deliver their goals. As one of us commented: “It has stretched my own modelling boundaries by unlocking the mystique, with techniques laid out in simple terms to build on”.
Allan’s commitment to the P4 modelling cause goes back a long way - he was a key player in the WS4mmG from 1980, and established the large and very successful East of Scotland group. Latterly, Allan stepped in to take up the Chair of the WS4mmG after Mike Gilgannon’s untimely death . That the group has managed to regenerate itself, become a participant on the exhibition circuit and start to attract new committed members is a further testament to our Unsung Hero. As Allan steps down from our committee it goes with a big thank you from all of us and our best wishes for his new Scotts Road layout that we hope we will be operating at next year’s Glasgow Model Rail Scotland.