Full steam ahead as Bury St Edmunds railway modellers plan biggest-ever exhibition to mark club’s 75th anniversary

For more than a century model railways have exerted a pull on their devotees as powerful as the Flying Scotsman in full steam.

When a bright spark of a train buff first thought of condensing the fire-breathing monsters hauling heavy loads across the country into something that could run on a table top it was the start of a hobby that has captivated millions.

And as years went by it grew from clockwork toys to the current heights of huge, intricate, electric-powered layouts, with celebrity fans including Rod Stewart, Pete Waterman and Tom Hanks.

The world’s first model rail club was set up in London in 1910 and in 1949 a handful of East Anglian enthusiasts began meeting in Bury St Edmunds.

This month Bury St Edmunds Model Railway Club is planning its most ambitious-ever exhibition to mark its 75th anniversary… while also facing its biggest challenge.

The show at St Edmundsbury Cathedral, on September 28, will bring together more than 20 of the finest model layouts from all over the country. But once it is taken down the club will have just over two weeks left to find itself a new home.

The farm buildings where it has been based for 50 years are needed by their new owner, who has already granted them extra time to move.

In the run up to the exhibition members were working flat out on their new Bury Station layout, which is due to go on show as a work in progress.

They will also be displaying Cobbold’s Wharf – an imagined dockland scene based on Ipswich Docks and named after the Tolly Cobbold brewery.

The layout, complete with buildings made from card, plywood, styrene and old beer cans, rolling stock and boats, recently featured in Railway Modeller, Britain’s most popular model rail magazine.

There will also be set-ups aimed at younger visitors, including Thomas the Tank Engine and one where they can have a go themselves.

With less than a month to go, their workshop on a farm in Drinkstone was a hive of activity, with members putting together the base boards and laying track for the Bury Station set-up.

Exhibition projects like that are designed to be taken apart and moved. But their Abbotsford layout built in the 1990s, based on railways on East Anglia in the 1960s, could not be dismantled and has sadly now been shunted off to the great sidings in the sky.

“The track was starting to wear out, anyway,” says club chairman Matthew Porteous, a retired orthopaedic surgeon who joined around 15 years ago.

If no new home can be found for the club before October 14, everything will have to be dismantled and put into storage.

The group started life as Bury Model Engineering Club, meeting in a hut in Mildenhall Road, Bury St Edmunds. The name was changed because everyone was doing model railways.

Retired accountant John Russell, who joined in 1996 and is one of the longest-serving current members, says: “It was a very small start. Then they had to move in 1974 when a supermarket was going to be built.”

Farmer Michael Ivor-Jones – who was very keen on model railways although he was never a member – offered the use of a former pigsty in his farmyard and they soon made themselves at home.

“He was very sympathetic to us,” said John, who lives in Elmswell and has been chairman, secretary and treasurer of the club.

After Michael died his wife Maggie remained their landlady until her death in 2023, aged 98. “Maggie was the honorary president of the club. She used to call us her boys. We used to have our barbecues in her garden.

“Now our president is our oldest member Bill Delieu, who is 94. He lives in a residential home and they have one of our layouts there and he operates it regularly.”

“When I joined we just had one room. Membership gradually crept up until we had 20 people – we were getting very crowded and Maggie said ‘what about using the barn?’”

So they expanded into the Grade II-listed, timber-framed barn, creating two more rooms and building a wooden shell inside so they did not impact the structure.

“At the height we had over 40 members, we have about 30 now, mostly from within about 10 miles of Bury,” said John whose love of railways started with train spotting when at school in London.

Matthew, on the other hand, got interested when he became a dad. “I didn’t start until my first son was born in the 1980s. I went to Brick Lane Market and saw a lot of model railway stuff and thought it would be something to do with him.”

After that there was no turning back and he now has a 450-metre layout in his garden in Pakenham, and its scale means his grandchildren can also run their Playmobil trains on his track.

“I took a cabinet making course when I retired and have a workshop in my garden. We get a production line going there with people making base boards for layouts,” said Matthew who sees parallels with his hospital career. “Orthopaedic surgery is carpentry with live people really,” he says.

“The Bury station layout will be enormous – 36 feet long. It’s the station in the 1950s. That’s an ambitious project. We’re looking for people who remember it from the 1950s, particularly trainspotters.

“It’s not just getting the layout right, the rolling stock has to be right too. But you can buy in a lot of rolling stock.”

He added: “There have been ups and downs for the club, but I would say it is more active now than any time I have known it.”

The club’s director of operations, Graham Warner, is using computer aided design (CAD) and laser cutting to construct the Bury station buildings.

“We walked around the station and I took 250 photos. It was a strike day so there was no-one around, which helped. I spent the next three weeks counting thousands of bricks. Knowing the size of the bricks, that helps with working out the scale.”

The meticulous, delicate work is a far cry from when Graham, who lives in Cheveley near Newmarket and used to be a mechanical engineer, was a semi-finalist four years running in TV’s Robot Wars.

“I was building robots that weighed 100kg and they were smashing the hell out of each other – the complete opposite to railway modelling,” he said.

Exhibitions manager Chris Day is another ex-trainspotter and joined the club nearly 30 years ago. “Trainspotting led me to model railways – some of us don’t ever grow up. It keeps us out of mischief,” he says.

“I’ve been exhibitions manager for five or six years and felt it right to do something special for our 75th anniversary.

“If I wasn’t retired I couldn’t do it. It’s already keeping me awake at night. I have a tape machine by the bed at night and with me most of the time to make notes of things I think of.

It’s the silly things that aren’t obvious, like how many tables and chairs we’ll need, how many lunches for the exhibitors. There is a huge amount of organisation.

“We have a number of excellent club and private layouts coming – probably some of the finest in the country including York station, an American narrow gauge mountain line and the only Chinese layout operating in the UK.

China was the last nation in the world to manufacture and operate steam trains and Chris says the grim grey buildings give a real feel of the country’s built-up areas.

Most railway modellers look back nostalgically to the age of steam. “The big issue with organising the exhibition is trying to find a modern image layout… most of those are very large and too big for an ordinary exhibition,” he said.

Club members believe their show – expected to attract around 2,000 people – is the first of its kind with multiple exhibits to be held in a cathedral and praised the Dean and Chapter for giving permission.

“Now they have taken out the pews and replaced them with chairs, we can use the whole space,” said Chris. I think it will be the biggest exhibition in East Anglia in a generation. There are 45 stands including trades.”

Exhibitors will receive a unique plaque with a logo created by club secretary Frank Wright, from Norton, that combines the outlines of the cathedral and a steam locomotive,

The design by Frank, who took a degree in art and design after a career as a telecom engineer, also appears on the flyers publicising the exhibition.

Chris also spoke about the need to attract more women and younger people into the hobby. “There are some very fine lady modellers, but we don’t have any female members at the moment,” he said.

“There is no reason why most people can’t find something they enjoy in it. It’s very much a hobby you can muck in and enjoy.”

The club has another 75th anniversary celebration planned in October when music producer and devoted model train enthusiast Pete Waterman will speak at a dinner at Ravenwood Hall Hotel.

To contact the club, or if you could offer it a new home, go to burystedmundsmrc.com