The Bury St Edmunds Model Railway Club held their annual exhibition today. With 20 exhibitors and 15 traders it was well worth a visit. Here are a few pictures of the some of the layouts.

Signa Dale is an 009 layout by Peter Rednall of the Sudbury MRC and represents a small town in the Peak District in the 1950’s.

It featured a rather nice engine shed…

… and some cut out buildings carefully positioned in front of the backscene that really added depth to the layout.

 

At the far end of the layout were some limestone outcrops that partially hid the quarry.

There were a number of modern image layouts featuring maintenance, MPD or TMD depots. If you have a collection of locos this is a great way of displaying and running them. There was something rather enjoyable about standing in front of these layouts and listening to the rumble of the idling diesel locos!

Beal Street Depot, in 00 by Ray Pond, is one example loosely based on the Leicester diesel depot.

I was particularly impressed with the detailed interior of the crew buildings.

Continuing the modern image theme. Templefield by David Fisher is a OO scale model of a fictitious former GWR station in West London, inspired by the West Drayton to Uxbridge Vine St branch line, set in the 1970s. I’m always drawn to small layouts. I liked the buildings (mostly scratch built) and the atmosphere David has created.

 

There were several impressive N gauge layouts (and good support for the scale from the traders too, which was good to see). This is Ambleton Vale by Anna Bass and Ray Taylor. It’s a rural branchline with features typical of the area around Newmarket in the 1960s.

 

Anna and Ray have modelled a number of scenes that you rarely see on layouts. This is a rather super agricultural show.

This is a day at the races. Well they said it featured things that were typical of Newmarket 🙂

Remember these scenes are modelled in N scale. It’s clever modelling!

I mentioned the trade support was very good, however, my purchases were limited to a few tools. The very well stocked Squires stand was hard to resist.

Switching to O gauge, Orford by Paul Clarke imagines that the Suffolk fishing village of Orford had a railway connection.

Paul has taken buildings from around the region as sources of inspiration for the model. The station building is based on the one in Thaxted Essex.

There are well created scenes throughout the layout. Including the coal wagon at the top of this blog.

Looking towards the overbridge creates a lovely scene and is a great way to finish a report on an enjoyable exhibition.