British Railway Modelling (BRM)

LAYOUT | OO | CRIMSON ROAD Working in the centre of Birmingham, my daily travel was by train. The main route was on the Cross City service. Standing around at stations for arrivals gave me time to look at the tracks, from the type of sleepers used, colours of ballast and layout design. However, sometimes when services were disrupted, I would travel in from Rugeley passing by Bescot Depot, seeing rows of locos (Class 60s, 37s 56s, etc., with one standing out in particular - 37114 City of Worcester) waiting in sidings and also departing out of the goods yard. Back in the ‘70s, I had visited both Old Oak Common Depot and also Whitemoor Depot, March, when it was under BR control and all the locos were in BR…

Name: Peter Griffiths Age: 68 Number of years modelling: Since my teenage years Name of your first layout: I helped construct a layout at the Huntingdon Model Railway Club in the 1960s, though I cannot remember its name; it was a round circuit layout. Favourite era/region: At the turn of the millennium, when EWS was just starting, there was still a large number of older types of diesel locomotives in various liveries still in main line use. Favourite locomotive: The Class 37. I remember this loco type from trainspotting in my youth, and the fact it is still operational today shows that it's a great locomotive. I live in South Staffordshire, close to the northern end of HS2 where it will connect up with the West Coast Main Line. It…

EDITOR'S COMMENT Having a good clear-out seems to be the theme at BRM headquarters this month, as we've been decluttering our storage areas and making way for new projects, including a new layout, which you can read all about on page 48. Going through old articles and products can provide a wealth of inspiration, plus serve as a good reminder of ideas that probably should have made it past the cutting room the first time around. We've packaged up some of these old projects and sent them off to our fantastic contributors, which you will see in future issues of the magazine. Getting rid of an old layout can be a difficult decision, but there is plenty of satisfaction to be gained by passing it on to its next owner…

One of the youngest volunteers on the Lincolnshire Coast Light Railway, 20-year-old Matthew Forman-Clark (who lives in Skegness) has just qualified as a driver of diesel locomotives in time for the main summer season. Matthew qualified as a train guard two years ago and is now thought to be the youngest qualified diesel train driver in his home county, Lincolnshire. His ambition now is to train and qualify as a driver of the LCLR's iconic steam locomotive, the 1903-vintage Jurassic. The railway -- which was the first heritage line in the world to be built and operated by enthusiasts when it opened at its original site at Humberston, south of Cleethorpes on August 27th, 1960, began offering three-day-a-week services in August two years ago on its line in the Skegness…

We have been renting our clubroom (since 2007) for a peppercorn fee, but we have no security of tenure. Well, the inevitable has finally happened and we've been given a month's notice to quit! The feedback we got from the BRM article describing ‘Olney’ (September 2023) has convinced us that it's worth trying to preserve the layout in one form or another as it is far from life-expired. We have had the idea of loaning the layout as a visitor attraction to selected local outlets such as garden centres, or other family leisure destinations. We would offer to look after the operational aspects with the added advantage that, being fully DCC, the layout could be operated by visitors from their own devices a la Pete Waterman. There is also a…

LAYOUT | OO | LITTLE COLNE “‘Little Colne’ Mark Two has had a very warm reception across the South East of England and we are looking forward to showing it further afield in due course.” Back in 2018, I attended a local exhibition held by the Colchester Model Railway Club B and was most-taken with a fairly small OO layout called ‘Little Colne’. I immediately resolved to book it for our own exhibition in Braintree and approached the owner, Peter Vestey, only to be told, “I don't take it to exhibitions – I only bought it here today as a favour to my Club.” I congratulated Peter on the quality of his work and thought nothing more of it until I saw it again at the Shenfield exhibition of the…