4mm/OO Gauge
Presented by Uckfield College Model Railway Club
The Uckfield College Model Railway Club, sponsored by UMRC and the Arnold Clark Charitable Trust, was run by a volunteer from UMRC and college staff member, Mr G Crawford until July 2025. Mr Crawford now runs the club himself. The students have been working on the layout, for one hour per week in term time, since 2019. Originally, the students were aiming to have the layout finished for last year’s Uckfield exhibition, but the pandemic stopped them in their tracks. The group sticks to the “Micro Layout” format because we don’t have time or space to build a big layout.
Ettington Station was on the East & West Junction Railway’s route from Kineton to Stratford in Warwickshire. It opened on 1st July 1873 and finally closed in 1965. The students have built Ettington with the track plan reversed so that the goods yard is at the front of the layout. They have also simplified the Goods Yard into a single siding. The name Ettington Verso has been coined because of the reversal. The students are also building the station as a “preserved railway.” This means that any DCC stock that the group owns, or can borrow, can run on it.
The layout is technologically advanced. A member of the Model Railways Electronic Group (MERG), Anthony Shaw, has developed a point control system using a single board computer and programmed it for us to set the routes using a mimic panel. How do we see what is going on inside the box from the fiddle yard? Again, Anthony programmed a Raspberry Pi to use its camera to show us via a monitor.
The students will be delighted to demonstrate how these work. Please feel free to talk to us.
Website – www.facebook.com/uckfieldcollege