Monthly Club News

December 2015: Work is once again continuing to progressing well on our Smallwood layout with the station are coming on well. Recent work has included weathering more of the retaining walls and a start has been made on the buildings for the town area.

November 2015: Work is progressing well on our Smallwood layout with the station are coming on well. We have all spent much of the month preparing layouts for exhibition at Spalding and the NEC. We had at successful weekend over the 14th and 15th November at the Spalding Model Railway show displaying our Chilcompton and Buckshee layouts. We ended the month at the annual Warley NEC Exhibition where we had Chilcompton on display. We met many people who remembered or knew the real location and the layout was very well received by the visitors. 

October 2015: We have spent much of the month preparing layouts for exhibition and this was rewarded at the Great Electric Train Show over the weekend of the 10th and 11th October when the Oakenshaw layout was voted best in show.

September 2015: We have spent much of the month preparing for our Annual Exhibition and the construction of our Smallwood layout. We staged the 42nd Redditch Model Railway Exhibition over the weekend of the 19th and 20th September and thank you to all that attended

August 2015: We start this month preparing layouts for the forthcoming shows in the Kingfisher Shopping Centre on the 22nd and 23rd August and at the Trinity High School in September. Work is now pressing ahead with our Smallwood layout and the electrics have now been sorted on a Chilcompton layout ready for the exhibition appearances in the autumn. We had a successful weekend with our Pop up Model Railway show in the Kingfisher Shopping Centre

July 2015: The Club website is 16 years old this month. We start the month making significant progress with our Smallwood layout with a start being made on many of the buildings for the layout. Like all our layouts these will be scratch built. 

June 2015: Monday 1st June 2015 marks the 48th anniversary of the formation of the Redditch Model Railway Club. On the evening of Thursday 1st June 1967 a meeting was held at the White Hart Public House in Headless Cross in Redditch which resulted in the Redditch Model Railway Club being formed. The Club's Annual General Meeting on Tuesday 2nd June once again provided few surprises and the Committee where re-elected without change for a further twelve months. Work on Smallwood is progressing well with good progress on the retaining walls and the track work. We have also wired up for DCC operation all the track the has been laid. Club member John Tisi has done a grand job sorting the wiring out on Chilcompton ready for its public showings this Autumn.

May 2015 : We started the month by successfully testing our Chilcompton layout following the alterations to the track work. Track laying on Smallwood is progressing well. Our Club night on Thursday 7th May was cut short not because of the general election but because asbestos was being removed from a small area of industrial unit where we are based. The contractor had covered up the switches to the communal lights so whilst we had power in the club room when it got dark we would have struggled to find our way out of the building.

April 2015 : We start the month with much of the track now down on our new Smallwood layout and the alterations to Chilcompton nearly complete. We spent Sunday 26th April testing our Chilcompton layout and creating a snagging list of things that need doing ready for the exhibition appearances at Spalding and the NEC in November.

March 2015 : We start the month working on three key projects all involving track laying. These being  the late Mark Clarke's layout, re-aligning one of the curves on our Chilcompton layout and we have also made a start on putting track down on our Smallwood layout. On Sunday 29th March we took our Buckshee layout to the Aston Transport Museum at Aldridge.

February 2015: We have now completed the dolls house and it has been delivered to its new home. Current projects include improvements to Chilcompton where we are completing the track relaying we started just over twelve months ago to improve reliability. We are getting the signals on Oakenshaw to work. Even before attending the two exhibitions with the layout last year many of the servo motors to control the signals had been installed but it is now a case of making them work properly. We have also now have much of the track in stock for the Smallwood layout and we will get on with this once we complete a further project to make a layout work that the late Mark Clarke was building before his untimely death last year for his grandson. As usual we have many projects on the go     

January 2015: We start 2015 continuing to build our Smallwood layout which is now entering its 2nd year of construction and it has moved on considerably over the last few months. We have taken the decision to replace the track on our Smallwood layout with standard Peco code 75 track.