“I thought it was a nice way of honoring him,” his son said.
Ashes of a model railway enthusiast were placed inside a model coal car as a unique way of honoring a man who dedicated his life to miniature railroads.
Peter Hurst, of Leeds, England, spent 40 years building a miniature train village in the attic of his home, which became his final resting place after he died in January. He was 88 years old.
"I thought it was a nice way of honoring him," his 57-year-old son, Simon, told SWNS. "We’ve been taking people up to see it."
He joked that the station the train is housed inside, which was built by Hurst over the course of his lifetime, was aptly named “Ashurst.”
“The station, Ashurst, is a made-up name, but it is quite fitting actually,” Simon said.
The entire model train village, worth more than $700 and measuring nearly 28-feet-long by 18-feet-wide, is inhabited by 60 tiny figurines that can visit two schools, three churches and four pubs.
There was also a papier-mache hillside for 50 livestock to graze on, and a bridge for the trains.
"As children, we respected it," Simon said. "Dad let us play with it, but we didn’t mess around with it."
Hurst began building the prototype of the railway, inspired by England’s Great Western Railway, after getting married in 1956.
When they moved to their new house in 1972, he moved the supplies over and continued developing the village.
In his later years, he enjoyed showing his grandchildren the set. Simon’s son, Harvey, who is now 28, grew up fascinated with the village.
"I think any children were blown away by it when they visited," Simon said.
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