All aboard for a trip back to boyhood.

Gainsborough Model Railway Society Open Day.


The original plan for the bank holiday weekend was the Fake Festival on the Saturday and Grimsthorpe Festival on the Monday. In fact if I’d had my way we would have taken in Tabbyfest in Swinderby on the Sunday too but this was vetoed by the powers that be. In fact not only was the Monday forecast awful, the day started dismal to say the least so we were looking for some indoor entertainment.

I’d seen adverts for Gainsborough Model Railway open days before and fancied it so off we went. The publicity said it was easy to find but I was glad I set up the sat nav as it was tucked away in the back streets near Tesco, not that we know Gainsborough very well. What we weren’t prepared for was the sheer scale (did you see what I did there?) of the model railway. The model trains are about twice the size of my old Hornby set and represented several generations of modeller’s efforts and very impressive it was too.

The theme of the layout is Kings Cross to the now defunct Leeds Central Station and the representation of Kings Cross was breathtaking in its attention to detail. There was even a workman tackling a bit of miniature welding by the line side, blue flashes emitting from his welding arc.

It’s easy to be a bit sniffy about grown men playing trains, but there’s no doubting the tremendous skill involved in constructing not only the many lines but the locomotives and rolling stock too but make no mistake about it a lot of the modellers were living the dream alright and woe betide the poor new member, operating the turntable for the first time getting the sequence wrong. He heard all about where he was going wrong from the stationmaster, or was it the fat controller?