Stafford 2026

Sunday saw me attend my third model railway exhibition in three weeks, a record!! With Dad and I heading across the county for the Stafford show.

One of, if not the biggest club run shows in the country, there was some excellent modelling on display and whilst I felt that some layouts could’ve done with operators operating more and chatting to their mates less, suspect I’m grumpy as I age alongside the knowledge that with a show of this size there was a lot to get round. Took some photos of a few of the models that caught my eye.

Favourite layout for me was ‘Wantage Town’, as featured in MRJ. A fantastic example of the railway set within its landscape with plenty of details to soak up whilst the trains trundled faultlessly by.

American HO layouts are an aspect of the hobby that I know nothing about. But ‘Red Hook Bay’, a fictitious seaport set on the Maine coast had some very impressive buildings and detail that really caught my eye. With the prototypically correct knuckle couplers allowing for faultless hands free running.

The ‘Crooked House’ land sale yard set on the Earl of Dudley’s private railway is a fine piece of modelling. An interesting layout operationally and makes a change for a colliery layout to not be set at the colliery. I particularly liked the fully laden coal barge sitting low in the water.

‘Garra Bridge’ reminded me of some of the stations in the landscape photos I’ve seen in the colour albums produced by Lightmoor Press. The decent depth of layout plus the backscene being used to good advantage.

Of the 7mm scale layouts, I’d not seen ‘Weekend Yard’ since seeing it being built at Guildex in 2023 so was nice to see it finished.

Whilst ‘Newfield’ was home to an impressive Midland Railway steam Railmotor.

The boats on Stafford Circle’s 7mm Narrow Gauge of ‘Seagone’ caught my eye and looked imposing.

Also narrow gauge, was the 009 model of ‘Devil’s Bridge’ showing how spacious the Rheidol terminus was in Edwardian times.

Two small layouts I enjoyed watching the operation for some time were ‘Lochgorm’ and ‘Knype Bridge’ (again) with leisurely movement of diesels to entertain. Managed not to take any photos of the former, but here is one of the latter.

‘Welford Coppice’ was I believe a late stand in and proved a suitable stand in.