Model railway show hits 40

[John Ashworth]

A model railway exhibition in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, UK, is celebrating its 40th year.

Railway show hits 40
10 January 2008

BRAMBLETON Model Railway Club is staying on track by holding its 40th annual exhibition at Harpenden Public Halls in Southdown Road from 10.30am until 5.30pm on Saturday, January 19.

There will be 11 track layouts on show, while local railway artist Michael Franklin and railway authors Geoff and Sue Woodward will make appearances.

Tickets are £3.50 for adults and £2.50 for children and senior citizens.

The club began in 1947 and has one of the largest outdoor track layouts in the country. For more information go to http://www.brambleton.co.uk

This struck a chord with me as, when I was a callow youth in the late 1960s and early '70s, my local model railway club exhibited a layout at this exhibition for several years in a row. I belonged to the Ilford and West Essex Model Railway Club, "the third oldest model railway club in the country" (as we always added proudly). We met in a shed next to Chadwell Heath Station on the Liverpool Street to Shenfield line. Although the club did have a proper gate to the road, in those days when there was little if any paranoia about security or health and safety the more normal access was by going to the country end of the down slow platform, squeezing under the road bridge and scrambling up an embankment. Once a year we would load the two or three base-boards of our narrow gauge layout (loosely based on Welsh quarries, if I remember rightly, to OO9 scale) into a fairly decrepit van, all pile into an equally decrepit car, and head north for a day of model railway operations.