Oldham Goup

[Hugh Norwood]

Oldham group meeting 12th November, 2025 cont/d.

The next 3 meetings – all on Zoom with confirmed dates are on:
    1. Wednesday, 10th December;
    2. Wednesday, 14th January;
    3. Wednesday, 11th February.
all commencing at 8.00pm.

Those who normally receive the Zoom link for the meetings can sit back; if you would like to join these meetings and do not receive the link please email Paul to be added to the list.

s.p.t. 18-11-25.

[Hugh Norwood]

Oldham group meeting 10th December, 2025.

The meeting was attended by Alan, Andrew, Bob, Charlie, David E., David H., Frank, Hugh, Ian, Peter, Philip, Rob, Stuart, Tony and Paul.

Apologies were received from Darryl.

Alan outlined his modelling priorities for the New Year. He has written an article he hopes will be published in the 009 News on the West Clare Railway. For illustrations in this article, he will need to build a West Clare Railway railcar and F type diesel locomotive. He will also need a model of the last steam locomotive made for the Irish narrow gauge by Hunslet, the West Clare Railway 4-6-0 tank locomotive Malbay. He also intends to construct next year a 2-4-0 tank locomotive which ran on the Glenariff Railway and the 0-6-2 tank locomotive Londonderry which ran on the Lough Swilly railway.  He has already started making the West Clare Railway D class diesel from Worsley Works etches.

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[Hugh Norwood]

Oldham group meeting 10th December, 2025 cont/d.

Bob talked of his plans to take St-Trojan to an exhibition in France in 2026. He hopes to be invited to a show in the Vendée in June, and combine the trip with a holiday.

An article should be published in Continental Modeller around the same time.

A few new photos have been taken of the layout, to show the more recently-built stock, like the Accumulator railcar:


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He is working to prepare the layout for the long car journey - fixing the two baseboards securely together, and adding LED lighting. He has also made 14 extra trees for the layout, and is fitting new back scenes. This will be reported on at a future meeting.

[Hugh Norwood]

Oldham group meeting 10th December, 2025 cont/d.

Charlie had completed two locos from Fourdees by adding lining. The 'Whiting' and a 'Starbeck'.

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the 'Whiting' loco

Additionally he had completed 'Gelert Bach' for the 'Bangor; Penrhyn Railway' project. It runs on a Minitrix 0-4-4-0 chassis.

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A recent purchase is the Bachmann 'Sir Handel', more of this anon once it has had some work to de-character the loco.

[Hugh Norwood]

Oldham group meeting 10th December, 2025 cont/d.

Ian had almost finished building the Scalescenes canal wharf boxfile layout, with the roof added to the final building and work on the bridge over the track exit almost complete. There was some discussion around the best way to print the colour cover layers and which glue to use to apply them.

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[Hugh Norwood]

Oldham group meeting 10th December, 2025 cont/d.

Rob has been working on an as yet unfinished kit of a fictional Armstrong Whitworth Diesel produced by Bernard Taylor, with a little bit of Shelagh of Eskdale and WAGR X class thrown in too.

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[Hugh Norwood]

Oldham group meeting 10th December, 2025 cont/d.

Tony had purchased a couple of A1 Models resin print railcars which were intended for the Kato 4 wheel chassis but there was too much overhang and so he decided to convert them to run on bogie chassis. The trailing car is sitting on a shortened Lima Wreen N gauge container wagon with 23mm removed from the middle. The driven car is on a Tomytec TM04 chassis which (purely by chance) happened to be the exact length needed. They're painted Tony's in-house Humbrol 96 (RAF blue) livery and will have e.g. handrails fitted in due course.

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[Hugh Norwood]

Oldham group meeting 10th December, 2025 cont/d.

Paul explained the reasons for building a new cattle dock and loading ramp for the Clogher Station model following the discovery of a new photograph which hinted at some significant alterations being necessary.

The model is being built with the use of card of various thicknesses.
Additionally progress had been made with 'The Unit' a rail tractor which ran on the Clogher Valley Railway which had been given a few additional details and was now at the point of being painted.

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With very best wishes for a Happy Christmas and 2026.


The next 2 meetings are on Zoom with confirmed dates:
    1. Wednesday, 14th January;
    2. Wednesday, 11th February.
both commencing at 8.00pm.

s.p.t. 24-12-25.

[Hugh Norwood]

Oldham & NW groups meeting 14th January, 2026.

The meeting was attended by Alan, Bob, Charlie, David E., David H., Hugh, Ian, Rob, Tony and Paul.

Apologies were received from Frank, Peter, Philip and Stuart.

