Soar Valley Model Railway Club annual exhibition

Ribblehead in T-Gauge scale 1.450 based on post 80s got started in March of 2020 as I was stuck at home with working and needed another project to be worked on as this has been in the making for at least 5 years in development and designing so that I know it could work in T-Gauge.

It is based on the Settle to Carlisle Railway and is located at Ribblehead Station with part of the Quarry and crossing the Ribblehead Viaduct (Main Feature) and ending up at Blea Moor tunnel with working siding still in use today at Blea Moor Signal Box.

Ilfracombe East is the terminus of a fictitious Blackmoor Gate — Ilfracombe branch of the L&BR. The L&B did, in its early years, operate a bus service along this route using Milnes-Daimler petrol vehicles. Following prosecution for exceeding the 8mph limit, the L&B chairman, Sir George Newnes, discontinued the service and sold the buses to the Great Western Railway. The layout is set in the “Southern” period (1923 — 1935), but a number of the vehicles retain their old L&B colours.

Other stock may be seen, operating through Minehead — Ilfracombe services. These run over the equally fictitious Minehead & Lynmouth Railway, which joins the L&B at Barbrook Junction, just outside Lynton. Interestingly, an abortive GWR backed scheme was proposed for a 2ft gauge Minehead & Lynmouth line, around 1900.

In addition, there are a number of locomotives, railcars and other items of rolling stock, representing developments which might have happened if closure had not taken place in 1935.

Barnwood is a fictional location in northwest England on a loop line off the West Coast Mainline between Preston and Lancaster. It is on the coast with a small port with regular connections to the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland. The town is busy with passing freight as it acts as a second route between Preston and Lancaster relieving pressure on this two track section of West Coast Mainline. Passenger services are worked by Regional Railways trains running to and from Preston and Barrow in Furness. There is a short branch line to Glasson on the estuary of the River Lune.

Set in the mid-1990s in the transition period of the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe merger, Brookfield is an industrial town on the former Burlington Chicago to Aurora route [though the track plan bears no resemblance to the real Brookfield] .The small yard handles local traffic deliveries received mainly from Eola yard further along the route using locos based at the small engine facility next to the yard. A wide variety of longer distance freight passes through as does Amtrak services both commuter and distance, some serving the local passenger depot.

The layout is set over a 5 year period ranging from 1988 to 1993. Scenic elements are an amalgamation of what could be seen around the station during the time period with no fixed date. This, I believe, forms into a pleasing model location with plenty of points of interest and enough nostalgia to hopefully jog the better memories of the locals from the time. As a result, stock is also included that reflects typical services that could be seen passing the area during those years.

Newvaddon Parkway is set two miles to the south of Tolvaddon, a fast- growing town in the heart of the Cornish countryside. It is on the mainline between Penance and the Cornish/Devon border. Penance is a busy shipping port in with various flows of coal, oil and freightliner containers. Penance is the terminus for the Great Western Line which sees a variety of passenger trains.

Depicting a fictitious mainline location in the South East in the modern day. The station is nestled in between rolling hills, covered in woodland and meadows. To the north is Oakwood Quarry, a long disused limestone quarry now owned by the M.o.D.

Join us at Rockcliffe to revisit the glamour and excitement of the age of steam. At the bustling, noisy Rockcliffe mainline station you will see the famous Flying Scotsman, Royal Scot, Golden Arrow, Cornish Rivera Express and the international Night Ferry to Paris Gare du Nord. As the signal turns green and the whistle blows, we board our train. In the Dining Car, glasses tinkle and cutlery rattles as our train departs and speeds through rugged, picturesque countryside. For a more relaxed experience, go to Platforms 7 or 8 for the quaint narrow gauge railway, puffing and threading its way through a landscape of mountains, tunnels and bridges to Lakeside and the Regency Spa town of Rockcliffe. Hear the male voice choir and Welsh Guards brass band playing in the bandstand or maybe relax in the Swan Inn with its old world charm and hospitality.

St. Ruth, built by the Midland Area Group, is a 2mm Finescale terminus to fiddle yard layout set in the mid 1960s and modelled loosely on Penzance. Operation is based on a 24 hour weekday period during September taken from the relevant timetables but with some adjustment to allow for available stock and track configuration differences.

