andykwilkinson

Hi everyone, Just to let you know that we now have the timetable for the courtesy vintage coach which will ferry passengers to/from Ely Railway Station and our Exhibition on Sat 18th May 2024 (which will this year be in the new Ely College buildings). Whilst free, we do hope you will consider making a donation to Macmillan Nurses (via Charles, it's driver and owner) when onboard. This timetable is designed to be convenient for the majority of trains that will (hopefully!) call from far and wide at Ely Station on that Saturday. If you are travelling from south of Cambridge please check as there is often engineering work (related to the building of Cambridge South Station) at the weekends. But we do have lots of free parking, should you want to come by car! I also heard last night that one of our invited layouts has had to withdraw - but our Exhibition Managers have a replacement lined up. As soon as I know the exact details I will let you know and update the list (earlier in this thread).

As at 4th March the following are confirmed for our Exhibition on Sat 18th May 2024 in Ely College CB6 3DY (the new building) Layouts Confirmed: High Lodge Logging Tramway - 009 (Terry Metcalfe, Ely MRC) Ambleton Vale - N Gauge (Ray Taylor & Anna Bass, Essex) Gracetown Bank - OO (Graham Moorfoot, Lincolnshire) Grazellar Bahn - HOe (Peter Johnston, Northamptonshire) Clone Line - OO (Cambridge MRC) Aviemore - N Gauge (Neil Watson, Ely MRC) Pitsford Yard - O Gauge (David Fennell, Suffolk) Top Yard - EM ((Dave Tailby, Leicestershire) Fordon Hill - N Gauge (Oscar & Ken Robson, Hertfordshire) St Saviour Street - N Gauge (Tim Chandler, Colchester MRC) Providence Colliery - OO (Theo Thomas, Luton MRC) Barway Sidings - O Gauge (Terry Cooke, Cambridge MRC) North Level Railway - 7mm Narrow Gauge (Alan Church, March MRC) Churwalden - N Gauge (Mark Ellis, Norfolk) Tashvale - N Gauge (Ely MRC) Traders Confirmed: H&A Models, Northamptonshire Coastal DCC, Suffolk Bob Pearman Books, Norfolk Great Eastern Models, Norfolk Railway Memories, Essex Layouts 4 U, Cambridgeshire The Railway Memorabilia Shop Great Eastern Railway Society Demonstrations: Derek Buck (Ely MRC) - Wagon Building Gary Welsh (Suffolk) - 'Model Behaviour' - Weathering Outside: Royston & District Model Engineering - Live Steam Railway and Minature Traction Engine Vintage Coach - Free Shuttle to/from Ely Railway Station Lots of free parking. As and when I get more information from our Exhibition Team I'll post it on here.

Hi again, I have just been sent some details of one of the new layouts that will be at this year's Exhibition, created by one of our Members - with help from a young neighbour. We must always try and encourage youngsters into our hobby - so well done Terry! Below is Terry's description: HIGH LODGE LOGGING TRAMWAY 009 - Terry Metcalfe - ElyMRC. Not a lot is known about this very short-lived railway located in what is now Thetford Forest. The mainline of the High Lodge logging railway or tramway ran from an area called High Lodge Farm on the Downham Estate to a sawmill close to the main standard gauge Cambridge to Norwich line in Santon Downham. There was also another sawmill located close to the village church. The length of this line was about 2.2 miles. A branch line ran from School Cottage eastwards for about 1 1⁄2 miles along the river valley to Little Lodge Farm. The tramway was constructed in 1918-1919 by the Canadian Forestry Corps (CFC) to recover logged timber from the Government requisitioned Downham Estate as there was a desperate shortage of timber. It was the only known logging tramway in East Anglia. The timber from the sawmill was sent to the Western Front in France for use as shoring for trenches and duckboards. It was built to the ‘standard’ 3 ft gauge favored by the CFC and used three Bagnall steam locomotives these plus one other loco were housed in a shed near the post office. The railway was dismantled shortly after the war ended the rights to the timber and the railway being sold to a consortium. The layout is DCC (Digital Command Control) because I wanted to have a loco with controllable sound The layout represents a narrow gauge railway in 1:76 scale known to Railway Modellers as 009. The track is 9mm wide which scales to a prototype width of 2’3” gauge. My next door neighbours 10 year old son has helped me build the feeder line from the logging activity to the trans shipment point, one of the deciduous trees and all of the log loads for the wagons. Hopefully he will also help with operating the layout. I hope to post some of the other invited layouts details soon.

