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Solihull Model Railway Circle was founded in Olton in 1951, making it one of the oldest model railway clubs in the Midlands, and it is still active today. Some of the first club meetings were held at the Manor House in Solihull. The current longest serving member joined in the late 1960s, but new members are joining us all the time. more...
The main objectives of the club are to share and improve knowledge and skills between the members, to produce scenic model railway layouts in different scales and formats and to exhibit to the general public.
The existing members are of widely varying ages, skills and interests, from beginners to veterans. Within the club there are members with experience in loft
layouts,
baseboard building, track laying, electrics, digital command control (dcc),
signalling, locomotive and rolling
stock building, detailing and weathering, model engineering, scenery, architectural modelling and civil and military road vehicle modelling.
The club is currently building a new layout. It is 16 feet by 2 feet and is an OO gauge branch line terminus set in Scotland. The layout will be both DC and DCC operated and use hand made point work by ‘Marcway’ and ready made ‘SMP’ plain track. Scenery features will include a curved viaduct, based on Killiecrankie, over a tidal river with shingles and around the station and goods yard area, a village and harbour featuring prototypical scratch built buildings.
The clubs main layout is Cherwell, which is a scenic OO gauge, 26 feet 6 inches by 10 feet 6 inches, four track mainline with an integral branch line. It features working automatic signals and has largely scratch built buildings with a local theme (The Manor House, The Mason’s Arms, The George Hotel, The Fat Cat Cafe, Tyseley Station, Water Orton Station and Kings Heath Library). The layout still needs a lot of buildings and scenery work, and has been partially rewired for added reliability. It was built mainly to display scale length mainline trains, those being run reflecting the varying interests of the membership. Trains run are usually British outline, but can come from any part of the UK mainland and from any date about 1900 to the present day. The layout is usually run on the first Thursday of every month. more..
The club also owns an O gauge continuous run layout, three-tracked with the third line used as a goods line. It is 13 feet across and 29 feet long and has a minimum radius of 6 feet. This layout requires scenery etc… It has been built to display reasonable length trains and to allow continuous running, those trains being run reflecting our individual collections. The layout is run on the fourth Thursday of the month and if you are an 'O' gauge modeller we would love to see your models running on our layout! more...
The other Thursday evenings, when there is nothing set are what we call ‘working nights’. On these nights we work on the layouts, carrying out repairs or upgrades and scenery work. There is no pressure on anyone doing any work (feel free just to come and talk to the other members), but if there is something you wish to learn/do, please just ask!
Throughout the year we have other events organised annually, these include:
A trip to a model railway or railway location – Free admission to location to members.
Annual ‘Loco Maintenance’ evening – Bring your loco’s along for a service or advice.
Slide show - Open to non-members.
Christmas Railway video night – Members only.
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