Bregenbach represents a small wayside industry on a fictional cross-country line in the Black Forest in Germany. The Bregtalbahn in reality ran from Donaueschingen on the

Schwartzwaldbahn to the small town of Furtwangen and closed in the 1970s.

The fiction sees it extended over the pass and down the Glottertal to Freiburg im Breisgau and electrified while still remaining a private railway. It stays open by having lower track access charges than the DB thus being attractive as a route for short trains. The line has a ruling gradient of 1 in 25, which is actually LESS steep than the DB line in the neighbouring valley. Trains ascend to Bregenbach station in both directions, with occasional passenger services calling and very occasionally two trains crossing here, though the through freights are too long for the loop.

Sometimes the brewery shunter will venture off down the hill to the exchange point at Furtwangen to collect or deliver vans. Most trains have an electric loco on the front, or occasionally on the back....

Ishinaka is an entirely fictitious layout created in Japanese N scale (1/150). The layout depicts a terminus station in a large town which has seen a rise in tourism since the discovery of thermal spa waters. A Samurai Heritage Village nearby also encourages visitors.

The main line and the branch enter from a fifteen road transverser which uses modified Kato extender tracks for alignment and power. At the rear a tram track links the station and the Samurai Heritage Village.

Since visiting Toronto in Canada in 1990 and 1994, I have built two layouts based on the trains I saw then and in particular those of the Canadian Pacific railway or CP Rail as it was then. It is inspired by a photograph I had taken of a swing bridge at Atherley near Orillia in Ontario. My initial thought was to build a simple diorama of the bridge and its approach piers, but it soon expanded and I can now run 20ft long trains. The track plan for Atherley Narrows allows for industries to be served from loops off the main line and these can be operated at the same time as trains pass on the main.

San Clemente is set in the late 1950s and portrays a branch line operation in Southern California. It is served by the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific railroads. Traffic is mainly agricultural products in reefers (refrigerated cars).

Wolfstatt is a father and son project which has taken 10 years to reach what you see today. It is modelled in HO and is based on present day Austria depicting a high alpine main line. This is Wolfstatt’s first year on the exhibition circuit, and this year’s Soar Valley Model Railway Club’s show is our second outing with the layout.

This is a layout for watching trains pass by many marshalled to prototype length representing many private operators as well as OBB (Austrian state : railway). Block trains, multi model, wagon load freight, regional, and international express traffic can all be seen, — several double headed rakes are to be spotted. All of this is controlled by our home developed Wi-Fi system using smart phones and a gauge master prodigy.

It is a fictional location and with no allegiance to any particular region or company and a time around the change from steam to diesel operation. This is to suit members' stock and interests and is an end to end layout which is double tracked into a ten lane fiddle yard. This gives the opportunity to have passing trains, not always seen on an end to end layout. The terminus station "Glenmore Parva" has two main platforms with a central loco release line and a bay platform for local service to "Shepshed". The station also has a small goods yard and private line to local industry area, which runs down under the main lines to the rear of the layout. There is an operational turntable to enable locos to be turned and make the return journey from the station to the fiddle yard.

Hackworth (Trafalgar Terrace) is a model of a typical British Railways Western Region large Motive Power Depot (MPD) with both a Churchward Straight Shed, Roundhouse, Maintenance shed and coaling tower. The MPD is surrounded by a locomotive works. Although the location is fictitious it represents an area around Bordesley on the ex-Great Western mainline East of Moor Street in Birmingham. Surrounding the MPD there is a backscene which represents a typical railway workshop complex. The layout features sound fitted locomotives, a working turntable and subtle lighting and sound effects.

The Hillton branch in South East Wales was a victim of the Beeching closures of the 1960’s. Due to the strategic importance of the Ministry of Defence facility on the outskirts of the town the track was not lifted and dismantled.

After a campaign by local residents for better rail links the Welsh Assembly along with Network Rail re-instated the branch and passenger services to the South Wales mainline. EWS then built a Traction Maintenance Depot on the the site of the old goods yard and a DMU stabling and signing on point. Passenger trains provide services to South Wales and the West of England. The MoD facility dispatches and receives trains from all parts of the MoD network.

