The Club Room
Mickleover Model Railway Group’s Club Secretary Steve Gibbons guides us through the club’s history and current activities in this month’s Club Room.
The guest chairman, your letters and projects, plus Exhibition Diary.
Society: Mickleover Model Railway Group Chairman: Glenn Daniel Established: 1968 Location: Mickleover, Derby
The St Johns (Mickleover) Model Railway Group was founded in 1968, after several fund-raising exhibitions at St Johns Church in Mickleover. This was to be the club’s home for over 20 years. It involved sharing the church hall once a week, alternating with the other activities taking place. In those days, a club night consisted of dragging out partially constructed layouts on trolleys from under a stage. This arrangement was hardly ideal and, as you can appreciate, progress was slow.
In the early 1990s, a building became available to rent from the local council that offered us the luxury of having our own clubrooms – a prefabricated building of former school classrooms, dating back to the late 1940s. Our members at the time refurbished it and this has been our home ever since. Some years later we were able to purchase the building from the council. Once in our new home we were able to make quicker progress on our layouts and have additional club nights each week. During this period, we constructed layouts in ‘N’ and ‘O’ gauge, including our recently retired (and now sold) flagship layout ‘Farkham’, which has been seen all over the UK. Currently in the clubroom we have a permanent layout, ‘Duffield’, which depicts a four-track main line in 4mm ‘OO’. This covers an area of 36ft by 10ft. Our layouts that go out to exhibitions include ‘Warner Street’ in 7mm ‘O’ gauge, ‘Derwent Valley’ in 2mm ‘N’ gauge and ‘Hillandale’ in 4mm multi-gauge. We also have ‘Western Hills’, a small 2mm layout that’s still in the construction stage. As our premises are now 70 years old, with a leaking roof and poor insulation, a decision was made in late 2016 to replace the roof and bring the building up to modern standards. This required large sums of money. To finance this the club has, with assistance from Bachmann, commissioned a limited edition Class 37 – 37114 in ‘Large Logo’ blue with Highland Rail branding. Only 512 were produced and this arrived in August. As a follow-up to this, a Bachmann BR Mk 1 BG in engineers’ yellow with black chevrons from Eastfield depot has been commissioned, and we’re planning another locomotive after that. Hopefully this will raise sufficient funds to allow the clubrooms to be rebuilt. The club also runs two very successful exhibitions each year. The main event is the Derby Exhibition, held at The Roundhouse in May. This is a showcase for many of the current high-quality layouts on the circuit, brought together in an historic railway building. Our other exhibition is the local show, held each year in the Mickleover Community centre, next to the clubrooms. This show features mainly club layouts and a few of our members’ exhibits, and enjoys support from local businesses. The club has grown over the years to around 80 members. We now have four dedicated club nights on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday evenings, from 1930 to 2200. These are well attended, with some members attending four times a week! Address: Mickleover Community Centre, 36 Uttoxeter Road, Mickleover, Derby DE3 ODA E-mail: mmrg3@mmrg.org.uk Web: www.mmrg.org.uk Membership fees (per annum): Adult: £24, Family: £36, Weekly: £4