Spring Exhibition Layouts 2025
Nonsuch Tudor Railway (O:16-5)
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Brent Eleigh (009) - Peter Rednall
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Brent Eleigh is a small village lying between Sudbury and Bildeston in West Suffolk. Following the 1896 Light Railway Act, a line was surveyed by Colonel Stephens to link Hadleigh with Long Melford with the intention of developing the agricultural economy of the local area. The railway was never built, but this layout represents a narrow gauge version of what might have been. With a little tweaking of the route, a junction has been modelled at Brent Eleigh to allow trains to diverge to nearby Lavenham.
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On leaving the station the ‘main line’ loops and crosses over itself in Himalaya Darjeeling style to gain the necessary height to carry it out of the valley and onto higher land for the journey to Long Melford. Most of the buildings adjacent to the station are modelled on those in the village, though a great deal of licence has been taken in relocating them.
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The model is set in springtime in the early 1950s, by which time the company has acquired a variety of both steam and diesel motive power, together with rolling stock from other lines which have closed. Road competition has yet to make serious inroads though cost cutting measures are being enforced.
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Dingle Town (OO) - Peter Worton
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Dingle Town shows a typical place on the outskirts of Liverpool which is still served by trams and a few motor buses. The trams seen running are ones that were still in operation between 1950 and 1956, although not all off the different types actually ran to Dingle. If you look carefully you will see the famous Green Goddess, Baby Grands and a few others that are not so famous. The tram depot has a number of trams which are under repair or waiting their next call for duty.
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Margaret's Mill (O) - Colin French
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A completely pointless Fenland layout!
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Fact
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The Wissington Railway was built in 1905 by Arthur Keeble to serve a remote area of Fenland in West Norfolk known as the Black Fen, which was devoid of surfaced roads. Local farmers valued the Railway as it was their only link to satisfactorily get the produce out and essentials in. Main crops were potatoes, carrots, celery and, ultimately, sugar beet. Incoming goods were fertilisers, coal and animal feeds.
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Fiction
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This layout imagines that Margaret's Mill and sidings were built on the edge of the Fen to assist local smallholders to get their produce to market and act as a centre for the receipt of essential goods. The Mill is very much part of the Wissington Railway and wagons are pushed up to the mill from the 'main line' and pulled out. Locomotives used are types which would have appeared on the Wissington Railway over the years. The period depicted is the late 1940s. The track plan is based on a typical layout which appeared on the Wissington Railway.
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The layout is a micro shunting layout built to a scale of 7mm / 1ft and shows what can be achieved in this scale in a very small space. The whole board measures 48 inches by 15 inches. Shunting is carried out randomly or by using a wagon cards and dice system.
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Market Barton (OO) - Michael Gurton
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Small branch line terminus set in rural Suffolk, serving a fictitious market town. The branch connects to the Bury to Ipswich line at Thursford Junction. It is autumn, so principal goods are sugar beet bound for Bury sugar beet factory and barley / malt to and from the maltings.
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Molehill Green (009) - Andrew Smith
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Molehill Green is a small hamlet in Essex… only there are two such hamlets (ten miles apart as the crow flies) named Molehill Green in Essex, one just to the east of Stansted Airport and one between Felsted and Braintree. So take your pick which one you think it is!

This small depiction of the Essex countryside shows a station on a narrow gauge railway line used to move gravel from the quarry sites to the larger town where the gravel is loaded for transportation to other areas. This small station looks like the trains terminate here, but they are really turned around before carrying on their journey down the line, and then return going the other way later. Although the gravel and goods trains dominate the running on this line, passenger trains also have running rights as this brings in workers and also serves the local villages.
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​Nonsuch Tudor Railway (O:16.5) - Derek Reeve
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What if the Tudors had developed the railways instead of the Victorians? This is my idea of how it may have been. Everything is scratch-built including the locos, rolling stock, animations, mice and buildings. Most of the locos run on a Hornby ‘Smokey Joe’ chassis.
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Nonsuch is a real place in Surrey, although many of the buildings are models of actual buildings in the Suffolk / Essex area, including the Guildhalls at Lavenham and Thaxted. The layout took nearly two years of intensive modelling to build; literally thousands of hours. Most of the buildings have taken in excess of 60 to 100 hours each to make.
Why the mice you ask? My previous layout ‘Wendsleydale’ was a cheese mine that had 125 mice. I was debating whether to make mice or traditional figures for Nonsuch, but on visiting a local model railway show, I was recognised as ‘the Mouse Man’, so it was mice again...!
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