Illie Town is a small modern image layout based in Cheshire. Passenger services are operated by ARRIVA WALES and EAST MIDLANDS. On the freight side, there is a ballast siding and a warehouse that imports steel, which are served by a variety of locos from different companies. There is a two-road loco depot with a separate fuelling point. The layout is over 20 years old and has been on the exhibition circle previously known as Bridge Street but a lot of work has gone into making it Illie Town. Though the track plan is pretty much the same, we added the bay platform, fueling point and warehouse for added interest, along with new background scenery. Fully wired for DCC and controlled by NCC power cab, all turnouts and signals are by normal analogue.

Most of the scenery and the buildings are scratch built from card and the backscene was photographed and printed in a subdued tone to emphasise the close proximity of the station to the famous Brush Works. The track is all Peco streamline, painted and ballasted to improve the appearance and the layout is controlled by Modelex D.C. controllers.

The layout after many years on the exhibition circuit was refurbished in 2021-22 by members of the lvanhoe M.R.S. as a tribute to Dave Tooley, who originally built the model but sadly passed away in 2020.

The aim is to portray in model form, most of the functions of a railway that served a community, in the days before road transport took over. Myton is located a few miles down a branch off a main line. The location is fictitious but based on personal experience of post nationalisation operations.

Kleine Rundfahrt is set in the Thuringia region of the former East Germany, the layout features stock from both DB and DR companies. The numerous transport museums in the area run excursions featuring preserved items

We are in the railway backwater of Smallwood a town somewhere in England with a terminal station that has seen better days. Much of the glass has long since gone from the all over station roof and the provision of four platforms are from an era of far more affluent times than the current general run-down appearance. The station still boasts a parcel depot as well as a small stabling point for DMU's. The future will see further rationalization as the Sprinter trains are introduced in the 1980s and the parcel depot is closed.

At a slightly lower level below the station are the remains of another station that now serve as exchange sidings for several local industrial concerns. These sidings would only just see out the 1970's becoming part of the town's bypass road. The layout has been built as a test bed for a much larger layout based in the same blue diesel era.

The scene presented is in the BR Sectorisation period (1988-92) and set in the northern suburbs of Sheffield. The station is of a minimalist type showing a reopened line and single platform on the long-closed ex-GC line between Sheffield & Barnsley. Services are provided by the last of the first generation multiple units and the ‘new’ sprinters and these operate under computer control.

The O gauge layout started with the original idea showcasing the Charnwood Forest Line Loughborough Derby Road Station which led out to a viaduct in a straight up and down configuration. After a lot of thought and with the hope of doing something different we decided that although the LMNW line closed to passenger traffic in 1931 we tried to envisage what it would have been like in the late 1950s early 1960s if the line had remained opened. Our original idea was developed and with much discussion it was decided that the layout should increase in size and that it would contain 4 major view points, a) Loughborough Derby Road Station would remain but would now include a goods shed,turn table and M.P.D. b) Whitwick Station would now be included with an additional platform to allow passing passenger trains (this was included for running and interest purposes). c) a goods yard with the appropriate goods loading dock, d) Grace Dieu Viaduct with its intricate stone and brick work leading through a bridge into the fiddle yard.

Newchapel Junction is a finescale O Gauge layout representing the post-grouping period where the SR and the GWR ran together.

The layout recreates the operation of a busy railway in its heyday with frequent arrivals and departures from the terminus station Newchapel Junction. The locomotives vary from express passenger and heavy freight engines to small tank engines of both SR and GWR origin.

The layout is based upon the Haverhill station on the Colne Valley and Halstead Railway, 1863 - 1965. The station was opened as the northern terminus of the CVLR with prospects of extending to Cambridge. In 1865 the GE railway opened its Cambridge to Sudbury line with a connecting spur to the CVLR.

In 1924 the passenger service was diverted to the GER station, although we still run workman trains and specials to the station.

Wolfe Lowe is a small terminus station located somewhere in Staffordshire Moorlands. The era is LMS pre-grouping but ambiguous as to which constituent company in order to allow the layout to accommodate Midland, LNW and North Staffordshire stock. The layout incorporates a small sandstone quarry and iron ore mine. In the quarry, wagons are filled with stone and hauled by aprivate railway locomotive down to a headshunt where they are exchanged with mainline railway company engines for the final leg into the station. The ore is delivered to wagons using a mine train which operates fully automatically - loading, moving and unloading without the touch of human hand!

N Gauge exhibition layout which demonstrates how much scope there is for 'Bringing to Life' a detailed small layout, but still retaining a very high degree of interesting aspects. Including buildings and a variety of trains. It is a fictitious layout.