Monthly Club News

December 2019 : We start this month off with an 8 page feature article on our Smallwood layout that was in the January 2020 edition of Hornby Magazine that was on sale from 4th December 2019. Work has continued on our new fiddle yard with all five main boards now completed.

November 2019: Construction of our new fiddle yard has continued as has work on making some minor track improvements to our Smallwood layout and the continued construction of Auch Ae layout by a small group of club members. We have also done some baseboard construction for two other club member layouts meaning at times we were working on five different layouts. We had an enjoyable weekend at the Warley Model Railway Exhibition over the weekend of the 23rd and 24th November with our display stand. This year we  once again incorporated our Barrie Island into the display which was very well received by the visitors.

October 2019 : With our annual model railway show out of the way for another year we start October firmly back in layout building mode. The timber was all cut on Thursday 3rd \October for our new fiddle yard that will be used behind our Chilcompton, Dagnell End, Oakenshaw and our soon to be started North Grove layouts. The fiddle yard will allow more and longer trains to be operated and will be completed ready for our exhibition commitments for the layouts in 2020. We had a great weekend exhibiting our Smallwood layout at the Great Electric Train Show over the weekend of the 12th and 13th October. This exhibition was once again at the new venue of the MK Arena in Milton Keynes.

September 2019: Work continues to prepare our Dagnell End layout for our annual exhibition. We staged our 46th Redditch Model Railway Exhibition over the weekend of the 21st and 22nd September and thank you to all that attended. On Thursday 26th  September Mike Wild the editor of Hornby Magazine visited our club rooms. He spent the evening photographing our Smallwood layout for a forthcoming article on the layout in Hornby Magazine. If all goes to plan Smallwood will be featured in the December 2019 edition of the magazine.

August 2019: We start this month preparing layouts for the forthcoming shows in the Kingfisher Shopping Centre on the 17th and 18th August and at the Trinity High School in September. Work is now pressing ahead with our Dagnell End layout ready for the exhibition appearances in the autumn. We had a successful weekend with our Pop up Model Railway show in the Kingfisher Shopping Centre with nearly 1500 visitors over the weekend.

July 2019 : We are completing an upgrade on our Oakenshaw layout to remove a problem we caused when we constructed it. July 2019 marks the 20th anniversary since Redditch Model Railway Club became a .com. Work has continued on the planning of our new layout. Following an Extra Ordinary General Meeting on 23rd July the vacant post on the Committee was filled by John Tisi.

June 2019: Saturday 1st June 2019 marked the 52nd anniversary of the formation of the Redditch Model Railway Club. On the evening of Thursday 1st June 1967 a meeting was held at the White Hart Public House in Headless Cross in Redditch which resulted in the Redditch Model Railway Club being formed. The Club's Annual General Meeting on Tuesday 4th June once again provided few surprises and the Committee where re-elected apart from Buchanan McInroy who stood down. We have started an upgrade on our Oakenshaw layout to remove a problem we caused when we constructed it. This involves realigning some of the track at one end of the layout so as to remove the need for adaptor boards to fit onto our generic fiddle yard that is used on other layouts.  We had a very enjoyable 3 days from the 14th to 16th June exhibiting our Arrowmouth layout at the Great Central Railway.

May 2019 Planning for our new 1970's based layout has continued by drawing out the proposed layout out full sized on a very large piece of paper.  This is allowing us to refine the ideas before we commit to actually making the layout We have also been remaking all of the trestles that support our Chilcompton and Oakenshaw layouts to make them more sturdy than the current ones.

April 2019 We had a great weekend in the company of a Pannier Tank 8F and a Jinty amongst other things at the Engine House at Highley at the Severn Valley Railway exhibiting our Smallwood layout on the 6th and 7th April. We have started to draw out a plan for our new 1970's exhibition layout Northgrove. It will be a similar size to Dagnell End and Oakenshaw. We have replaced a point on Arrowmouth that had failed the last time the layout was operated in readiness for the outing in June to the Great Central Railway.

March 2019: We are continuing to improve our layouts ready for forthcoming exhibitions. Work on Dagnell End is nearly complete and the exciting news is you will be able to see the layout at our show in September. We are also spending more time preparing our Smallwood layout for the SVR Open Weekend in April.

February 2019: We have continued on the improvements to our Dagnell End layout. Work is currently centred on the London Underground part of the layout with sections of the track being relayed to improve operational reliability. We have also spent some time preparing our Smallwood layout for the SVR Open Weekend in April.

January 2019: We start 2019 with work continuing on our Smallwood layout and preparing our Oakenshaw layout for the Weston Super Mare Model Railway Exhibition in January 2019. We had a great weekend and were well looked after at the Weston exhibition on 13th January where our Oakenshaw layout was well received by the visitors - We will be back next year with a different layout.