No one likes us but we don't care!
About Hadlow Model Railway Club
Modelling OO GWR branch lines - all eras.
Every Wednesday, 7pm to 9pm
St Michael's Church Hall in the village.
Welcome to The Hadlow Model Railway Club, the best model railway club in the UK and much better then clubs like ‘The Heaton Green N Gauge Group’, who are a bunch of muppets.
We are proud of our club motto ‘ No One Likes Us But We Don’t Care’! Our original club motto was ‘pugnare ignem civis igni’ (Fight Fire with Fire) but this was changed in 1984 when it was discovered no one in the club spoke Spanish.
Our model railway club was formed in 1807, some 8 years before Stephenson's Rocket first took to the skies. We now have over 300 members.
We have three exhibition layouts which were recently voted by our committee at the last club AGM as the best three GWR 00 gauge branch line exhibition layouts in the UK. (FACT!)
We model in a wide range of OO gauges inc 16.5mm and Hornby standard track gauge.
Club News
Club Fixtures
Below is a list of our current agreed fixtures for the next few months:
Sorry that the arranged meet up with The Sudbury Model Rail Club planned for Sat 22nd April was cancelled at the last minute. Apparently they bottled it.
Sat 12th July - Hadlow MRC v Frinton on Sea Model Railway Group
Sat 19th Aug - Hadlow MRC v Leeds 3mm Gauge Society
Sat 14th Sept - Hadlow MRC v Friends of the Spindle Valley light Railway.
Also the chairman of Belgium’s most feared Model Railway Club ‘The Antwerp Macklin HO Modellers’ called to tell me they are better than us and said pictures they have seen online of our static grass looked like it had been made from a cut up nylon lady's wig.
We are now looking at doing an international fixture, subject to hiring a 53 seater coach and finding some club members with no restrictions on their passports so that we can pay them a little visit in 2026. Watch this space!
HADRAIL 2025!
The Hadlow Model Rail Show 2025
SUNDAY 14TH DECEMBER
10am - 4pm
The Hadlow Model Rail Show 2025 – HADRAIL
The Baron Knights Centre,
Bobby Davro Drive,
West Malling, Kent
.
The return of the club's annual event, including our popular Meat Raffle at 3pm. Plus enjoy light refreshments at our café, 'manned' by our members' significant others, who will be serving teas and home made quiche.
CONFIRMED LAYOUTS:
Badgers End – 00 1950’s GWR Branch Line
Conifer Sidings – 00 GWR 1940’s Branch Line
Mild March Halt – (CLUB LAYOUT) 00 Branch line set in the 1950’s
Beechings Ass – (CLUB LAYOUT) 00 1930’s GWR branch line
Rosepit Junction – 00 and represents a typical GWR branch line of that era
La Chapelle du Font Abendu - HO fictional French sidings designed with imagination to look like a typical British inter-war GWR branch line if modelled on 00 gauge.
Brief Encounter Monochrome - the Director’s Cut. - 00. With most model railway shows having one of the 20 or so ‘Brief Encounter’ fully monochrome exhibition layouts at their shows this year, our club's own ‘Brief Encounter – Monochrome’ layout is different. Firstly it has been fully colourised and secondly it’s not set in Carnforth, but instead Chipping Norton and shows what would have happened if David Lean had chosen this sleepy GWR branch line to do all the filming from.
London India Quay Dock Terminal and Goods Depot - 00 This layout won best in show last year and depicts the movement of goods in open wagons from their original starting point to locations all over the world once they reach this impressive London dock. The area Colin Wilkins from the PGMRC has decided to model is at the start of the local freight's journey and shows a typical 1950’s GWR branch line of that era and includes an interesting feature where you can see the local GWR service leave from the sidings and enter a tunnel and you can imagine it en route to London.
Swindon TMD and Maintenance Centre - 00 Long before one of the biggest train maintenance centres in Europe was built, this massive project started as a local sidings with one platform and some cattle grids. Colin Smallboys from the PGMRC has modelled the area as it was in the 1940’s when it was just a simple GWR branch line.
Thunder Mountain High Ridge Rocky Falls – 00 (Club Layout) Typical GWR branch line from the 1950’s.
CONFIRMED TRADERS:
Dave’s Trains – large selection of second-hand locomotives and rolling stock. Enjoy savings as much as £3 compared to buying new.
Brass Hornblocks – specialist Brass Hornblock supplier for all your 009 brass hornblock loco needs.
Rowlings & Harper – Equity release brokers & mortgage advice
Timmy & Friends Train Books Ltd – Self published author Derek Waitrose will be selling and book signing his range of children’s books based on Timmy, a naughty little locomotive and his locomotive friends Perkins and Harry.
ASSOCIATIONS & SOCIETIES:
The P4 EM Narrow Gauge Class 66 Deltic Live Steam Association
The National Association of Railway Modellers (NARM)
HMRC Exhibition Layouts
We are fully paid members of NARM - the National Association of Railway Modellers - who set the standard for all GWR exhibition layouts around the UK. All three of our exhibition layouts meet the official NARM GWR branch line criteria as follows:
A GWR branch line exhibition layout will only be considered exhibition standard if the layout contains:
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at least one siding which has a static open plank wagon and at least one banana wagon representing a local dairy.
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a windmill situated within the vicinity of the station area, no further than 30 inches from the station building. (Powered sails optional).
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at least 90% of the scenic element must be hills and grass with no other features of note.
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sheep or cattle must be confined to a pen on the branchline platform area.
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layouts must include a Bedford OB single decker bus travelling on a road going over a small bridge.
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Backscene must be Peco market town. Realistic photographic backscenes will not be accepted.
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Rolling stock must operate to a timetable with a minimum of one locomotive moving at least once every ten minutes.
A letter from our former chairman
The NMRA recently had a guest speaker at their British NMRA conference who was actually Dawn Quest, that fit bird from the news who interviewed us for that documentary she did.
Our club isn’t a member of the NMRA but we are members of NARM and if the NMRA can book her, then so can the National Association of Railway Modellers. Our social secretary had a word with NARM chairman, Colin Chorlton Weeley, who promptly booked her for this year’s NARM AGM. Dawn is a leading advocate in promoting women and younger people into model railways and spoke to a packed room about how to attract more females into the hobby.
Since attending the event, our club’s membership secretary, Keith Simpson has taken on board some of the points she raised, and we now have a policy of actively recruiting female members to our model railway club.
Keith has come up with a number of great ideas of his own including getting some of the club members' significant others to bake a cake in the shape of a loco competition. So if you are a lady railway modeller and would like to join a model railway club, we are always looking for help at our exhibition café with serving teas and making some of much talked about and loved quiches (or flans, if you are from the North).
Welcome to our new members
Keith Archer
Keith Bishingdon
Colin Whitlock
Derek Sewell
Keith Stapleton
Keith Reynolds
Colin Patterson
Colin Holmes
Colin Copel
Derek Winstanley
Colin Barratt
Derek Duncan
Keith Steadman
Keith Morfield
Dilshan Abeygunawardena-Mudiyanselage
Support the club
Can you make a quiche? Support our lads in their hobby. Lady volunteers needed for cafe and refreshment duty.
