Who was there?...

1. Cherwell

4mm scale, OO gauge

Solihull Model Railway Circle

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, Kings Heath library, Tyseley Station, and Water Orton Station). The layout 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 between about 1900 and the present day. If you look carefully you can see pigeons roosting under the station bridge, foxes using the track bed as a shortcut and one fox eyeing lambs, gulls eggs and the shepherd on the upper pasture, cats watching building work in the arch from the platform and gulls above the sea and on the cliffs with a lonely cormorant.

2. Tipton Hills

2mm scale, N gauge

West Midlands N gauge group

A factious preserved railway. Mainly run with small shunting engines pulling freight or four wheeled passenger coaches. Thomas the tank and friends also makes an appearance for the young and young at heart.

3. Bournville Engine Shed

2mm scale, N gauge

Bournville MRC

The layout is the clubs attempt to model a section of the Midland Regions line from Birmingham New Street to the South West. The area chosen falls between the road bridges of Mary Vale Road and Pershore Road and is focused on Bournville Engine Shed (No21b) a satellite of Saltley. Traffic on the line had increased to the point where a second track was laid and the shed played a significant part in providing motive power for local trains. Though it never reached its full potential the twenty four road roundhouse, built to a standard MR design, had all the facilities required to service locomotives including workshops, sand house, water tower and coaling stage. The model shows the two main running lines passing the shed which has the roof removed to display the working turntable. The era modelled is LMS to BR.

4. The Bernise Line

2mm scale, N gauge

Trent Valley Model Railway Society

The Bernise line is a Swiss Alps layout featuring a small village station and unique rack railway from the base to the summit of the mountain.

5. Kompact Cement

3.5mm scale, HO gauge

Chris Gilbert

Kompact Cement is a small US switching layout that has been designed to fit on the back seat of my car for transportation. The layout is four feet six inches long by 12 inches wide and is connected to a 3 foot fiddle yard. The track work is Peco code 100 and uses medium radius points. It is DCC controlled. The layout is not based only anywhere in particular but rather a collection of ideas from across the States. This allows me to run locomotives from any railroad I like as the mood takes. The operation is very simple with one train serving the cement works and one train serving the warehouse, but using the superbly slow running Atlas locomotives it can take anything up to half an hour to complete the switching of both trains. 

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask me.

6. St Etienne-en-Caux

4mm scale, OO9 narrow gauge

Charlie and Elizabath Insley

St Etienne-en-Caux is at the heart of the Tramways de Caux, a 60cm gauge railway system set in the Pays de Caux in Eastern Normandy. The model, although freelance, is based on a number of Northern France narrow gauge railways, in particular the Chemins de Fer (FE) du Calvados, the CFde la Baie de Somm. The model is set in the late 1950’s. The railway uses a varity of locomotives, including the orginal tramway ‘bi-cabines (locomotives with cabs at either end), Decauville Mallets ex-WW1 locomotives (English, French and Germany), and machines built by French and Belgian manufacturers such as Blanc-Misseron, Haine St-Pierre, Couillet and La Meuse.

7. Evington St Johns

4mm scale, OO gauge

Shaun Greet

Evington St Johns is based on a freight only branch in East Anglia, serving a local store/goods depot and coal yard. An occasional rail tour visits using a DMU. Era of 1968 – 1972. Class 03, 04, 08, 15 and 31 provide motive power.

8. Conyer Dewitt

4mm, OO gauge

Jeff Mitchell

A visitor interactive shunting yard. Based on Wednesbury Town Yard in the Black Country. A series of photographs of various wagons are placed on the control panel and the objective is to form a train in the order of the photos. The name of the layout “Conyer Dewitt” is can you do it pronounced in a Black Country accent? The layout is DCC Controlled and the rolling stock is fitted with Kadee couplings, automatic uncoupling takes place by magnets beneath the track. The locos are sound fitted.

9. Welsh Slate

7mm, Narrow Gauge

Gary Hinson

High up on a North welsh hillside, a little steam locomotive goes about its daily business of shuffling slate wagons around a slate quarry. Hundreds of miles of narrow gauge lines criss crossed the Welsh mountains to access slate to be processed for roofing. The nature of the processes meant that it generated vast amounts of waist, this also had to be moved to convenient place for dumping.

The model represents a small section of a much bigger system, on one of the quarry’s galleries. It has a small workshop but is dominated by the water wheel used to drive a compressor for rock drills within another part of the quarry. The arrival of electricity is about to spell the end for the water wheel and the new electric compressor has just been installed.

The model is 7mm to one foot, running on 16.5mm track. Locos and rolling stock are built from kits or scratch.  The layout is a minimum space project but still has a continuous run.

10. A Scottish Branch

4mm scale, OO gauge

Solihull Model Railway Circle

A new end-to-end branch line club layout based on Scottish practice, displayed here partly built to give an insight into layout construction. It is 16 feet long by just over 2 feet wide and we are using SMP code 75 bullhead plain track and handmade Marcway points and is being constructed to run with either DCC or traditional control. There is  a terminus station at one end and a hidden 'fiddle' yard with a traverser at the other with a scenic section in between. A major part of the concept is the use of very deep baseboards with the railway running through the middle, allowing greater depths and heights of scenery for a more interesting appearance. The major architectural feature is the curved viaduct based on Killiecrankie.   

11. Avonbridge

7mm scale, O gauge

Solihull Model Railway Circle

This layout is a 30 feet by 13, three-track, continuous run with station and storage loops. Early in 2013, we widened two of the front boards to provide some space for to allow for shunting.

The boards are made from 9mm exterior plywood with some aluminium box-section bracing and steel box-section legs with rubber door-stops as feet that can be screwed in and out of the boards for adjustment. PECO code 124 bullhead track is laid to a minimum radius of 6 feet. Points are operated from the main panel using Hammant and Morgan motors.

Buildings are based on local Midland Railway prototypes and therefore the layout represents a busy MR branch line somewhere in the midlands, although the stock run is from a variety of companies and eras to suit our varying interests.

Most buildings are scratch-built from a combination of Plastikard and wood. The main station building is a model of Northfield and the small shelter on the opposite platform is from Moseley. The signal box is modelled on Luffenham, with Marton Junction’s coal bunker.

At one end is the road-over-rail bridge at Ripple, near Tewkesbury and at the other end a section of the 1816 Edstone canal viaduct from Bearley, near Stratford Upon Avon.

People and accessories are from various manufacturers, including PECO and Preiser. A goods shed from the Birmingham and Gloucester railway is under construction and future developments will probably include a footbridge between the platforms, back scenes and possibly a small engine shed.