We have some exciting news to share! 😀 Our 44th Model Railway Exhibition in Ely will be at Ely College (CB6 3DY) on Saturday 18th May 2024 and will, for the first time, be held in the newest part of Ely College. This superb space (2 large halls and a spacious entrance lobby - see pictures) offers our visitors, invited model railway exhibitors and invited traders a number of significant improvements. One of the main advantages will be completely level access to all the (directly interconnecting) spaces throughout. Alongside the new location of our visitor cafe, we will also have access to a large adjacent quadrangle where we hope to have Royston Model Engineers offering train rides for young families. Another advantage is that it should be a lot easier for our invited model railways and traders to set-up their layouts and stalls. Our Exhibition Managers are putting the final details into place and will be in contact with you all in the near future with the final exhibition pack/paperwork. And a further advantage is that we will have the use of Ely College onsite car parks (part of the old area and all of the new area). We will also have access to a large car park area at the adjacent Highfield School (2-3 minute walk from the show entrance). And the best bit - we are also doubling the number of car-park marshals to help direct you to all these extra spaces and all the car parking is FREE. As many of you will remember from last year’s show, if you wish to come by train we’ve got you covered too. We should again have a lovely vintage coach shuttle service running between Ely Railway Station and the Exhibition at Ely College. This is FREE - but Charles the driver would be delighted to accept voluntary donations onboard for Macmillan Nurses. We will publish a timetable for this vintage coach shuttle nearer the time. And when you arrive at the new Ely College entrance to the show, this year we will have TWO payment desks (both accepting card or cash payment) and so hope to significantly reduce any queuing (we open at 10.30am, close at 4.30pm.) Note that Ely College is a non-smoking site. Dogs are not allowed on site either - except assistance dogs are welcome. You will also be delighted to hear that, for the third year running, we will be holding our entrance prices, offering a good value day out to both modellers and families alike. This year we also hope to have a miniature traction engine offering rides around Ely College grounds for the children too. Full details of our invited layouts and traders and further useful information will be published in the near future on our website: www.elymrc.org.uk as well as on our Ely MRC Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Elymodelrailwayclub We’re really looking forward to putting on the show in this new, modern building at Ely College and very much hope to see you there on Sat 18th May 2024!

Just a quick update about our 2024 Exhibition (which will be on Sat 18th May). We are well aware that the queue to get into this year's show was at times (especially in the morning) unacceptably long and we apologise for this. I suspect it's because more and more people are now paying by card - which even with the card readers we have and 3 experienced people manning the door - seems to take longer than cash transactions. So, at our Exhibition Post Mortem Meeting last week, we have decided to DOUBLE the door ticket issuing/manning capacity next year, especially during the first couple of hours. We will have one table for Card & Cash, and a second table (across the corridor in the Entrance Lobby) which will just be for Cash transactions. Hopefully this will considerably speed up entry. Also, the Vintage bus shuttle to/from the station seems to have been mostly very well received. We plan on doing the same next year!

A few of us having post-exhibition beers and a meal in a local Ely pub after the show had been all packed away!

Thanks 298 for the comments - and to everyone who came to our Exhibition on Saturday. It was a great success and certainly one of our busiest shows in the last 15 years!!! The results of the 'Best Layout Competition' (as voted for by the public) and a picture of the winner receiving the Malcolm Hine Memorial Tankard from Sophie (Malcolm's niece) are now in the News section of our website. Thanks Sophie for offering to do this. There is also a rather good visitor video of our show already on YouTube! - again on this News link. Thanks again to the Traders who kindly and generously donated Raffle Prizes and to everyone who worked so very hard to make it all happen, especially our Exhibition Managers Brian & John, our Committee and a good number of stalwart Members and their partners. Thanks also to the vintage coach owner for doing the shuttle to/from Ely Railway Station. I believe he raised a tidy sum for Macmillan Nurses too. Sure, not everything went perfectly on the day (does it ever) but we got most of it right - I think and I hope. Of course, we will be having an Exhibition Post Mortem meeting in the Clubroom and will endeavour to make next year's show even better! FYI, our next show in Ely will be on Saturday 18th May 2024 - Note: we always go for the 3rd Saturday in May - so bookmark the date now! https://elymrc.org.uk/news/?fbclid=IwAR0UCoGVYX9jx1H-yMm7L74Alq4cVyjNyHqZ3SzGPft9rYZ7BZ9pFNftAdk

Update: The vintage coach shuttle to our Exhibition will depart from the bus stop near Tescos petrol station. It’s a 3-4 minute walk from Ely station. We have learnt that the coach will not be able to access to station forecourt because of the turning circles being too tight when it’s full of parked cars. We will have a Club Member at the station with a yellow sign who will direct you to the bus stop, see yellow line for path around Tescos to the bus stop.

