In past years There has been a steady release of information about the layouts that are attending. This year we have made it easier and in future years and and when layouts are confirmed you will always be able to find them on this page.
We have generated a second page where we will list all the Traders that will be attending the Exhibition you can find that information by going to RailEx Traders.
As we have included descriptions here. you may have to scroll a way to read all the layouts.
Don’t Forget to book your tickets before you leave the site!
For RailEx 2023 the exhibition has been able to confirm the following layouts will be attending.
| Layout Name | Layout Description | Gauge |
|---|---|---|
| K Street Yard | K Street Yard is an idea for a Milwaukee Road switching location set between the late 1950s and the early 1970s. It is fictionally set in the north of Spokane in Washington state. Due to competition from other railroads, notably the GN and NP, the Milwaukee were left with a difficult location between city buildings, which requires a steep descent from the mainline in order to enter the yard. Complicated switching is then needed to spot the various wagons in the front of the correct industries dotted around the location. Buildings have been constructed from a mixture of Walthers and Bachmann kits, and some scratch building. Most have been heavily modified to suit the location, to give a wide range of differing facades. It has been wired to give a choice of traditional DC if required, or DCC working at the flick of a switch, digital control being with NCE equipment. Couplings are the standard KayDee that we use elsewhere. and track is the standard Peco American code 83. | HO |
| Brighton East | Matt was a medical student in Brighton and came up with the old Kemp Town branch as a possible setting for a layout. What if it had retained some passenger service (this actually ceased in the 1933) and had never been shut (it closed to goods traffic in 1971), been electrified and then had a second tunnel bored to allow direct access to Lewis? This is not a protypical rendition, the space was not available to do that, but it hopefully gives a flavour of the small space restricted terminus that was Kemp Town. | EM |
| Little Ashton | Little Ashton was based on a layout called Ashton, though this was 00. The layout is purely fictional and allows me to run my extensive stock of EWS and DBS locomotives. Control is analogue with Gaugemaster controllers. There is a modified Bachmann Farish fueller with lights and a twin set of PECO diesel depot buildings. Tack is PECO code 55 fine-scale. There is also an Eddie Stobart warehouse. It is normally full of Eddie Stobart lorries and trailers. | N |
| Holcombe Brook | From the moors north of Bury, Holcombe Brook flows south to join the river Irwell at Summerset. The pure water of the brook made it ideal for the textile finishing industries, and so there sprang up numerous bleaching, dyeing and printing works in and around Holcombe and the surrounding villages. To serve these businesses a 31⁄2 mile branch was built from the East Lancashire Railway to the village of Holcombe Brook. The line opened in 1882. It was absorbed into the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway in my model represents the terminus of this branch line as it appeared in the early part of the 20th century. The track plan above shows the station layout. My model follows this plan with one exception: for extra operational interest I have added an engine shed to house a station pilot. The engine shed is based on that at nearby Burnley. All other buildings are models of the original structures at Holcombe. | O |
| Slough Trading Estate | The O Gauge layout depicts the railway sidings that once fed the Slough Trading Estate on the eastern side of Farnham Road Bridge in Slough. These were visible from passenger trains passing on the main line. The railway was originally built in 1919 to serve the Slough Motor Transport Depot, a WW1 facility for repairing army vehicles returning from the battlefields. The Depot was purchased by the Slough Trading Company with the aim to become London’s manufacturing hub and the one of the UK’s first Industrial estates. It was also one of the last industrial railways to continue the use of steam locomotives until its closure in 1973. Companies using the railway included; Mars Confectionery, High Duty Alloys, St Helens, O’Cedar, St Martins Jam, SMD, Westons Biscuits, RAGUS Sugar, Artesian Ice and the estates own Power Station. Locomotives and Rolling stock reflects both the Depot and Trading Estate eras and the many companies that were and are still based in Slough. The layout’s owner is the author of the Wild Swan publication ‘Slough Estates Railway’. | O |
| Dobris | Back in 2004 we started visiting the Czech Republic and the following years to travel on their railway system which was (and still is to a certain extent) much like pre Beeching era in the UK with freight on the branches, some to fairly small towns. On one such visit we travelled up the very scenic line from Prague to Dobříš. The station at Dobříš is anything but scenic set in a very industrial area of the town. We travelled in a 4 wheel trailer hauled by a diesel loco. Upon reaching Dobříš, one of these trailers was shunted into a siding presumably to work back on a train later that day. There was also a loco and brake van next to the goods shed with numerous wagons loaded with timber in the sidings. | HO |
