Risborough and District MRC

Layouts:

• Loughborough Road - OO gauge LNWR pre grouping. Loughborough Road could be almost anywhere in the UK, there being examples in Nottingham, Leicestershire and Brixton, and no doubt elsewhere as well. Our Loughborough Road is in West Bridgford. The layout is a “might have been” fantasy but includes some real features. My Grandfather lived on Loughborough Road in West Bridgford in the late 19th Century and had a boot and shoe business with shops – at various times – in Nottingham (in Cheapside), Carlisle and Chorley. His home in Loughborough Road has become a factory on our model.
  
  Loughborough Road is a main road running south from Nottingham through West Bridgford to – Loughborough. The Midland Railway line linking Kettering/Melton Mowbray/Nottingham runs through West Bridgford and slightly further East was the London North Western and Great Northern Joint Railway line built to link Market Harborough & Peterborough/Melton Mowbray/Nottingham. There is no evidence that any station was proposed for West Bridgford but it is not entirely impossible that the good citizens of West Bridgford – in 1900 a thriving and growing Nottingham suburb – might have ambitiously established a terminus for the Midland and London North Western Joint Railway and all linked into a growing Nottingham suburban railway network. Just to the North of our imagined station is Trent Bridge Cricket Ground. The council apparently managed to find a narrow site allowing access to the station between the Paley & Co. factory and what became the Midland hotel and signalled by Mackenzie and Holland.
  
  The station has one regular passenger platform and a small goods yard. The council were anxious to promote their town and funded a traverser at the platform end which allows all but the largest engines to escape. This bears a strong resemblance to the GWR Moor Street traverser – there were 2 there but the remains of only one are visible today – and no doubt was built by the same contractor. Commerce through the Goods yard reflects the area – Paley & Co moved their boots and shoes to their other locations; gunpowder vans deliver explosives to local mines (no health and safety restrictions to protect the local citizens?) and there seems to be an awful lot of large beer kegs. For some reason a daily Lancashire and Yorkshire train (presumably its final stop) delivers fish and fish products from Fleetwood to the Cod Liver oil factory. One wonders why East Coast fish are ignored. Red brick seems to be the local building choice. The Loughborough Road Miners association has its meeting rooms overlooking the station.
  
  The 00 layout is a fiddle yard to terminus scheme built on a slight curve with a size of approx. 11 feet by 3 feet excluding operating area – there are lots of comments that there are no straight lines but the curved track disguises three straight baseboards joined at angles. The time period is pre-1900 to 1930 allowing the use of Midland, LNWR, L&Y, GC and LMS passenger and goods stock. Layout operation requires thought and planning – and the use of a station pilot – to shunt goods vehicles into and out of the limited goods yard. Stock and buildings are mainly kit bashed and are currently DC operated. There is no Control Panel. All devices (points, uncouplers and loco isolation) are operated through RF handheld controllers and locos through DC handheld Feedback controllers. The layout is operated primarily from each end of the front with Fiddle Yard activity at the back.
  
  The layout was featured in British Railway Modelling (magazine and DVD) in July 2015.

• Tremierten - N gauge, ex GWR Country branch Terminus. Tremierten is an imaginary ex Great Western branch line terminus set in somewhere in Cornwall in the British Railways Western Region period and uses the Gaugemaster system of remote uncoupling. The name “Tremierten” is actually an anagram of retirement as the layout was bought part built and completed by me after I retired after 40 years working for BT.

• Glenridding Lane - OO gauge, 1960's Industrial Steam. Glenridding Lane is my first attempt at an exhibition layout and I have been ably assisted by members of Hemel Hempstead Model Railway Society. Set in the late 1950s to mid 1960s Glenridding lane is a fictional industrial passenger freight terminal set somewhere in the south of England. There is a large presence of William Stroudly A1 and A1X Terrier tank locomotives. We operate up to 10 of these locomotives, William Stroudy was the chief engineer for the London Brighton and South coast railway. The main section of the layout is set in an inglenook setting with one main inbound/outbound line a spare yards siding line and one warehouse siding. This allows for some interesting shunting to take place. Glenridding lane features heavily on canal road and rail transport , the canal line features a MERG pocket money shuttle kit. Allowing for continual running up and down both the quayside and forward and back to the fiddle yard to warehouse. In the main road yard has 4 loading bays for the many variety of vehicles this is mainly features the early Eddie Stobart haulage company in the original livery. To the right side of the yard is a scratch built builders yard featuring kits from Scale Model Scenery. The back scene of the layout feature a mixture of PECO and Metcalfe back scene there is also in the middle of the layout back scene a picture of part of Hemel Hempstead where our club is based. We have used a degree of modellers licence to produce what I hope is an interesting layout for both the general public and the society members.

