Ken Hobday

It is with great sadness that I have to tell you that Ken has died.

His great resolve and strength of character stood him in good stead throughout his long illness but he died peacefully at 7.30 am on Tuesday the 9^th of August 2005 with his wife Wendy and family at his bedside.

Ken only a few weeks before had celebrated his 75^th Birthday with a party at which many friends and family members attended. The highlight of which was Ken receiving via Wendy his campaign medal for serving in Egypt which had only just been awarded by the government. He was in good form still with that famous twinkle in his eyes and thoroughly enjoyed the day.

Ken was born on the 25^th of July 1930 in Ruislip, Middlesex and attended school at Seabright School, Kidderminster. His first job was at Hillier & Watts as an Apprentice Physicist before attending what is now Brunnel University to study a course on plastics. National Service followed and because he had broken his ankle playing hockey he elected to serve an additional 6 months in the belief he could travel the world at the army’s expense - he landed up spending 6 months in Egypt more or less confined to barracks!

He then worked for Aladdin Industries in their Electronics Department before joining English Steel selling permanent magnets. Such was the demand at the time he could phone round his customers on a Monday morning and secure enough orders for the week. Needless to say that when the company was taken over it was discovered they didn’t need a salesman and Ken was made redundant. With his redundancy money he and a partner setup a company making infrared light bulbs and spotlight bulbs. One day his partner more or less disappeared and Ken carried on regardless. They soon added lampshades to the production line to overcome the seasonal nature of the sales of infrared bulbs. At the suggestions of their cousins (my brothers Geoff and Tim) Ken started to sell the lampshades at local markets and because it proved so successful he switched from wholesaling to becoming market traders. At this point his wife Wendy was co-opted to become a trader and the business took off. Ken & Wendy soon became typical traders by moaning at the way the markets were poorly run, so when the opportunity arose to manage a market they grabbed the chance – the rest is history. Wendy Fair Markets is now one of the largest private operators of markets in the country and several of they children now run the company on a day to day basis. They operate markets all over England and Wales and are constantly adding new venues.

Ken was always interested in trains and when he had his first small stroke in 1985 he was advised to rest for three months and take a hobby. He chose initially to collect Hornby Gauge 0 Trains. Unbeknown to Ken I had also started to collect Hornby but specialising in post-war Gauge 0. We quickly became jointly engaged in collecting in earnest and normally would speak to each other at least once day by phone (known as the “lifeline” by Wendy and my wife Jill) and frequent visits as my business took down to London. Ken was not particularly interested in post-war and I was had no desire to collect pre-war so we complimented each others collection habits. Independently but unknown to each other we joined the HRCA at the same time and shared consecutive membership numbers and happily we shared the same birth date 25^th of July. Eventually, we began to stand at toy fairs and auctions up and down the country and together with Wendy and Jill we all had wonderful weekends away and great adventures.

Ken was one of the great characters who added so much to the collecting of model trains over many years. He made numerous friends, was truly great fun and was loved by so many. Ken was more than a friend to me and I miss him so much. Ask anyone about Ken and an anecdote always follows – we need to write the book!