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Bere Banks inspired by the junction station at Bere Alston west of Tavistock. It’s “as if” the 1968 closure of the through route between Meldon Quarries and Bere Alston never happened. Providing an alternative route avoiding Dawlish to Plymouth and Cornwall, from Exeter, via Coleford Junction, Tavistock to Bere Alston. The branch to Gunnislake and a small goods yard remain, with DMU’s serving the growing commuters and tourists around this isolated part of the county. You can watch diversions and summer specials passing through on the mainline. With Westerns, Warships and Hymeks, supported by a cast of class 25, 33, 37 and 47’s providing the motive power. You may recognise the distinctive LNSWR station buildings. The overall layout had to be compressed a little, hopefully capturing the essence of the architecture in the area. Join us to soak up the atmosphere of a summer Saturday in the early 70’s.

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This layout is set in the late 1960s/early 70s somewhere on the Western Region of British Rail and attempts to portray an urban freight yard. Such yards were still commonplace at this time, especially in larger towns and cities where the freight facilities were often quite separate from the main passenger station. Examples on the WR which were served by their own branch lines included Reading Central Goods (closed 1983) and Newham which handled freight for Truro (closed 1971). Traffic handled varied widely, from general freight through specific flows of bulk commodities such as fuel, heating oil, bitumen and cement to parcels. Most of these yards vanished during the 1970s and 80s as freight traffic patterns changed radically, concentrating on block trains of just one commodity. Such locations are now either derelict, or more commonly, completely erased and buried under office blocks, industrial estates, new housing, or as in the case of Reading, new road schemes. Even the traffic flows depicted on the model which still exist on today’s railways have gravitated to fewer, larger facilities. General freight in the form depicted here is long gone, and BR abandoned the parcels market to the courier companies and Royal Mail in the early 80s. Indeed, National Carriers Ltd after privatisation, many buyouts, takeovers and mergers later is now part of the DHL empire. The Western Region of the period still managed to largely retain its own pre nationalisation character, even 20 years after the end of the GWR. Motive power was unlike any other region being based mainly on its own diesel-hydraulic designs. Although steam had ended 4-5 years earlier, much steam era infrastructure still survived including redundant water towers and cranes which will be modelled. Although now 'modernised', the railway still carried much freight traffic in speed restricted, short wheelbase, wooden wagons and coal in unbraked steel mineral wagons. The late 1960s was a period of great change for railway liveries. The older green and maroon colours for locomotives were giving way to the new corporate image of BR blue. This took many years to achieve and resulted in a glorious hotchpotch of livery variations as stock was gradually repainted. The blue paint used during the early days did not wear well, especially combined with engine anti-corrosion additives and the new-fangled mechanical washing plants, where the chemicals used acted more like paint stripper. Motive power straight out of works after overhaul would look smart, but within a year or two, details of previous liveries could well start showing through the new layer of paint as it faded and wore away; sometimes sections of new paint just fell off. All a challenge to replicate in model form. On the model I have included fuel and cement terminals, National Carriers depot (where wagonload traffic and bulky sundries traffic was dealt with), and a BR parcels depot - all typical traffic sources of the period. Domestic coal is still delivered by rail, but the coal yard is assumed to be 'off stage'. There is also an exchange siding which receives trainloads of aggregates. A variety of privately owned ex BR locomotives and industrials moves the wagons to and from the unloading facilities. The model is in N gauge using Peco code 55 track. Control is standard DC. For such a simple layout DCC digital control is unnecessary. Couplings have been changed on locos and stock to the MBD/DG system and uses electro magnets placed under the track at strategic locations to effect uncoupling, hopefully hands free!

