Smallwood Introduction

Exhibition Manager Details 

 

 It is 1976, a year best remembered for the long, hot summer and the Montreal Olympic Games. On television, viewers enjoyed programmes such as When the Boat Comes In, George and Mildred and Noel Edmonds' Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. Steam had disappeared from British Rail almost a decade earlier, yet the railway scene had changed surprisingly little. Years of underinvestment and the industrial unrest that characterised the 1970s meant that many parts of the network retained a distinctly timeworn appearance, making this a fascinating era to model. Welcome to Smallwood, a fictional market town somewhere in England. Its once-important terminal station has seen far better days. Built during more prosperous times, the station still possesses four platforms, although the faded buildings, tired infrastructure and general air of neglect reflect the economic realities of the period. Despite its declining fortunes, Smallwood continues to handle parcels traffic and includes a small DMU stabling point, providing a varied mix of passenger and operational movements. The future, however, is already casting its shadow. During the 1980s, the arrival of the new Sprinter fleet will bring further rationalisation. The parcels depot will close, while the station itself will lose much of the character that defines it in the mid-1970s. Below the main station lie the remains of an earlier railway facility, now repurposed as exchange sidings serving several local industries. These sidings, too, have only a limited future and will disappear before the end of the decade to make way for the town's new bypass. Smallwood has been constructed as a proving ground for a much larger layout planned in the same BR Blue diesel era called Norgrove that is under construction.. The layout is fully operated using DCC and features a wide range of detailed scenic buildings. Locomotives and rolling stock comprise a mixture of kit-built and ready-to-run models, all carefully weathered and enhanced to capture the atmosphere of the period. Although relatively compact, the track plan has been designed to reproduce a wide variety of authentic British Rail operating practices. Passenger services, parcels traffic, engineers' trains and local freight workings combine to create an engaging sequence of realistic train movements, ensuring there is always something of interest taking place.   

Exhibition Details

 Exhibition Details Layout Owner : The Redditch Model Railway Club

Number of operators required : two to three 

Layout size : 15ft x 1.5ft – The layout is operated mainly from behind and is a terminus to fiddle yard arrangement

Expenses :  We would expect reimbursement for out of pocket expenses for members and or The Club following the exhibition of this layout.

Magazine Features : featured in the January 2020 edition of Hornby Magazine