• Whipsnade Central - 009 gauge depicting the narrow gauge railway at Whipsnade Zoo.

• Mothecombe - OO Gauge, 1960's South Devon station on the line to Plymouth. Mothecombe is a quiet through station on a rural line somewhere in south Devon, close to the coast and Plymouth, and is operated in both GWR/SR or BR periods. At either end, two fiddle yards feed trains through the layout. A bay platform is provided for the local push-pull service and a small yard serves the local community. Occasional diversions from the main line add interest during the day. Pre-covid, the construction of this layout served as a training ground for our younger modellers and we sincerely hope that our Junior section can re-establish itself in 2022.

• Silverbury - OO Gauge modern image of what the GCE line to London would have looked like, if it survived. The idea with Silverbury was to create a modern image layout of the Great Central Railway if it had been made 4 tracks into London after the 1st world war, and if Beeching had not closed the line, but instead reduced it to two tracks. What would it have looked like? Silverbury is a combination of Silverstone and Aylesbury a “WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN” layout. The period modelled is BR Blue to the present day, and to achieve this we are producing interchangeable buildings and industries which can be dropped into place. Silverbury is placed at the edge of both Network South East (BR blue) and Chiltern Railways (Network Rail) so many trains would terminate at this point. It is also a mainline for long distance and Cross Country Passenger, and through freight trains. This is to create plenty of interest for both operators and viewers.

• All cars stop here - All Cars Stop Here 請在此站停車 is a 00 (1:76) scale Hong Kong Tramways microlayout, it is 740mm x 210mm and based upon a Hong Kong street scene where trams run in the Central District.

• Pentrefan - EM Gauge pre grouping GWR set in Wales. The Cambrian Railways made something of a habit of rescuing lost causes. No run-down tramway, ill-conceived minor railway or under-funded branch line was too far past the point of no return to be denied shelter beneath the Cambrian's umbrella. Pentrefan is typical of the kind of afterthought on a byway to nowhere that became part of the Cambrian. Originally a horse-drawn tramway, then a Cambrian-sponsored light railway, the model is set just after the Cambrian was absorbed into the mighty GWR, when the new broom was only just starting to make any progress in the process of sweeping clean.
  

• Mellin Parva - O 16.5 narrow gauge. The layout was originally built by David Simmonite but is now operated by R&DMRC. A railway station, a boating wharf and a sunny day in the 1950s. What else could be needed to complete this idyllic scene? - Nothing!

• Tamzynowo Wlk - HO scale Layout is loosely based on polish station of Szklarska Poreba Gorna. The station is one of the highest located stations in Poland on the boarder of Czechia and Poland on line 311 (LK311). Despite some additions on the either side of the station boundaries, the layout imitates the real station’s track setup and signalling system prior to modernisation in 2013.
  
  The station buildings are out-of-the-box plastic kits with added weathering and interiors as well as both internal and external lights. The platforms are equipped with items such as litter bins, benches, and concrete flower beds well known to be seen on numerous Polish stations for the last half of century now. Similar to the most of model railway projects, the layout has been a work in progress since 2013 starting from a single test module to learn how to ballast and connect tracks. It has now grown to almost 8m long multiple-module station layout with further parts being added as testing grounds for level crossing, a pond, rock formations and a bridge section. The station name (Tamzynowo Wlk) is fictional station and is a tribute to my wife (Tamsyn) who has been putting up with my hobby for number of years now. The layout is equipped with realistic replicas of original polish catenary system as well as street and platform lights, signals as still seen in Poland even now.
  
  Polish and European modelling era’s definitions are different from those in UK. The layout buildings and equipment allow for layout operating from 1970 till even now which replicates NEM eras from IVc (form 1974) till VIa (after 2009) that allows for almost all type of engines and train formation to be operating on the layout.
  
  Materials
  • Tracks are all Peco code 75
  • Catenary system is all etched brass assembled and provided by “Kluba” (http://modelarstwo-kluba.pl/) and “Ostbahn” (https://ostbahn-mk.pl/) whilst lamps were immaculately assembled by “OMAK” (http://www.omak.eu/oferta.html).
  • Majority of bushes and trees are from another polish manufactures of MBR (https://mbrmodel.eu/) and FREON (http://modelarstwofreon.eu/en/).
  • Signals switch points’ lanterns are also manufactured by “Kluba” and correspond with those still seen across the Polish railway network.

Traders:

• Sunningwell Command Control for all that's best in DCC
• Quainton Railway Society Books

Demos

• This year we have 5 R&DMRC members demonstrating a range of modelling skills, do stop and talk.

Societies

• Chinnor & Princes Risborough Railway
• Princes Risborough Signal Box Preservation Group
• Great Central Railway Society

R&DMRC Secondhand Sales

• A variety of used models, kits etc.