







Redditch
Model Railway Club was formed on 1st June 1967 by a
group of twelve members. The club has grown from
strength to strength, and now has five
fully-operational exhibition standard layouts, a
membership of 30 and hosts and an annual exhibition. For
over 55 years the Club has been based in the new
town of Redditch, around 15 miles south of Birmingham.
Following the initial meeting to gauge support for the
Redditch Model Railway Club, within days a large double
lock-up garage shown to the left had been found to the
rear of a local shop and the first official meeting of
the club took place on June 1 1967. Here 12 members met,
including founder member Mick Clements. Mick has held
the position of Club Treasurer from day one, and to mark
his long service to the club Mick was made President of
the club in 2005. Since that first meeting much has
changed. In 1970 the club relocated to an attic room in
the Smallwood Alms Houses as redevelopment of the town
centre meant that the original double garage was no
longer available. This was then the Club's home for the
next 27 years and it allowed the creation of a permanent
layout, which even now - nearly 30 years after its
dismantling - enthusiasts still remember with affection.
The years of change.
In the late 1980s it became clear that the
club needed to move forward to survive and the emphasis
of activities changed from the permanent layout to the
building of our first exhibition layout - Arrowmouth,
which is based in the 1960s on the Hest Bank area. It
was started in 1989, attended its first exhibition in
March 1992 and, thanks to a refreshing of the scenery
and track work together with regular attention from the
members, it is still on the exhibition circuit today. In
1967 the Redditch Model Railway Club staged its first
model railway exhibition in Redditch, and this has now
become an annual fixture of our calendar. After the construction of Arrowmouth the Club went on to build Gorcott, a slightly
smaller Settle and Carlisle-based layout. Like
Arrowmouth, the era of this layout was very much 1960s,
featuring the steam to diesel transition era. Like
Arrowmouth, Gorcott became a regular on the on the exhibition
circuit and has been exhibited at shows as nearby as the
Warley National Model Railway Exhibition at the NEC and
as far away as Wakefield in West Yorkshire, and Ipswich
in Anglia. As well as homing in on the north west in the
1960s, club projects have also taken on a Somerset and
Dorset Railway theme through the enthusiasm for this
much-lamented cross-country line of Mick Clements. We
have built a total of four exhibition layouts based on
an S&D theme. The latest is Chilcompton (shown to
the left), which was first
exhibited in February 2001 and is a scale representation
of the real station on the S&DJR with curves at each end
to reach the fiddle yard which is shared with our Dagnell
End, Oakenshaw and Norgrove layouts.
Modelling a prototype has meant many happy hours
researching it including a number of field visits to
both measure and photograph what is left of the real
station site today.
Taking the Club to new levels
In
2004 the Club took the brave decision to create a
totally new model railway exhibition. After searching
for a suitable location without success, the club found
the Cocks Moors Woods Leisure Centre in Kings Heath in
South Birmingham, which is an ideal venue because of its
proximity to the M42/M40 motorways and its 16,500 sq ft
halt which allows the whole show to be contained within
one room. The Club held the first Birmingham Model
Railway Exhibition in September 2005, and it has
developed into a high quality and friendly show with a
good reputation. Unfortunately after five events the
exhibition was found not to be financially viable. Finding a home for a model
railway club is not getting any easier, and in 1997 we
had to leave the Smallwood Alms House and took temporary
residence at the nearby former Methodist Church that was
used by several voluntary groups. It gave the Club a
base, but we didn't have much space to build new layouts
and so it was, that due to the structural condition of
the Church, the Redditch Model Railway Club became
homeless again in 2006. The Council threw us a lifeline
with the offer of one of their Enterprise Units on a
local industrial estate, the only snag was the cost of
commercial rent and business rates - a lot different to
the free double garage we started out with in 1967!
However, we now have 24-hour access to our club rooms
with the option to load and unload vans under cover when
we take layouts out to shows, but most importantly we
have space to build new layouts and develop our existing
exhibition projects.
The future
The
move to the industrial estate has also seen us encourage
a handful of new members and productivity has increased
as we now meet twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday
evenings - after all, we are paying for the clubroom so
why not use it? We don't usually have a layout up and
running on club nights, but we are an active group of
modelers and regularly spend the evenings building
buildings and scenic items for our current project,
Norgrove. This new fictitious layout is based in South
Birmingham in the 1970's and construction will take a
number of years to complete. Construction started
on this layout in August 2020 and followed the more or
less competition of our Oakenshaw and Smallwood layouts. The
latter is
based on fictitious mill town in West Yorkshire in the
1960s. Construction of this layout started
slowly in 2010, but Club Members have also built
Smallwood and refurbished the scenery on both our
Arrowmouth and Dagnell End layouts since then. The Club had a self-imposed deadline to complete
Oakenshaw in
time for an appearance at the Warley National Model
Railway Exhibition in 2014. During June 2014 Oakenshaw was photographed by
Trevor Jones from Hornby Magazine
and the layout was featured in the October 2014 edition of
that magazine. During 2013 the started another layout
project called Smallwood. This is an end to end layout
designed more for one day and smaller exhibitions. The
layout is based in the 1970's and will be controlled
totally using DCC and is designed as the test bed for a
much larger project set in the same era. As a club we are
always open to new members and, whilst we might not
always have trains running, there are always plenty of
projects to get involved whatever your modelling
abilities. We've got an exciting future ahead with four
layouts to maintain, Smallwood to complete and the start
of another called Norgrove,
so why not get in touch and join the team?