IPSWICH RAILWAY MODELLERS ASSOCIATION

The progress of a club - from a pub to a church! - charted by their Publicity Officer. Previously published in British Railway Modeling November 1995

GRAHAM LOVELL.

The Association first met in the ‘Oxborrows’ pub in May 1966. From then on the members have met at various locations, including above a bakery and a Chinese restaurant, in a Scout hut, and in the Ipswich Engineers shed on Foxhall Road. Then there were some converted chicken huts in Bixley Drive - which were rather difficult to find on a dark winter’s night! In 1986 we had to move as our huts were to be knocked down to make room for a housing estate.

After much searching, our Secretary found an old disused church, St. Peter’s (between the ‘Novotel’ and Stoke Bridge), which we could use. We moved in May 1986 and have been there ever since. Strange enough, the church is just across the road from the pub where it all started 20 years before. With the increase in space, more could be built. We now have layouts being built in 0, P4, EM, six in 00 and two in N gauge.

Starting with the 0 gauge layout, Crossley Junction, this is a continuous run with a single track junction station and a branch to a small high level station. Work on this is progressing rapidly as most of the builders are retired and can come and do some work at any time.

The first EM layout, Gun Lane an East London dock shunting layout. based on the ideas of lan Rice (i.e. 2’ of scenery and 10’ of fiddle yard)

The second EM gauge layout, Great Easton is a modern image/steam, Eastern/Southern region freight line how about that for a mixture. This uses the baseboards of a previous EM layout, but the rest has been totally rebuilt.

The first of the OO layouts is Foxley, a modern image layout built ten years ago to fit the chiken hut we were in, but since total1y rebuilt. I think that all that remains of the original is the station p1atforms, the bridges and the basic idea of a four track main line. This year it has been extended to 44’ long with a MPD and engineers siding added.

Next layout is Oxdon and Swintord, basically two termini connected via a turntable. Each terminus can be operated independently. The turntable is being replaced with a normal fiddle yard, as it fell apart at the last exhibition we did.

The next 00 layout is unnamed and. is a double-tracked, fine scale, junction set in steam days. Progress on this is slow as all the builders usually get pulled away to do other jobs in the club.

There is also a 4O’ layout, Grimsthorpe Junction, also known as "Pete’s layout". This features a pre-grouping NER/GER country junction on one side and a hump shunting yard as the fiddle yard on the other. It has been built by Pete and his small band of helpers out of any old scraps of wood or track that they could find. For example, the hump yard points are worked by the remains of an old typewriter

The final 00 layout is "Jim’s layout". This is a multi-tracked continuous run layout built for children’s entertainment.

Our N gauge group reformed when we moved into the church, i.e. some members joined who modeled N gauge, and are now busy rebuilding Biggen Park, a large four track exhibition layout. The younger members of the N gauge group have built a small exhibition layout, HallbrookVale (named after the members who built it),which will be extented once Biggen Park finished.

Club nights are on Tuesday and start at 7.30pm. The Foxley group also work on a Thursday at the same time. If you want to visit, please feel free to do so.

Forthcoming open days at St Peter’s Church are on Saturdays November 4 and December16, from 10 am to 1pm. Our main exhibition is held on November 18 and 19 at the Northgate Sports Centre, Sidegate Ipswich featuring 20 plus layouts including Biggen Park and Foxley Mk. 2 making their debut appearances (see Diary Dates’ for further details).

For details of the Association

contact either Ken Welton 01473 711718 or Graham Lovell on 01473 286397.