Ingatestone on track !

  Progress has continued on tracklaying on Ingatestone, with most of the running lines now down and soldered securely to screws at the board ends. In the pictures you can see work in progress last Thursday night. Improvements made to the baseboards have seen additional bracing added to remove some of the twistability from them. …read more.

Baseboard Joints

Baseboard joints are a necessary evil if you ever have to move your layout. Scenically they create what is often an obvious rift line across our otherwise beautiful handiwork, but operationally they can be a major cause of unreliability. So I try to make the joints as unobvious as I can, but robust enough to …read more.

Welcome to the Ingatestone Blog!

This is the first blog by the team that will be bringing Ingatestone to life in 4mm scale. The team are: Chris Ibbotson, Tom Slade, Bob Allaway, Maurice (Mo) Beanlands, Lawrence Robbins and Kavind Patel. We are at Keen House most Thursday nights from 19:00 and also have Sunday working sessions from 11:00 that will …read more.

Empire Mills post Ally Pally 2015

Yesterday we had our first official layout group meeting. Probably should have done it sooner, but better late than never. In this we discussed follow up from Ally Pally, things that went well and things that didn’t. We also covered what needs to be done before our next outing (Portsmouth in November) and who is …read more.

Welcome to the Lacey Dale blog

Welcome to the blog for the MRC n gauge project ‘Lacey Dale’. Here we will be posting information and updates about the project. Please comment and/or subscribe to receive updates. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments section and we will try and respond as soon as possible.  

Empire Mills – In which I make bushes

Well I’ve spent the day making bushes and a hedge. I’ve found a pretty straightforward technique that gives pleasing results. To start off, we had already placed rubberised horsehair around the layout as a first step. It had all be sprayed brown before placement but they didn’t really look that good. So here’s what I …read more.

Copenhagen Fields at KX “Steam Extravaganza”

Well we have certainly had a very different weekend to the normal model railway exhibition!  After a hectic few weeks of work with a major re-wire of the front boards (a fall-out from the Preston show 6 months ago) we got the layout moved to the Kings Cross Granary square complex on Friday 9th for …read more.

Via Eboracum and Copenhagen Fields Programme

As promised a  photo of VIA EBORACUM.  I thought I would take up garden railways.  It now needs the road way granite setts and pavements and of course a lot of painting: yellow London stock brick.  In the end, I lined all of the arches, as these days digital cameras can get low trackside views …read more.

Empire Mills

Update From 2 June 2018, Empire Mills has a new home. We wish the layout well under its new management! You can read about the EM Gauge team’s new project Orchard Wharf here.   Empire Mills is the Model Railway Club’s 4mm scale EM gauge layout. The basic layout depicts a small, freight-only branch line. The …read more.

HO – Putnam Division

Putnam is The Model Railway Club’s American based layout, originally inspired by the Putnam branch of the New York Central Railroad, which ran north from New York. This line was single track and mostly ran through a semi-rural landscape of small towns and small farms. The layout is HO scale (1:87) with control via DCC. It is a work in progress, designed to grow gradually. The yard has been exhibited several times as an end-to-end layout, but we have recently completed work to turn it into an oval and can now run much longer trains. Work is under way to add scenery to the new boards. The big curve at the right hand end is the first to be tackled and, in contrast to the semi-urban nature of the main yard, will be rural in nature featuring a considerable number of hand-made trees.

We try to operate the trains with New York Central locomotives, both steam and diesel as befits a model set loosely around 1950, although locomotives from other railroads are used at times. Rolling stock represents the huge number of different railroads that existed at the time.

Work continues on the layout, including making the fiddle yard wider to enable a wider variety of trains to be run at exhibitions.

Happisburgh Goods – Retired

The Great Eastern Railway had planned to build a line from North Walsham to Happisburgh (pronounced Haysboro) on the Norfolk coast, then south east towards Great Yarmouth. Unfortunately the line never got built but for the purposes of our model we have assumed that it did.

Bow Junction

Bow Junction is the Model Railway Club’s new 7mm scale layout to be constructed in finescale Scale 7* gauge. After much research and planning new members are welcome to join the group with the opportunity to be there at the start of this new venture. The layout will be true to scale and depict a historic important slice of London around 1900.

Bow Junction shows the North London Railway’s junction from Bow Road following the line towards Poplar and the Docks and the diverging line to Fenchurch Street. In the midst of this unique junction is the North London Railway’s locomotive works, the erecting shop, forge and workshops, “Bow Works”.