The guest chairman
Aberdeen MRC chairman Colin Stevenson presents this month’s Club Room.
Society: Aberdeen MRC Established: 1971 Location:
Polmuir Avenue, Aberdeen Chairman: Colin Stevenson
The Aberdeen Model Railway Club was formed in 1971, with the constitutionally stated objective that ‘the club shall promote and foster interest in modelling railways’. We do that by meeting every Wednesday evening, and by inviting all members to contribute to the layout being built – we try to have at least one layout under construction in the club rooms at all times, with the philosophy that people learn best by doing! If a member has a question on any aspect of model railways, there will always be someone willing to offer help and advice. The offer to our members is to come along to the club and practise the skills they need to complete their personal layouts, by helping to build a club layout which is generally bigger than most members can accommodate at home. Alternatively, members can bring their personal projects into the club rooms and make use of the club’s tools and facilities. This gives the club access to a range of layouts which can be taken to our own exhibitions – and others. Our premises are located on the Ferryhill Railway Heritage Trust site, near the centre of Aberdeen. As the club is a member of the Association of Model Railway Societies in Scotland (AMRSS), the Model Rail Scotland Exhibition in Glasgow, held over the last full weekend in February each year, is a major event in our calendar, as is our own exhibition on the last weekend in October. When the club was formed, the majority of members were ‘O’ gauge modellers. That demographic has changed over the years, and Aberdeen MRC now reflects the demographic of the hobby as a whole in the UK – approximately 80% of our club members are ‘OO’ gauge modellers, and of them about 80% model the steam/diesel transition era. So I would like to encourage modellers with different interests to get involved with the club – any small group of modellers can propose a layout idea to the committee to access club funding and resources. When we were approached by Knickerbockerglory Productions at the beginning of 2018 about a TV programme around the idea “The Great British Bake-off meets Model Railways”, we were initially sceptical. But given our constitutional objective, we felt that we had to participate, and so we entered a team into the competition. The experience proved to be enthralling, exhausting and exhilarating, and has changed the way I approach my own modelling. I hope you all watch The Great Model Railway Challenge on Channel 5 this autumn and enjoy it as much as we did. Look out for a number of “as seen on TV” layouts, coming soon to an exhibition near you!
Address: c/o FRHT, Polmuir Avenue, Aberdeen AB11 7WE E-mail: secretary@aberdeenmrc.co.uk Web: www.facebook.com/Aberdeenmodelrailwayclub Membership fees: £60 (per annum)