Alan has constructed a West Clare Railway diesel railcar and a F class Bo-Bo diesel locomotive.

The railcar was made from a David Hurst 3D print and was powered by a scratch-built motor bogie based on a Mike Chinnery design.

The F class Bo-Bo diesel locomotive was made from a Worsley Works etch running on a chassis Alan had previously used for a previous County Donegal liveried version of the locomotive.

Both models were airbrush sprayed with enamel paints using Humbrol dark green No 30 to represent the CIE West Clare Railway livery.

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[Hugh Norwood]

Oldham & NW groups meeting 14th January, 2026 cont/d.

Bob outlined how he has added painted back scenes to St-Trojan.  This seems to have improved the look of the layout in photographs - he showed "before and after" photos.

Newly-installed LED lighting has also made it quicker to take photographs, so some of the new photos will be submitted to Continental Modeller to accompany the planned article on St-T.

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[Hugh Norwood]

Oldham & NW groups meeting 14th January, 2026 cont/d.

Charlie had progressed work on Bangor (Penrhyn). He had also bought two 3D printed W&L coaches for use on Winter Overcoats.

David H. had used information from Jamie P. to produce a 3D print of the Ballymena & Larne 4 ton ore wagons. Additionally there was a reworking of the CdN flat wagon to carry 2 whiskey barrels (Irish). On another front David had built a curved 009 point for use on a future layout.

Hugh showed how he had upgraded the "clacks" (telegraph / semaphore) tower on his layout to computer control, so that people can now type sentences (on a retired smartphone screen) and have the message sent over the Clacks, using an Arduino microcomputer.

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[Hugh Norwood]

Oldham & NW groups meeting 14th January, 2026 cont/d.

Rob had recently acquired a Backwoods K1 Garrett. It mostly ran well but there were a couple of small issues to sort out with one of the power bogies to achieve the reliability desired for exhibition.

Tonyhad completed a small 3D print of a halt along with telephone call box and lavatory. He'd almost completed the rail buses featured in the last notes along with some RNAD flat wagons that made use of the Society kits.

Paul had progress 3 projects though the schedule suggested at the previous meeting proved to be very aspirational.
The new cattle dock was fitted with railings and gates; the paint work on Unit was nearly finished as was that on a Backwoods CDR coach.

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There was some useful discussion about the use of lichen to construct trees.



The next 2 meetings are on Zoom:
    1. Wednesday, 11th February - confirmed.
    2. Wednesday 11th March -t.b.c.
both commencing at 8.00pm.

s.p.t. 19-1-26.

[Hugh Norwood]

Oldham & NW groups meeting 11th February, 2026.

The meeting was attended by Alan, Andrew, Bob, David E., David H., Graeme, Hugh, Paul M., Peter, Stuart, Tony and Paul.

Apologies were received from Frank, Ian, Philip

Alan described how he made the chassis for the West Clare Railway 4-6-0T locomotive Malbay.  This was the last ever steam locomotive built for the Irish 3ft narrow gauge railways.  

He was able to use a etch from Worsley Works for a Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway 4-8-4T locomotive as both engines had the same size wheels, wheel spacing, and Walschaert's valve gear. This greatly helped with the construction of the chassis for Malbay.

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[Hugh Norwood]

Oldham & NW groups meeting 11th February, 2026 cont/d.

Bob: The demise of the original Shapeways shop has deprived many modellers of a source of many useful products.  Bob described a successful collaboration with David H., who kindly 3D-printed some additional French coaches from the designs Bob had previously bought via Shapeways.  The original designer has recently put his 3D models (just the STL files) on the makers' site cults3d.com , where they can be downloaded at very reasonable cost.

David H. was able to split the design down the longitudinal centreline, and print 'half carriages', but in PLA material rather than the nylon Shapeways used.  This split helped Bob, who needs to make the carriages wider to suit his needs.  David had also managed to print 'quarter carriages' and 'individual window' sections, to allow Bob to build some 5-window coaches, rather than 4-window.  Now, he has a lot of work to build another batch of carriages ...

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[Hugh Norwood]

Oldham & NW groups meeting 11th February, 2026 cont/d.

David H. had completed the B&L iron ore wagons. He used decals from:
https://phoxydesign.co.uk/
They are custom waterslide decals with white underprint for any colour surface. There are a very good set of instruction on the website to help you get your artwork ready for printing.

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The magnetic couplings used came from:
https://www.porterhousemodels.co.uk/
They do 009 standard ridged sets of 5 for £7.20 and 009 close pivoting sets of 5 for £7.20 they work with NEM pockets.

He also showed us a Northern Rail type Pacer he'd built for his daughter (also for 009).

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