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Layouts at the 2028 Redditch Model Railway Exhibition

It is planned to have a selection of layouts in the popular scales. Layouts Booked so far confirmed will include for our 2028 show:

 
  1. Bridgnorth - A new 4mm scale Model of station of the same name set in 1960
  2. Oakenshaw - 4mm scale layout based in West Yorkshire

Others being confirmed ..........

 


Bridgnorth - presented by Graham Heald  - 4mm Scale

Today, Bridgnorth station is the northern terminus of the Severn Valley Railway and is probably familiar to the many thousands of visitors who travel on the line each year. However, this model depicts Bridgnorth as it appeared in 1960, when the station was still an intermediate stop on the Severn Valley route, which then linked Shrewsbury with Hartlebury and Kidderminster. The model therefore represents Bridgnorth during the final years of its working life under British Railways, just a few years before passenger services were withdrawn in 1963.  Built in 00 gauge (4mm scale), the model is operated using an NCE DCC control system, with sound-fitted locomotives providing an added level of realism. Particular attention has been paid to reproducing the station as it would have appeared during the period, rather than depicting the preserved railway that can be seen today.  All of the buildings on the model have been scratch-built, using photographs and other historical information as reference, and are based on the buildings that stood at Bridgnorth station in and around 1960.  The result is a model that captures Bridgnorth at an important moment in its history – when it was still a working British Railways station, but with the end of passenger services only a few years away.  

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Oakenshaw - presented by Redditch MRC - 4mm Scale

Oakenshaw  is a fictitious West Yorkshire mill town set in the early 1960s, located somewhere near the real town of Keighley on the Airedale Line. Like so many Yorkshire mill towns, the layout is centred on a river crossing, with the railway serving a busy industrial community surrounded by stone-built mills, warehouses and terraced housing nestled in the valley. Following the regional boundary changes of 1957, this former Midland Railway station became part of the short-lived North Eastern Region of British Railways. Although now under new management, the station still retains its unmistakable Midland Railway character, reflected in both its architecture and operating practices. Built to 4mm scale using OO gauge finescale Code 75 track, Oakenshaw captures the final years of Britain's steam era, when new diesel traction was beginning to appear alongside traditional locomotives. Passenger, parcels and freight services all combine to create an authentic snapshot of everyday railway operation in industrial Yorkshire. Every building on the layout has been scratch-built, using thick card for the basic structure before being clad with Plastikard embossed to represent the local stone and brickwork. Careful painting and weathering recreate the distinctive appearance of West Yorkshire's soot-blackened industrial landscape. Behind the scenes, a sixteen-road fiddle yard is capable of holding up to twenty-four complete trains, allowing a varied and continuous sequence of realistic operations throughout an exhibition. The trains are carefully assembled to reflect those that would have been seen in the area during the period, with authentic coaching stock and freight formations hauled by a mixture of steam and first-generation diesel locomotives.  

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