A couple more snaps from last night...and some shots that the BBC reporter took when recording the interview with our Exhibition Managers, Brian & John in our Clubroom yesterday. That fiddle yard (ignore the bottle of wine, that's my donation to the raffle that will run at our Exhibition) will be full of lovely 1950's era Eastern Region stock on Saturday!

Great to see Wickham Market on it’s final test run last night before we show it at our Exhibition at Ely College on Saturday. After 10 years work we are rather pleased with the way it’s looking and running It’ll be dismantled & crated up on Thursday, loaded up in a big hired van on Friday and then unloaded Friday night and put back up - it’s on the stage in the main hall at the College. Lots of other superb layouts, in various gauges, scales and eras have been invited to the show too as well as some good traders. There will be demos, a loco repair clinic with Tony Wright & the Royston Model Engineers will have train rides for the children just outside - the weather forecast is favourable too. And for the first time we have a vintage coach doing a shuttle service between Ely railway station and our venue at Ely College! Anyway, fingers crossed it’ll all go exactly as planned - we’ve some experience in doing this after all these years! Don’t forget, the Exhibition opens to the public at 10.30am on the day of the show. We hope to see some of you there!

I gather BBC Radio Cambridgeshire did an interview live this morning with our 2 Exhibition Managers (Brian & John) who are organising our 44th Annual Show this Saturday at Ely College - the main interview will be broadcast on Lucy's evening show tonight. Amongst the things talked about was Wickham Market, our large OO "round-roundy" based on the prototype just north of Woodbridge (pictured in a blue diesels era, just for fun). This will will be at the show after 10 years work to get it to Exhibition standard - but in 1950s steam era guise. We're very proud of it so do come and see it!!!!

We are (as always) delighted to have Great Eastern Models as one of our key traders at our forthcoming Ely Model Railway Exhibition - Sat 20th May 2023 (10.30am-4.30pm). Start thinking about what you might want to buy and, if possible, let them know beforehand so they can bring it for you. Also, they have (again) very generously donated a superb raffle prize, this starter train set. Sure, we appreciate this will be more suitable for one of your kids or grandchildren rather than some of you serious modellers that visit every year - but it's a very generous gesture by them and we thank them kindly! The raffle will run on the day - so do consider buying a ticket for it when you’re at the show. Tools 4 You, another regular and much valued trader at our shows has also donated some nice items too. See you all on Saturday! Not long to go now!!!

Hi everyone, I have some good news. It seems the only rail engineering work taking place on Sat 20th May (our Ely Exhibition date!) is south of Cambridge. Trains to Ely from Cambridge, Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, March, Peterborough, King's Lynn and from Norwich on that line will be running, and in most cases, entirely as normal. 😀. Do please make your own checks regarding your specific train route. Charles, the driver of our courtesy vintage coach (see pictures earlier in this thread) has also been given permission to use Ely station car park to run his bus shuttle to/from our Exhibition. So the coach will be allowed to wait right outside the station entrance! 😀 Note that this will be a FREE service but he asks that passengers make a donation to Macmillan Nurses using the onboard collection tin he has. Working with Charles we have worked out the following bus timetable (attached) so that it should be a good fit with the principal trains arriving at Ely every hour and no one should be left hanging around at the railway station for an excessive length of time. The journey (about 1.5 miles) should take about 10 minutes or so each way. This is the first time we've tried this so we have planned it carefully and very much hope people take advantage of this facility to visit our Exhibition via train. If it goes well, we would hope to make this a feature every year. (Of course, if you still want to drive we still have the large, free and exclusive car park at Ely College too). So, let the train (and Charle's gorgeous vintage coach!) take the strain - and we'll hope to see you at our Exhibition! Just a reminder that we open at 10.30am and close at 4.30pm.

We've just had approval from Highways to put our road signs up around Ely 10 days before the event - so look out for those very soon! We are also just finalising the arrangements for the vintage coach shuttle to/from Ely railway station to the Exhibition venue. I will post that info as soon as it's nailed.

For those interested in visiting our show to see our Wickham Market. Finally, I've finished my 4mm scale model of The Granary at Wickham Market (for Campsea Ashe), our Club's large new OO round-roundy exhibition layout based on the prototype as it would have been in the mid/late 1950s-early 60s. Pictures of model and (one of the few) pictures I had to go on showing The Granary, near the signal box, attached. See also our track plan. Both Granary, Signal Box and almost everything else has long been demolished but the station building itself survives and has been turned into a superb community cafe/centre. Fortunately, Wickham Market station still remains open - but is now effectively just a halt on the now mostly singled line between Lowestoft and Ipswich. This layout, the result of many years work by a good group of us at Ely & District Model Railway Club, will be at our forthcoming Model Railway Exhibition at Ely College on Saturday 20th May (doors open at 10.30am). Do come and visit! 😀