Mickleover 2025

For more years than I care to remember, our local group, the Trent Valley Group, of the 7mm Narrow Gauge Association have held an annual ‘do’ in January where like minded people can lighten the January gloom with a day of toy trains, cake and tea. 

Though the event has grown from its original aim of giving us a chance to erect our large group layout, through a members day to a modellers day and arguably, a small exhibition.

This year, thanks to booking issues, the ‘do’ took place on 1st February, or 32nd January as we were calling it!

Being the first event since I completed ‘Wheal Ponder’, I was keen to take the layout along and this was soon set up on the Friday evening.

With the stock put out on the Saturday morning, there was time for a brew and a bacon roll before the doors opened. A steady supply of tea was needed to combat the broken heating in the hall!

The layout suffered a couple of electrical niggles during the day, possibly caused by the heat differentials between being in a cold attic, warm house then cold then warm hall over a two day period. The layout was well received and had a couple of enquiries about whether I’d take the layout to some shows. Will see what family and shift work commitments allows with this regard.

In addition to the bacon rolls, we’ve got a reputation for a good selection of homemade cake. My better half had worked wonders baking five different cakes for our event and three more people baked too! My first choice was for a piece of Bakewell.

The day is a great chance to catch up with friends, with several familiar faces amongst the Association calling by the layout to say hello and have a chat. My Dad was able to pop over for a bit and also saw the Chairman of the Nottingham club, where Dad was a member for many years and I was a youth member. Thankfully as a retired RAIB Inspector, the layout behaved itself in front of him!

Being close to home, my daughter was able to come along and got on with some operating before she’d even taken her coat off!

Later in the day, two more visitors appeared, firstly was the De Winton from ‘Rhiw Goch’ which has yet to be fitted with DCC so can run on my layout but not theirs. It ran as well as it looked and was very much at home on ‘Wheal Ponder’. The one in my stash of unbuilt kits has just gone up the priority list!

The weekend saw the arrival of a new issue of the 7mmNGA’s magazine Narrow Lines featuring my layout and I’ve got a couple of other articles sent off. A nice surprise later in the afternoon was the layout catching Phil Parker’s eye and him taking a selection of photos for a possible article in BRM.

Trade wise, the ‘do’ attracted some older established traders and some new ones alike. A couple of things that caught my eye were:

Iconic Rail’s Glyn Valley Tramway carriage, developed I think to be some light relief from developing the Falcon loco. Whilst I’ve got some old Wrightlines kits in the drawer, these did look very tempting.

One new producer is Gubbin Box Models. Printing 3D loco bodies to suit rtr chassis. As someone who has seen the success of Fourdees doing this in 009, I’m keen to see a producer making these in NG7.

The Peckett looked very impressive on the Bachmann Quarry Hunslet chassis. Whilst the ‘Orikit’, an upscaled Varikit, has a Bagnall-style look I think- a smaller version of the Snailbeach Dennis with undertones of the double framing on some of the Cliffe Hill locos. Designed for the Peckett B2 chassis, I was left wondering whether it was fit on the Ibertren chassis I have at home.

The kit that caught my eye the most was the proposal Kerr Stuart drew up for the Talyllyn in the early Haydn Jones period, a model that has been on my list since the drawing first surfaced. A fine looking kit, one may well appear on ‘Wheal Ponder’ sooner rather than later…. Also shown was a proposal to produce a kit for a Festiniog England, with hints of more than one version to come. Exciting times for NG7!

There were several other layouts at the ‘do’ too, including some 009, some had caught my eye and had been ones I’d been looking forward to seeing for a while.

First up was the return of an old friend, Phil Traxson has taken the Creamery that formed part of our old group layout and turned it in to a new stand alone shunting puzzle layout.

Shunting the Creamery, it was good to see the late Tim Allsopp’s fireless loco back in its natural home. Whilst Phil’s Triang Dock Shunter conversion also caught my eye. In particular as Phil’s diesel conversions were some of the first NG7 models I encountered when I first joined the Association.

Next up was Apadobe Mine, an O-9 / NG7-9 inglenook shunting puzzle please loop of track to allow the train to take a run after each shunting session. I’d been impressed by this in ‘Narrow Lines’ and a chance to see the layout in the flesh so to speak was pleasing to me. I like a good shunting puzzle and adding the loop of track adds an extra element.

Last, but certainly not least, we have ‘Rhiw Goch’, a compact snapshot of this instantly recognisable location on the Festiniog Railway. Having seen this layout on the NGRM-online forum, I was keen to see this layout up close and was impressed at how effective the layout was considering the much shortened rakes of stock. The selective compression in all areas really worked well and shows just what can be done in a small space.

Overall a great success, though we were a little short handed at times (not helped by the number of us, myself included, who were exhibiting). Having taken layouts the last couple of years, I shall need to go empty handed next time and help do some of the less glamorous jobs that make the show tick.

‘Wheal Ponder’ is out again at Narrow Gauge North in early March, hopefully see a few more familiar faces up in Pudsey. In the mean time, it’s back to the ore hopper and the new layout build.