Garden Railway Saturday; The Llangollen Show, 2026

Blimey, what a month... some unpleasant personal stuff, and a LOT of model-making. All of which means I'm somewhat late to the finish in posting about the Llangollen Garden Railway show- an event which has become something of a regular go-to for us.

Held in the Eisteddford pavilion, as usual, it's a big garden railway show over two halls, with a mix of layouts and trade.

A few contenders for 'model I'd like to build/own/replicate' starting with these Corris coaches.

The Gauge-1 Deltic was gorgeous. 

And then there's Mavis, my favourite of the Thomas locos. The chaps on this layout are busily making accurate replicas of the cast from the model series, and these machines were very impressive jobs. Amazing what you can do with 3D printing and modern radio-control too.

Mindyou, this live steam GWR 4-4-0 was rather nice.

This caught my eye, though mainly because I saw the real preserved one at the Vale of Rheidol back in the Spring. Apart from being the wrong gauge, it's about half as long as our whole layout.

An impressive, mainly Isle of Man lineup.

Some nice details- there were some nice scenic models at the show, and modules with good buildings and scenes on them.

Tram loco.

Thoughts on the exhibition... it seemed a little bit quieter this year. Still busy, but maybe not as much as previous years. I've read a few modellers posting on blogs that exhibitions have been quieter with the rise in the costs of, well, just about everything. Llangollen is one you really need to drive to, so maybe that had an impact. The mix of layouts was ok, but felt like it was missing an attention-grabber as you walked in (the slightly manic, colourful Playmobil layout not being there this year). Usual nice mix of trade, everything from relatively cheap laser-cut (though not as many as usual?) to super expensive live steam locomotives. Refreshments were interesting this year too, no petrol-burgers from the internal canteen, instead a horsebox coffee shop outside, and a similar mobile stand. Very nice, but struggling with the footfall so long queues in the rain. Actually on that note, the first visit we've done which wasn't a heat wave..

As per usual, we walked into Llangollen for lunch. Which was a touch disappointing (very tasty, but not a lot of it), though the ice cream from the shop in town made up for it.

Llangollen Station.

Overall? It was still a nice day out; we had a meeting with both one of our Editors, and with a supplier we might be doing a bit of a collaborative project with. Had it not been for those though, we might not have gone along (50 quids worth of Liquid Dinosaur to get there and back, on top of the entry tickets). We did buy some decent swag there though, plenty of bits for future projects, but it does make me wonder if we'll go back again for next year, or skip a year. 

 

Railway Research Trip; The Tanfield Railway

Last May saw us ticking another new (to us) railway off the list, with a visit to Tanfield, in the North-East. This has been on the to-do list for quite some time, and we nearly went last October.

Boy, sure glad we waited until the weather had improved in the Spring, much nicer...

About the best you could say about the conditions were that it made for atmospheric photographs. 

The railway, however, was excellent. More than lived up to expectations based on what I'd read in the mags and online. This is another of the giants of the British railway scene, even if it hasn't got the massive express engines and the like. It's just gloriously, fantastically, doing its own thing. The railway celebrates the industrial past of the North-East and does it in style, vintage coaches, small tank engines and diesel shunters, and some very quirky stations.

"Twizzel", which might have skyrocketed up towards the top of my list of favourite locomotives. Cute name, and it just looks, well, 'right' as a machine.

Only the week before this I'd been wearing shorts in a mini-heatwave, back in Wales. This day, we actually ended up in gloves at one point, and had to get hot drinks at each station.

This was the sort of thing I was here to see; vintage coaching stock and small locomotives. There's a project coming up for British Railway Modelling, see...

Plenty of chances for detail shots, both outside the coaches...

...and inside. Great place to have a small but heated family argument with the Childs. Ask me how I know.

Anyway, ruffled feathers smoothed with copious amounts of glowering silence, hot drinks, and pastry goods, it was time to stroll over to the engine sheds at Marley Hill. This beautiful little Armstrong shunter, a real dinosaur of a loco, was pottering about.

Moody shot.

Andrew-Barclay taking on water.

Lots of opportunities for cameo shots around the place.

Back to the sheds.

Love an Austerity, and the NCB-liveried no.49 was looking smashing.

A very characterful station at Andrews House; this will be inspiring a Hornby piece as well in due course.

Back onto the train for a run to the other end of the line.

"Twizzel" again on the mixed train.

This was the best part of the day for me. I've been doing a lot of research for the upcoming projects, a chunk of which has been the industrial railway photography books curated by Gordon Edgar. By dint of young age I missed the dying-days of industrial steam railways, but the Tanfield manages to replicate some of the grot and grime. Getting a chance to shoot moody pictures like this was terrific.

If there was a downside to the day (beyond the domestics... though is it a domestic if you have the row outside of the house?) it was the distance away. I could have easily spent another few hours here, but it's a long run back to West Yorkshire, especially in the awful weather, so we thought we better hit the motorway.

Still- characterful railway, amazing locomotives and stock, beautiful countryside, friendly volunteers; we'll be back for more later in the year with a bit of luck. In the meantime, plenty of inspiration for at least two upcoming projects...

 

This Month in British Railway Modelling; Miniature Railway in Miniature

Kitsch-Summer continues (shall I hashtag that? Get it trending?) for me in British Railway Modelling magazine. Wanting a colourful project, what better than an upper-middle class back garden with a miniature railway in it?

Miniature Railways come in various shapes, sizes, and locations; originally, when doing a piece on such lines, I was tempted by something like Fairbourne, but I'm doing rather a lot of beach-set projects this year, so wanted something a little more distinct.

Here's the basis; some of the excellent Z scale bits from Rokuhan of Japan.

Everything else was made from scrap and upcycled bits.

Converting the American loco before repainting it into a bit more of a British livery.

For the house, I used a venerable Airfix house kit picked up at the Keighley show, left hollow to hide the controller and batteries.

All looking a bit grim here, with the base colours washed on.

That's better :)

Mini station, patio, and spot-the-ball. Mainly because there were some figures and accessories left over from the Summer Fete build.

Guess this means it's somewhere in the West Midlands then; I envisage this as being an affluent suburb along the line featured in the 'modernised station' and 'retaining wall' pieces. Ooh, it's a shared universe, like The Avengers.

Trying to do the 'family' home thing with a repainted Metcalfe playground.

The pond was a bit of an experiment with poured casting resin in a plant tray.

A functional micro layout; about as close as I guess I'll come to making a model of a miniature railway, at least for the time being.

BRM as usual making it look awesome on the page.