SHMRC Annual Exhibition
The following layouts are booked to appear at our next exhibition
Benbridge (N gauge) - East Dorset N Gauge Group
Benbridge is based loosely on the Cotswolds, from about 1950 through to 1965. You will see a good range of steam and some early diesel running.
The station has up and down fast lines plus the branch line that comes down the hill and into the station. To the front of the layout we have a large goods yard for timber, cattle and coal. A new goods yard, a fairground and manor house form the latest additions and ensure that there is plenty going on!
Collingwood (00 gauge) - Simon Paley
Collingwood is a fictionalised version of Fareham set in the period 2003 – 2017. This already busy location, at the junction of two main lines and with the stone terminal has been extended to include other features from the area and provides plenty of operating interest.
The layout has a full signalling system including route selection, interlocking and live train detection that demonstrates typical current mainline practice.
Photo: Mike Wild / Hornby Magazine
Flintfield (P4 gauge) - Vincent de Bode presented by Adrian Colenutt
Flintfield is a layout built to P4 standards and portrays a fictitious North Suffolk terminus operated by the Great Eastern Railway (GER). The period is around 1910. The track plan is based on that at the real station of Eye, the terminus of the branch from Mellis Junction on the GER Norwich main line. The station building is based on the one at Eye with the larger of the maltings based on one at Hadleigh.
The layout and stock were originally the work of Vincent de Bode from the Netherlands, with construction starting back in the late 1980s and it making its debut in the UK at Scaleforum 1993.
Photo: Adrian Colenutt
Kitedale (P4 gauge) - Ray Hodson
Originally called Kitehouses, this layout was exhibited by Dave Hawkins and Tony Sullivan (and me sometimes) for some nine years.
Having been acquired, the location has been moved from the North East to Lancashire, to become an ex Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway terminus to the north of Rochdale, with a connection to the Oldham Loop Line. Kitedale is the passenger terminus but the line continues to a Paper Mill, Quarry and Industry goods only line. The period is late fifties – early sixties, the final years of steam and the start of diesels and DMUs.
Lanatra Quay (3mm gauge) - Nick Salzman
This is a cameo style layout set in North Devon/Cornwall.
It features a quay on wooden trestles tied up to which is a West Country smack. The sandy estuary has a small creek running under a timber bridge and passing nearby Lime kilns. A small station serves the area.
The track features mixed gauge of the old 7 foot Broad Gauge and standard gauge. The period is from the late 1870’s until the end of the broad gauge in 1892 and traffic includes both broad gauge and standard gauge passenger, freight and fish trains.
Mrs Wilberforce's Yard (2mm gauge) - The Model Railway Club
Based on part of North London, just up the Caledonian Road from Kings Cross, this small goods yard is part of the Model Railway Club’s much larger Copenhagen Fields layout. Normally sited over Copenhagen Tunnel, in the area where the famous Ealing comedy ‘The Ladykillers’ was shot and featuring Mrs W’s house.
We have moved buildings from other parts of the main layout, rearranging some of them out of context for this small, slightly fictitious, scene. The railway is built to 2mm fine scale track and wheel standards and has an off-stage exit to a fiddle yard, not normally present on the main layout. The period portrayed is that of the 1920’s & 30’s.
Photo: Tim Watson
Outwell Village (00 gauge) - Alan Price
The Wisbech and Upwell Tramway opened to traffic on the 20th August 1883 only as far as Outwell, and then on to Upwell on the 8th September 1884.
Outwell Village is the largest intermediate depot on the tramway. Our model spans a time frame of just after the second world war up to the lines closure as little changed of the location in that time. We have stock to cover both the L.N.E.R and British Railways periods. All buildings have been sratch built and could been seen at the location as with the stock ran on the tramway over the period of the line existence.
Pottendorf (HO gauge) - Tim Hale presented by Paul Taylor
Originally built by Tim Hale, Pottendorf is a small branch terminus station in Oberfranken at the end of a long hot summer in the 1950’s/60’s. Old operating practices remain in place, with passenger services in the hands of a railbus or larger loco hauled trains that feed direct from the branch to either Nuremberg or Würtzburg.
The branch still retains a number of sources of goods traffic that mean that freight services remain in operation, including the mining of fluorspar, which is transported to Linz in Austria for the production of hydrofluoric acid.
The Royal Albert Bridge (N gauge) - Basingstoke & North Hants MRS
This layout features a representation of the Royal Albert Bridge that crosses the River Tamar between Devon and Cornwall, and except for the bridge sides it is totally scratch built.
The layout is just a representation of the area due to the constraints of the baseboard size supplied to us for the Great Model Railway Challenge and is operated over various times from the mid-1950s until 1973 when the Down line from Plymouth was taken out of use.
Trinity Dock Street Bridge (00 gauge) - Gavin Rose
Set on a cold dismal Monday morning in February 1939, among the busy inner town docks of Hull on the English Northeast coast. The tracks are inlaid into stones setts with many points and tight radiused curves as they connect the various quaysides with the yards to the west of the city.
As the short trains move about the buildings and rattle over the swing bridge the South Easterly wind is not only bringing the poor weather off the North Sea, but also the threat of war from the near continent.
Tiverton (EM gauge) - Tim Surrell
The model represents the station at Tiverton where the lines from Exeter, Dulverton and Tiverton Junction converge.
It portrays the station at Tiverton during the late 1930s, after the station layout had been expanded to its maximum extent, and after the earlier multi-bay platform canopies had been replaced with more modern versions.
Wenfield Dryers (7mm gauge) - Pete Matchan
The layout is an extract from Wenford clay dries in Cornwall set in 1983 just prior to closure. The layout was initiated to try the scale and some new techniques. The base is two Ikea Lack shelves which have been lined with 3mm plywood to create the fascia and concealed lighting. An additional board has since been added to act as a Fiddleyard for exhibitions.
The track construction uses individual C+L components and built to 31.5mm. RTR rolling stock can be used without any adjustment to the wheels. The main idea of the layout was to dip my toe in 0 gauge and demonstrate that even in 7mm you don’t need much space to have a layout to have some fun!
Whitley (EM gauge) - Alan Dewey
Built and closed in 1863, Whitley was an actual temporary station about two miles south of Birdbrook on the Colne Valley Railway in Essex. This interpretation, as a permanent station, is based on the features of the style of that Company and surrounding area.
Despite the historical ‘reprieve’, the services on this section of the railway were withdrawn by BR in December 1961. The layout depicts the line just before closure, in the green diesel period.
The following two layouts are provided for younger visitors (mainly!) to try their hand at operating.
SCATS (00 gauge) - South Hants MRC
The Southern Counties Agricultural Trading Society (‘SCATS’) was based in Winchester and formed in the 1960s by a local group of agricultural merchants to supply farmers in the area with feed, grain etc. This small layout provides a representation of one of their warehouses and challenges operators to shunt wagons into the appropriate sidings.
This is an example of an ‘Inglenook Shunting Puzzle’ layout aimed at problem solving – but it can also be used just to play trains!
Widley and St George (00 gauge) - South Hants MRC
A special layout just for the younger children. They can have plenty of fun driving Thomas and Friends around the layout at speed.
A small charge is made for each timed session to help ensure everyone gets a turn.