Author

Tom Cunnington

Date

28th June 2026

Reading Time

4 minutes

Whilst the latest political chaos unfurled in London on 20/21 June, Minories made its way to the relaxed setting of Buxton and its gardens for Railex Buxton.

Now in its 5th year, it was a return for most of the team as we were at the show with Copenhagen Fields two years ago.

Rob came over to Chiswick for 10 on the Friday morning and we completed loading the car and trailer and were on our way before 11. On a journey that long the lower speed limit with the trailer can add 20+ minutes to the journey, but the delays this time were primarily due to congestion so we arrived about an hour later than I had hoped.

Hugh had come by train and bus taking in the scenic view of that part of the world – thankfully passing through Bedford a few hours before the tragic collision later in the afternoon – and was there to meet us.

We got the layout up and basic cleaning and testing before we were kicked out at 6pm, leaving us to stock up on Saturday morning. Rob and Hugh found a suitable pub owned by the local brewery for some well needed refreshment and dinner, whilst we waited for Oliver to arrive by train via Stockport at 9.30 after school.

Since the last outing you may recall I’ve modified the fiddle yard in readiness for its use on Canonbury and – despite testing – found a couple of issues with section breaks that I guess could only be found with multiple trains on the layout, as loco chassis with pickups on both bogies bridged joints causing shorts. I design the ‘potential’ for shorts in as a way to prevent trains going through points set against them – with longer ‘frog’ sections up to the fouling point – so there is a risk for that to go wrong. We worked round the issues on Saturday and some “wheels free” possessions on Sunday before the show opened sorted them out with two extra cuts in the rails and we could put a couple more trains into service. Of course the one item I hadn’t brought was a razor saw, so we borrowed one off a neighbour…

The new fiddle yard layout allows for a slightly different method of operation to rotate the trains more evenly, as it avoids having trains blocked in at the far end of the fiddle yard and can rescue handling a bit too. But I could see some of our neighbours looking quizzically at the way the trains moved around the back and how we used the curved ends to stage trains so that we maximise the activity on the scenic section.

On the rolling stock front, Buxton saw the first running of the intermodal train alongside the Freightliner train. Both are the original release Bachmann trains with additions from C-Rail to dilute the standard containers supplied by Bachmann.  The mineral wagons have grown in number so we had two trains of them, and weathering continues ahead of attempting scrap metal loads. And a number of newer locos have been weathered so could be used blended in with the rest of the stock rather than standing out.

Despite the heat the layout ran well – the only issue with the layout came later on Sunday when the heat pushed out one of the stock rails on the point into the loco spur, although the operators certainly need hydrating. Thankfully if the passenger trains turn around often enough we don’t use the spur so Rob and Hugh on the station side kept things running.

With a long journey back I didn’t want to hang around at the end so we started removing the freight trains and moved to a passenger only service half an hour before the show closed, and ran the last train at 4.30. With the assistance of Danny, Jon and Kieran (from the Lacey Dale group who had used the opportunity to visit their prototype and the show in a long day out) we broke the layout down and – once the fairground outside had started to pack down – recovered the trailer from behind it to load. We were on our way in just over an hour.

Not the easiest weekend to travel, as the M1 was closed southbound all day with what looked like a tedious diversion around Milton Keynes so we took a ‘scenic’ route via Stoke to Chiswick where we unloaded the layout in the storage unit it lives in and dropped the trailer to be home for about 11. Hugh already had his return planned via Stockport and the WCML and Rob squeezed in the car with the Lacey Dale clan.

The next invitation for Minories is for the Erith show in January, but with at least two and a possible third invitation for 2028 the layout continues. It’s 20 years this summer since wood was first cut for the baseboards at Peter Mann’s workshop, the track built on my kitchen table and I started work on the class 105 kits and the repainting of the Mk1 suburbans. Time flies…

Tom