Our founding Chairman, Shaun Gill, is not just a railway modeller. He is also an Explorer Scout leader. During 2025 he was selected to lead his scout troop to the 2026 World Scouting jamboree in Poland. As that takes up a considerable amount of his free time to organise and prepare for, it was with […]
I never thought I’d join a model railway club. A friend belongs to the N-Gauge Society and although I loved going to exhibitions with him over 19 years (TINGS is an annual pilgrimage) I never felt like taking part in regular meets. Too shy, too anxious, too self-intimidated to stand up amongst my peers – […]
NG34 Model Railway Society’s first ever show is set to take place on Saturday, March 8th at Cranwell Village Hall from 10am – 4pm. We’re really excited for this to take place and it’s the culmination of the hard work and dedication of our events team. There will be 13 layouts, 2 traders, 3 demonstrations, […]
I would like to say a massive ‘thank you’ to all that came and made today happen; our friends from other clubs and exhibitors that came to support us, the unsung heros that aren’t part of the club but wanted to see us succeed with their help in the kitchen and on the door. A […]
It’s now time to start thinking about the control system behind Rhad Valley, and despite the unexpected cost of the frog juicer, I wanted to get back on track with this and keep things low cost. With this in mind I decided on DCC-Ex because it’s good (I’ve used it before) and it’s b****y cheap! […]
I noticed when I was poking around the layout with the multimeter that the frogs and switchrails weren’t carrying any power. This is usually fixed simply by cleaning the track, mainly between the rails and the switchrails, but for whatever reason I couldn’t get it clean enough to be reliable. I don’t know how old […]
In the last post, we finished off by wiring up a bus wire for all of the common terminals of the solenoid point motors to connect to, and this is where we pick it up. The layout currently has old fashioned solenoid point motors – think classic Gaugemaster PM10’s and then think older! These motors […]
Ordinarily, converting a DC layout to a DCC layout is a fairly straightforward task when going from simple loops; you would unplug the DC controller, plug in the DCC controller and away you go. This one however, got me stumped… I came into the hobby when DCC was already around – my only experience of […]
Rhad Valley was purchased as a restoration project and gets its name from the fact that it only cost £100 – Rhad literally means “cheap” in Welsh. The layout has a lot of potential, however it also needs a lot of work doing to it. Unfortunately over time, the scenics have become damaged; all but […]
Digital Command Control (DCC) revolutionizes the way model railways are powered and controlled. Unlike traditional Direct Current (DC) systems, DCC allows for independent control of multiple locomotives on the same track, providing a more dynamic and realistic operating experience. This guide will take you through the steps to wire up a model railway layout using […]