| Norwich Central | Experience the hustle and bustle of urban railway life at Norwich Central. This layout perfectly captures the vibrant energy of a city centre station, complete with bustling platforms, towering buildings, and an intricate web of rail lines. Marvel at the precision and coordination as trains arrive and depart amidst the urban backdrop. | O |
| Nette Brucke | Delve into the captivating world of Nette Brucke, a model railway that pays homage to the historic charm of a bygone era. Witness beautifully preserved heritage steam engines as they traverse the winding tracks, passing through tunnels, over bridges, and alongside charming rural landscapes. Nette Brucke is a nostalgic journey that railway enthusiasts will cherish. | N |
| Freem009 | The modules are based on a selection of British narrow gauge railways and the a group of us build them to a standard to join together into a larger layout. | 009 |
| Rossiter Rise | Rossiter Rise portrays a fictitious through station somewhere in the suburbs of North West London in the mid-late 1950’s. It includes platforms serving LMR suburban services, LMR branch line trains and London Underground services. At the front of the layout is a small LT depot. Many of the structures are scratch-built, whilst others are kit-built or modified propriety models. The majority of the rolling stock is not ‘R-T-R off the shelf’ but a collection of unusual and rarely modelled items, including conversions, scratch-built and 3D printed construction. As well as the services mentioned above freight and light engine workings mean that almost anything can make a surprise appearance as motive power! | OO FS |
| Top Yard | The Basic Premise of this layout is that wagons are tripped in from the BR Network From under the right hand road bridge and out to industry under the left had bridge with an industrial loco. What happens in between in entirely in the lap of the gods! | EM |
| Penmaenbach | Penmaenbach is a self-contained shunting layout built using a custom-made Grange and Hodder baseboard kit and Peco Code 75 00 Bullhead track. Penmaenbach is a simple set of sidings which can be used as an “Inglenook” shunting puzzle (using wagon cards if required) as well as a connected branch line and small halt to add operational interest. The buildings are a mixture of scratch-built, plastic and laser cut kits. The bridges are made from styrene sheet. The overall setting is inspired by the railways of North Wales but the layout gives us an opportunity to use a wide variety of rolling stock from the 1980s and later when the BR Rail Blue era was ending. Other stock including Civil Engineers wagons and contemporary DRS nuclear traffic may appear from time to time. | OO FS |
| Llawryglyn | Llawryglyn is a small village that lies approximately five miles from the Cambrian Railways main line station at Caersws, between Newtown and Machynlleth. Caersws also was the junction for the Van Railway line that ran from Caersws to the lead mines at Van. In my version of history, another lead mine near Llawryglyn, was served by a branch (or twig?) off the Van Railway. My model represents the station at Llawryglyn in the years around 1910 – 12, when the Cambrian, never a well-off concern, was probably at its most successful. Passenger services terminated here, while the line continued a further ¾ mile to the mine itself. Fellow Cambrian modellers may recognise the origins of the station building and goods shed, while the smithy is a model of Llawryglyn’s real smithy; which was dismantled in the mid-1970s and re-erected at St Fagans National History Museum, Cardiff. The locomotives come from a variety of sources, with both kit built and scratch-built examples running. The coaches are mainly built from Ratio GWR and Midland Railway coach kit sides – cut up in various ways, and with scratch-built ends and underframes, they have made various Cambrian vehicles. Goods stock is from a variety of kits. Uniquely among Welsh railways, the Cambrian also had a wagon adapted for the conveyance of dragons, which has been modelled complete with a suitable load. | EM |
| Fairhaven Town | Back in the day, the LBSCR & LSWR railways linked up at Havant, and following access disputes, the latter was granted running rights into Portsmouth (January 1859), then with further (fictional) extensions, by both companies, meeting up – again – at what is now known as Fairhaven, thankfully without a repeat of the earlier disagreements! | O |
| Lochty | Lochty is a model of the goods only terminus of the East Fife Central Railway operated by the North British Railway. Opened in 1900, it ran until 1960. Its chief claim to fame is that after closure it ran as the Lochty Private Railway, chief stock of which was the A4 “Pacific of South Africa” and a Coronation observation coach. The stock is all kit built and the track is the newly introduced EM track made by PECO. | EM |
| Los Tanimals | A part of the Gosport American Railroad Group, built by Bob Norris, to provide a smaller layout than our “Solent Summit” layout, which can be up to 4 scale miles in length, and costly to display. The layout includes: Cement Works, Pickle Works Scrap Yards, Factories, Bus Depot, Car Importers, Horse riding school, Radio station, Depot, and an Interurban line. The whole layout. including the loops at either end, has scenery, and depicts a location in the Texas/Arizona area, with trains from the 1940s to 1980s. Digitrax DCC radio controlled, the whole layout fits into one estate car (just!). | N |
