The Club Room
The section focusing on your work and projects. Includes Exhibition Diary.
The Ilford & West Essex Model Railway Club can trace its origins back to 1930 when a young gentleman by the name of Ronnie Riddle advertised for like-minded railway modellers to attend a meeting in Ilford. The response was encouraging, and the seeds of the Ilford & District Model Railway Club were sown. In February 1935 the West Essex Model Railway Club (which had formed three years earlier) and the Ilford & District MRC were amalgamated to form Ilford & West Essex Model Railway Club. We are currently the fourth oldest model railway club in the UK. After the end of the Second World War the club established its headquarters in Romford, before moving to our present site. This is adjacent to Chadwell Heath railway station and we have been here since 1955. We have a dedicated club room with a kitchen, library (containing over 7,000 books and items of reference) and a workshop mainly used for the 7¼in gauge members. The club is organised into five sections: ‘HO’, ‘N’, ‘O’, ‘OO’ and our 7¼in gauge railway with live steam locomotives. We have our own annual exhibition, titled ‘West Essex Modelrail’, and this is normally held over the last weekend in April; our next exhibition is to be held over the weekend of April 27/28 2019 at St Edward’s Academy in Romford. In addition, we have an annual ‘Showcase’ event, held in October, to show the local communities what we are all about. On the first Sunday of each month, between April and September, we hold open days at our headquarters where we run our live steam 7¼in gauge railway which is fully track circuited and has operational signals controlled from two signal boxes. In addition, we also operate the section layouts within the club room where possible. Our main 7¼in gauge locomotive is called ‘Excalibur’ and is based on a Urie ‘N15’ class ‘King Arthur’ locomotive. The club has section meetings on Tuesday evenings (‘N’ and ‘OO’), Wednesday evenings (‘HO’ North American image), Friday evenings (‘O’) and Wednesday and Sunday mornings (7¼in). In 2020 we will be celebrating our 90th anniversary and are planning for our 63rd ‘West Essex Modelrail’ exhibition, which we hope will prove to be a spectacular event.
For further information, or if you want to join, here are the contact details: Address: Honorary Secretary, IWEMRC, 180 Balgores Lane, Romford RM2 6BS E-mail: info@iwemrc.org.uk Web: www.iwemrc.org.uk Membership: Full: £90 (per annum) Juniors: £48 (per annum)