Cranwell Express has finally hit the road.
Our club layout, Cranwell Express, has only been seen in public twice so far since the build project launched.
It first appeared at our October 2023 inuagural show and was at that stage 4 white primered baseboards, some photos from the interwebs, and a draft track plan. That set our intent to deliver a working model of the RAF Cranwell Railway based in the 1920s period. Interest was limited as there wasn’t much that people could relate to at that time.
Its second appearance was during March 2024, where after a visit to the RAF College Library at Cranwell to improve our research quality, we had been able to finalise a track plan, lay and wire most of the track, and create an 8 carriage train of teak effect 4-wheel ex metropolitan line stock. Interest this time was much better, mainly due to it being a working demonstration of how to go about planning and building an n-gauge layout. This ‘warts & all’ reveal was so popular that several times during the day we had to stop running trains for fear of crashing them whilst we answered the multitude of questions being asked by those looking to take up the hobby themselves.
Now roll forward 14 months and I am pleased to report that Cranwell Express has just successfully completed its first appearance on the exhibition circuit.
Over the weekend of 9th & 10th May 2026 Cranwell Express was on display at the Market Deeping MRC show at Stamford (Lincs).
The weekend wasn’t without issues – 1 frog wire snapped off and a few connections became loose during transit (bits of the A15 road surface between Bourne and Sleaford are dreadful…) and required some last minute snagging, but we had trains running by the time the doors opened at 10am on Saturday.
The layout, and the operating team of Colin, Ian, Ross and Barry made it through the whole weekend.
Some of the comments we received were; “Ooh, this is a new layout on the circuit”, “I worked there and didn’t know we had our own railway”, “You really have done the research on this one” and “My god, it’s Cranwell!”. That last one was very pleasing as it means we got the scenery and the buildings right.
We met many people who had served, are serving, or will shortly be serving at RAF Cranwell who now know a little but more about their workplace. We met some people who added to our historical knowledge of the site, albeit not from the 1920s.
All in all it was a very enjoyable first exhibition. Our Market Deeping MRC hosts were great and put on a very well organised and catered show – lots of smiles all round so well done Team MDMRC.
What next for Cranwell? Some post-exhibition checking and fettling of point motor adjustments, some strengthening of soldered joints, replacement of 1 turnout that was giving interittent binding issues irrespective of pizza cutter or later finer standards of locomotive wheelsets and then its down to dressing the scenery with the ‘detritus of life’ such a food barrels, vegetable crates, fire buckets, handcarts, more coal piles and then some humans doing things. But first, feet up, relax and bask in the glory of a job well done.
