Renumbering Coaches

Here’s a simple project to renumber coaches to avoid having duplicates on the layout or make them specific to your region. These are Bachmann Mk1 sleepers – for the ‘next’ project, and with 3 of both types (SLSTP and SLF) in the rake I needed to renumber at least 4. They’ve been converted to EM …read more.

Minories in Brighton

The final outing for us in 2019 was to the Brighton Model Railway exhibition in November. It’s an invite from our member Nestor that we’ve had to put off due to previous clashes with Tolworth and Wakefield, but it’s a reasonably quick drive down the A23 for a set up on the Saturday morning as …read more.

Minories at the Great Electric Train Show 2019

Minories made the trip to Milton Keynes in October for the Great Electric Train Show. It was a late evening set up on the Friday, and we only just squeezed between the layouts either side that were already up when we got there. A fault in the wiring on a board (that had worked fine …read more.

Minories in Hornby Magazine

Minories is in the latest edition of Hornby Magazine, which appeared in my local WH Smiths today. Although planned for some time, the photo shoot only took place in May with editor Mark Wild coming down to Keen House for the shoot. You can see the layout in person at the Great Electric Train show …read more.

Minories goes to Derby Roundhouse

On the 12th and 13th May, Minories headed north to the historic Derby Roundhouse – for the Michleover Model Railway Group exhibition. John, Rob S and Tom headed north on Friday in a transit van (which came with a special adaption to first gear to keep the driver awake), where we met up with former chairman …read more.

Minories November 2017

We’ve had a busy few weeks, leading up to two exhibitions over consecutive weekends in November- Tolworth then Wakefield. It would be fair to say we weren’t quite ready for Tolworth Showtrain – so apologies to the Hampton Court MRS and those who came on the Saturday morning. However with perseverance we fixed the key …read more.

Sticking point

There are six points on Minories, all operated with Tortoise slow action point motors with Exactoscale baseplates transferring the movement of the motor through a tie-bar under the baseboard to wires soldered to the underside of the switch rails. There are stretcher bars between the switch rails, and although these do provide some mechanical joints between the two switch …read more.

Converting Heljan Class 23 to EM

The Heljan Class 23 is one of the simpler conversions to EM gauge. I don’t think there are any revolutionary ideas here, but hope this may be of use to anyone else contemplating the conversion or looking for an easy one to start with.     The model as supplied picks up electricity from the …read more.

Minories at 60th Anniversary Exhibition in Romford

We were delighted to be invited back to the Ilford and West Essex Model Railway Club’s exhibition “West Essex Modelrail” on 23/4 April, their 60th annual show. It took place at the St Edward’s School in Romford,         We were in a small pocket of EM layouts, opposite Mike Bell’s “Prospect Wharf …read more.

Layouts on tour – Spring 2016

Our layouts are all designed to be portable, so they can be taken to exhibitions. This spring we are delighted to have been invited to some great shows, including: 20th Feb – Minories (GN) headed into Southern territory at Tonbridge, whilst Happisburgh Goods went in the opposite direction to Biggleswade 12/13th March – Caledonian Goods (aka Mrs …read more.

Track building – Part 1

One of the more frequent questions I get asked at exhibitions is how the track is built. Modelling in EM there isn’t much choice for anything other than plain track, but my track building goes back to my teenage OO days. Despite living only a couple of miles away at the time, I originally stumbled …read more.

“Narrow Gorge” – OOn3 microlayout

“Narrow Gorge” is Tom Cunnington’s entry in the MRC’s 2015 layout challenge.

Although not his first layout,, it is a first attempt at a number of techniques, including narrow gauge (all the kit-built stock is new for the layout), modelling cliffs and water, and trying to give depth in a very small footprint. It was also a bit of a rush, having previously decided (several times) that it would be a distraction from other projects.

It’s built at 1:76 scale, the same as OO, but with narrower 3′  gauge track – normally called “OOn3”

Here’s the diary of how it was built over 18 days, mostly an hour or two later in the evening (with apologies for viewers on some mobile devices – the photos keep rotating back)