Milland Valley Railway

We welcome John from Petersfield who interests cover most scales and many prototypes

We recently welcomed Bob from Liphook who has joined us, having attended the Building a Model Railway Course in 2010. He models Continental in HO and is in the early stages of construction of a new layout.

At the 2011 A.G.M. the club secretary, Andrew King and club treasurer Eric King retired and Nick Harling and John Chandler were elected to the respective posts. Martin Hill, the club chairman was persuaded to continue in post for one more year.

There was a unanimous vote of thanks to the retiring officers

In late February 2011 Tony & Janet gave the club  notice to leave the garage by 20th April 2012; also to change to fortnightly meetings in the garage from 19th August 2011, with the suggestion to use the committee room at the Milland Village Hall  for the alternate Friday evening meetings.

The club has been in the garage since October 2006  when the previous club building, on a local farm, was required at short notice for redevelopment. The idea was to give the club breathing space to find other premises or to follow up on an offer to return to the same farm, in different premises.  Nothing materialised and  unfortunately other avenues were not initiated.

Tony also made an offer to purchase Weyford on Sea to reduce the storage problem that would certainly follow a move to a venue where the room was to be  hired for the duration of meeting.

At an EGM in March the basis of the proposals was agreed, but the club decided to go to fortnightly meetings at the Committee Room from 6th May, with the likelihood of a move to every Friday meetings there before Christmas 2011, although this is yet to be agreed. Discussions about storage is under-way with the Hall trustees.

The club agreed to accept Tony’s offer for the layout and work starts shortly on revising the racking layout and redecorating the area to accept the layout.

When operational the club will have use of the layout for operating sessions four times a year.

From June 2011 all meetings are held in Milland Valley Memorial Hall Committee Room.

Updated 20-11-2011

The layout was transferred to the Committee Room of Milland Village Hall on a very dark and wet evening. We tried to restrict those attending as the room is quite small, but all the members were keen to see what went on. Unfortunately this made the shoot a longer process than we’d planned.

CONTINENTAL MODELLER ARTICLE?

As part of the preparations for a proposed article in the Continental Modeller magazine, Yamanouchi Oshika our N gauge Japanese modern image layout, has had some extensive scenic work in the run up to Christmas. A photo shoot was arranged in the local village hall on January 7th and photos have been sent off to the magazine.

MAJOR WORK ON WEYFORD ON SEA

A lot of work is planned for the next 6 or so weeks and progress photos will be appearing on the blog

FORTHCOMING EXHIBITION APPEARANCES

On Sunday 27th February our “00″ layout Weyford on Sea will be appearing at the Midhurst Modellers Show and six days later on Saturday 5th March, Yamanouchi Oshika is at the Abingdon Model Railway Exhibition.

This will be our first time exhibiting at the Abingdon Show and look forward to a good day out for the club.

A Japanese N gauge layout will be the Liphook & District MRC’s exhibit for the Midhurst Modellers Show on Sunday 28th February 2010.

A relative simple job of adding overhead catenary and providing a completely new townscape of Japanese buildings, road layouts and vehicles, plus a small tram line, has transformed Cottleston Park into Yamanouchi Oshika.

Nick has led the conversion and all should be complete for this weekend.

Wish us luck!

As the club’s Weyford-on-Sea 00 layout will not be fully altered and up dated in time for the Midhurst Show we will be exhibiting a relocation of our modern image Cottleston Park to the Far East with new name and changed scenery.

Nick,  who has collected a formidable collection of Japanese outline stock of all types had persuaded other N gauge modellers to embark on entirely new layout for exhibition in 2010/11. In reviewing a plan B for the Midhurst Show in late Feb 2010 it was decided that Cottleston Park could easily be refreshed and upgraded as a Japanese layout with appropriate changes to the scenic treatment and buildings in time for Midhurst. Work starts on this immediately, with the layout having been taken out of storage and transferred back to our temporary club room a couple of weeks ago.

Two weeks before the Midhurst Show the layout is due to appear at Alton MRC FEBex. This will be probably be with a mixture of European and Japanese stock as the exhibition manager is keen on seeing plenty of modern image N stock from across the world running on it.

After much contemplation the revised layout will be called Yamanouchi Oshika which I have been assured has been checked to ensure it won’t offend any Japanese speakers!

This layout will be used as a trial for the techniques to be used on the entirely new layout which will now be built slightly later than originally planned.

Work on Weyford-on-Sea continues.

We have received the sad news that our honorary life member Alf Rolph died on the 12th August aged 85.

Alf was a long time regular member, who used his undoubted engineering skill to produce models of 0 gauge GWR locos which ran on our Woodchurch layout, which he also helped to construct.

He was born in Marylebone and later had family connections with the G.W.R at Hayes. His early career was spent in the assembly of Spitfires and later in the Army  involved in the repair and maintenance of  all types of military vehicles. In civilian life he was a motor engineer running a GPO motor vehicle workshop when that organisation was one of the largest owners and operators of motor vehicles in Europe.

Although slight of build, Alf was not one to quit, surviving cancer twice and a major operation thirty five  years ago and despite the need for regular injections he turned up, rain or shine to our very often cold club rooms right up to the end of last year.Fiercely independent he was somewhat miffed that being made a honorary life member in early 2008 meant he no longer had to pay his subs!

He seemed to enjoy the club banter- we certainly enjoyed his company and shall miss that and his involvement in club activities, in the years to come.

Alf leaves a widow Olive to whom we sent our condolences.

A group of current and former members  attended his Service of Thanksgiving at Liphook Methodist Church on the 25th August and had the opportunity afterwards to reminisce with Olive and his relatives and friends about the times we shared with Alf.