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This is my fourth railway modelling project which is currently under construction. A scene of an Edwardian period Burton-on-Trent brewery and High Street circa 1902. The concept of the layout is one large brewery premises located in the centre of Burton on Trent at the turn of the 20th century. Breweries at this time were often very large concerns and the property and land footprints spread throughout the town in all directions. Private railways served the brewery premises which were served from Midland Railway secondary lines running down from the main line in and around Burton railway station. This created dozens of level crossings across most of the town centre streets. I wanted to create a town scene and level crossing amongst the brewery to show this concept working. I wanted a lot of the renowned Bass red paintwork on the vast array of brewery buildings. Striking, definitive and memorable from an earlier visit to The National Brewery Centre in Burton on Trent more than 20 years ago. In contrast the High Street, typically late Victorian / Edwardian, has a lot of browns and beiges. Brilliant white is a thing of the future in my little model world. The track plan is based on Worthington’s Brewery around the High Street road crossing and includes maltings, brew house, ale stores and cooperage. The track design is taken from Cliff Shepherds book Brewery Railways of Burton on Trent and bent round into a hexagon shape. Each hex board includes scenic centre pieces and when joined up provides the complete process story. Buildings are based on the breweries of Bass, Ind Coope, Trumans, Peter Walker and others, located in and around Burton on Trent. There is a High Street scene on one board that divides the brewery in two. Brewery trains have to squeeze behind buildings, around tight corners, and across the road crossing to get from one part to the other.

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BNSF Metra is a North American N Scale DCC sound layout, with small town and station situated somewhere on the BNSF Metra commuter line, which is one of the many running in and out of Chicago. The station sees regular stopping Metra and Amtrak passenger trains on their way to and from Chicago. The tracks also see varied container and freight traffic running through on the two bi-directional tracks serving the many container and distribution depots around the city.

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We welcome a totally new layout this weekend.  The idea for this layout came about at the March 2024 Redditch Model Railway Exhibition. My grandfather (David Boot) was exhibiting his end-to-end layout ‘Charlton’, and I was along helping as I have done ever since I can remember as a small boy. We were both reminiscing about the days gone by where we’d exhibited many layouts, but especially, my personal favourite layout ‘Knowle Bridge’, which was a continuous run layout. With this in mind, I started the build of the new layout, we could operate together. The layout is still very much under construction. The track layout is loosely based upon Badminton Station, a GWR station situated on the South Wales direct line North of Bristol. Badminton’s track layout leant itself to a continuous run exhibition layout, but also provided enough else to keep the viewers engaged. The location ticked all the boxes for me: through platform lines for local stopping services or as refuges for goods trains, through fast lines for express passenger workings, small up siding with a goods shed and cattle dock to allow for a small amount of shunting. I decided to give the layout an altogether different name, as I have never intended to create an exact replica of Badminton, merely a nod to the location. The name comes from a brook local to my home along the Teme Valley near Worcester, locally known as Mill Brook. There is a railway link to this name, and in 1905 GWR started a Motor Wagon Transport service along the Teme Valley between Henwick and Shelsley Walsh, with a route to the best of my knowledge passed my front door, but most importantly used to stop to collect water from the above-mentioned Mill Brook. My modellers licence has created a world in which this service became popular enough with goods for local hops/fruit and passengers for the world famous Shelsley Walsh Hill Climb a railway line was formed, along which Millbrook Station could be found.  The layout is built using PECO Bullhead track, Dapol signals and controlled by DCC, with a forward-facing scenic section and large fiddle yard at the rear. The buildings are a mixture of kit built, kit bashed, and resin cast buildings from numerous sources. The rolling stock and locos are all ready to run, and a mixture of my own collection – but undoubtedly bolstered by my Grandfather’s (David Boots) collection, the layout has been designed to have the ability to be exhibited using stock different periods, but will most likely be replicating the years towards the end of steam.  

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Oakenshaw is a fictitious West Yorkshire mill town set in the early 1960's located somewhere near to the real town of Keighley on the Airedale line. Like so many of the Yorkshire mill towns the layout portrays a town in a valley centred around a river crossing. Regional boundary changes in 1957 brought this former Midland Railway Station into the short lived North Eastern Region of British Railways. The station is very much based on Midland Railway practice and the scale is 4mm using "OO" gauge fine scale code 75 track. All the buildings on the layout are scratch built, mainly using thick card for the basic structure. These were covered with plasticard to replicate stone or brick finishes. The structures have then been painted and weathered to represent the prototypes from the area. The fiddle yard features sixteen roads and is capable of holding 24 separate trains. All the buildings on the layout are scratch built, mainly using thick card for the basic structure. These were covered with plastikard to represent stone or brick finishes. Trains are made up of correctly trains for the era and location that are hauled by a mixture of steam and diesel locomotives.

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