The Elizabethan Railway Society 2024

An analogue or DCC-controlled layout depicting a modern diesel traction maintenance depot with an adjacent through line, station, and goods facilities.

Meden Vale was a COVID lockdown project and was fixed to the workshop wall until asked to exhibit the layout at a show. Legs were soon fitted. All the switches are fitted to the front of the layout. The layout can be operated from the front, side or rear. There is no set period of time as a variety of stock can be used. Meden Vale is a continuous run round and a shunting layout operated with wood Dowling and electric point motors.

This layout represents the western end of the Southwold Railway in 1914. The Southwold Railway had just taken delivery of a powerful new locomotive - Manning Wardle 0-6-2 tank No 4 Wenhaston. This was stabled in a wood and asbestos engine shed on a spur off the siding at the railway-owned gravel pit near Bird's Folly, Halesworth. The bridge complete with a length of track can still be seen to this day and Folly house is still to be found on the brow of the Holton Road. Engines No. 1 Southwold, No 2 Halesworth and no 4 Wenhaston are all Golden Arrow white metal kits on an N gauge chassis. Carriage and good vehicles are by Worsley Works, Nine Lines, and Golden Arrow.

Scale model of the former Sutton in Ashfield town station on Outram St. in the 1950's. The station was built by the Great Northern Railway (GNR) as part of their Leen Valley Extension which enabled trains to run from Nottingham Victoria to Shirebrook North via Sutton-in-Ashfield Town, Skegby, Pleasley East and Shirebrook South. The line was closed on 27 May 1968 and the station was demolished to make way for the Asda supermarket which still stands on the site today.

An imaginary shed based somewhere on the Barry Railway system with all buildings based on actual BR structures. The layout was built as somewhere to show my collection of Barry locos, all of which are kit or scratch-built, there is nothing ready to run on the layout. Llanforen Shed was featured in Railway Modeller.

Heanor South represents a real Great Northern branch line terminus that opened in 1891. As can be seen from the track layout the line was intended to carry on further but lack of finance prevented this. Our version represents the line had it survived intact until the British Railways era. Much research was done to model the line although some compression has taken place on the layout to allow some features to be included.

Brittannia Mills were built in 1902 for Samuel Bourne & Co. Ltd., in Netherfield east of Nottingham. Located alongside the GNR, Nottingham to Grantham railway line and next to Netherfield and Cowlick railway station.

The theme of my model built over the years, is based on the Kirkby Engine shed, yard and sidings with the Station on the Nottingham Worksop Line serving the movement of coal from local mines. Details are taken from drawings, measurements, and a collection of Photographs. The model buildings are about 1:87scale, some are reduced in length to be included on a similar representative scale with 00 gauge engines The model was developed and named 'Steaming back to Kirkby Loco' to become a reference for a project featuring the infrastructure of Railways and industry in Kirkby-in-Ashfield.

The scenic part of the layout reflects an impression of the two-mile stretch of line between the Hindlow tunnel (north end) and the cattle bridge near Harpur Hill. At the tunnel end of the line is the former Beswick Lime Works followed by the road bridge and then the former LNWR station and goods yard. The line then goes into a short cutting past a fragment of the former Ryan Sommerville Limestone Quarry and finally ends at the cattle bridge where one track leads up the Harpur Hill branch and two tracks lead to Buxton. The model is a testament to all those who worked in the area and to those who have aided us with the research for this project. A single track still exists today from Buxton along this route and through the tunnel to the Hindlow Quarries and is still in regular use. The era we are depicting saw local passenger trains between Ashbourne and Buxton (these ceased in 1953), light mixed local freight mainly between Uttoxeter and Buxton and high-volume lime products are available between the quarries and all areas of the UK. Also, the quarries needed a regular supply of coal from the nearby coalfields. Shunting plays a significant part in the layout within the area of the Beswick Lime Works, the Station Yard, and the branch to the Harpur Hill Quarries. Rolling stock is mainly LMS and former LNWR ready to run with several scratch-built wagons.

Knowles Hill Colliery is a fictitious colliery set as a tribute to the many collieries in the Nottinghamshire Coal Field. It represents what was, for well over a hundred years, an everyday occurrence of mined coal being brought to the surface then moved to sidings to be picked up and distributed around the Country by rail. This ended in 2015 with the closure of Thoresby - seeing the ending of coal mining in Nottinghamshire after 174 years.

Uppingham is a model of an actual single line 3.5 mile spur from Seaton in Rutland which closed in 1960. The model is built to a scale of 3mm to 1ft and is not to be confused with T1120 which is not the same. The layout runs entirely on DC and uses vintage H&M point motor control with Gaugemaster controllers. The track is 3mm Society sleeper base with Peco HOm pointwork. All the buildings are scratch built-in card covered in embossed styrene. Rolling stock is a mixture of scratch-built, ready-made vintage Triang TT and kit-built items.