| Lower Exbury | Inspired by the real Exbury village area in the New Forest in Hampshire and its military importance to D-Day preparations, ‘Lower Exbury’ was created in 2009 by Jo Palmer as a Scalefour challenge layout for the 2011 ‘Railwells’ exhibition. Her fictitious South Hampshire Light Railway represents the terminus of a ‘twig’ off a branch line with a now little-used river wharf and also serving the local (off-scene) brickworks. We are visiting in July 1952, during British Railways’ Southern Region era. The future is looking bleak. Even after trackwork was relaid with second-hand rail from wartime sidings a few years earlier, the brickworks is facing closure and the remaining traffic is light. Basic passenger and freight services are worked by veteran pre-Grouping locomotives, elderly carriages and an assortment of period wagons. | P4 |
| Inspired by Friedrichstrasse | The story of Berlin in the twentieth century has been the story of extremes; power and grandeur, but also suffering and division. A city governed by the extremes of the century’s political ideologies; and each have left their indelible mark on the city, their legacies still in evidence today. ‘Inspired by Friedrichstrasse’ is set a Berlin being rebuilt following the ravages for the secondWorldWar and adjusting to the East/West tensions. It is the 1960s/70s period, deep in the cold war era and DR dominates the scene, with a wide variety of steam and early diesel traction in evidence. This, however, does not preclude the appearance of some DB stock, working the inter-zonal services from the West. | HO |
| Kaninchenbau | Kaninchenbau is set in the rolling Alpine foothills and was designed using the ‘rabbit warren’ principles for fully automated running using iTrain. The layout runs 5 trains continuously within the 22.5m of track. Fundamentally the design uses two interconnected levels that can operate independently, yet facilitate trains to swapping between levels. The track design also allows for trains to disappear ‘offstage’ to wait for periods, or even pass each other thus confusing the audience when expect trains to re-appear. The layout was also built at a lower level that normal for accessibility to all visitors. The ‘rabbit warren’ style ensures that trains will not always appear from the expected exit and this provides great interest in younger viewers who try to guess when the train will come from they are generally very surprised when the ‘wrong train’ appears from where they expect the ‘right train’ to appear. | HOe |
| Staindrop | Welcome to the south west Durham countryside circa 1928. Staindrop is a large village between Darlington and Barnard Castle, but never rail served. This ‘might have been’ branch is an attempt to model the old Central Division of the North Eastern Railway but in post grouping LNER days. However, the pre grouping character of the branch remains with an infrastructure of pure NER. The buildings and structures are all locally sourced. The station building is based on Battersby, the water tank from Middleton-in-Teesdale, and the wooden overbridge from the Stainmore line. Many of the details, such as fencing, are researched from original NER sources and drawings. The signal box, based on Bowes, and signals are pure Central Division-not slotted and have simple caps rather than finials. The viaduct is based on an NER timber trestle from Ushaw Moor which lasted until the 1960’s. | O |
| OO Live Steam | The OOLSC layout consists of an 16ft x 8ft oval with one continuous “up loop” with associated sidings, together with one continuous “down loop” with associated sidings. Additionally, the layout features a sunken outer loop which is used specifically for our “feature” ever popular, family/visitor “Have a go and Live Steam Driver experience”. This very successful addition to our Road Show is displayed prominently on the stretched fabric backdrop which is an important feature of the finished layout assembly. Once erected, it allows access to the front and two sides for the viewing public, also (free standing) for occasional all round viewing when required. The Locos are masterpieces of model engineering. They incorporate many of the principle features of full size Live Steam prototypes such as double acting cylinders, connecting rods and drop links directly to the driving wheels together with a reverse motion | OO |
| The Quarry | ‘THE QUARRY’ evolved from a picture of Bill & Ben, (of Thomas fame) using a mixture of buildings from the Farish and Lyddle End mine buildings range, a Faller stone crushing plant with a modern scratch built top, other scratch-built buildings, and some old layout buildings from the second-hand box. It took 4 weeks to build the 3ft x 2ft layout, with grandson Charlie helping where he could, spraying and painting the surfaces. The quarry rock face is made from high density insulation foam board, sealed, sprayed and painted with acrylics. Ballast and rock scatter have been taken, from a mixture of different grades of material. | N |
| Titheridge Junction | After completing a new 12 road fiddle yard for existing N layout “Dewsbury Midland” (not to be confused with Manchester clubs later 00 one) there was talk of using it for a new fairly modern era N gauge club layout. Coincidentally well-known N gauge modern image modeller Pauline McKenna had recently joined the club and this provided the motivation to make a start. To add some interest a flying junction with a simple siding was conceived. The name is in memory of Pauline’s late husband, DB Schenker driver Steve Titheridge The era is usually early diesel with a western theme although we are very flexible as to what runs on our layouts. | N |