Today I went to two club open days: relaxed informal events where clubs open their doors and show you what they are doing.

Thetford and District Model Railway Society and Bury St Edmunds Model Railway Club organised their open days on the same day at venues only 10 miles apart so that it was easy to visit both. Good forward planning!

Thetford and District Model Railway Society.

The club meet in the Charles Burrell Centre, a community and business centre in Thetford. (I thought the centre was a very good idea. Why don’t more communities have centres like this?).

The club have lots of space, some large layouts and they were running two sales stands. I had a good chat to the modellers, a nice coffee, a tasty Eccles cake (I was told the secret is the brown sugar) and I walked away with some HO scale buildings.

Bury St Edmunds Model Railway Club

A short hop down the road and I found myself in a light, airy village hall with the Bury St Edmunds club. They were showing two nice N gauge layouts, part of their large ‘L’ shaped O gauge layout and three interesting modelling demonstrations. I had a really good chat with Simon Fox the owner of Foxvale, a nicely detailed N gauge layout, and picked up lots of ideas.

I have been missing seeing model railways at exhibitions and today has really boosted my modelling morale. Many thanks to both clubs for organising two great open days on the same day specifically so that people could visit both.