All aboard! Waverley Model Railway Club still riding the rails
Many of us had model train sets growing up.
Mine was a small circular Hornby clockwork affair and I spent many hours laying the tracks and carefully placing the rolling stock in position before enthusiastically watching an engine, three carriages and a guard's van trundling around slowly and steadily, lap after lap.
Fun as it was, it always left me enviously dreaming of the larger, more elaborate layouts you saw on the box or on posters at the local toy and hobby store.
Since its formation in 1970, Waverley Model Railway Club has taken that passion and enthusiasm to remarkable levels.
The club describes itself as a community of enthusiasts and modellers whose members enjoy coming together to share their passion, hone skills, pass on and acquire knowledge and run small scale railways.
Alan Greenhill, Waverley vice-president and exhibition manager, said club membership is rapidly closing in on 100 and ranges in age from 10 or 12 through to members in their 90s.
“We’re probably the second largest model railway club in the state,” Alan said. “And we seem to have a good way to attract and maintain membership. Some members have been here for 40 years.”
Enjoyment and passion notwithstanding, it’s far from just big kids playing with toys.
“There’s design work, electronics, woodwork, it’s artistry,” Alan said. “There’s so many handyman skills to learn. And now the exhibition layouts are guided by computers.”
Railway modelling offers an inexhaustible catalogue of skills and areas of interest that participants can learn and develop over time.
Delicate woodworking skills to craft miniature locomotives and carriages; the imagination needed for laying tracks, creating scenery, bridges, roads and buildings; and the technical knowledge required for wiring, lighting, electronics, computer systems, and even sound systems in locomotives.
Club activities are based at two venues in Melbourne’s south-east with permanently set-up layouts housed in the North Dandenong premises, acquired in 2000 to cope with the expansion of the club.
“There’s some big layouts there that take up the entire hall,” Alan said.
Waverley’s original clubrooms, since 1980 at Ashwood Hall, are where the club works on and stores its portable layouts. Alan said the portable layouts are constructed in modules of 1.8m x 0.9m “that are designed so that they can fit into the club trailer”.
And given that Waverley members attend up to five or six events around Victoria every year, that mobility is essential.
“We attend exhibitions all over the state,” Alan said. “In January, we spent a weekend in Warrnambool. Last weekend (15 and 16 March) we displayed at the Train and Hobby Show at the Sandown Racecourse. And then we’ll be going to Moe in May.”
And, just last December, club members took a small display to Cumberland View in Wheelers Hill much to the delight of the retirement village residents who joyously relived their childhood love of a model train set.
KINGS BIRTHDAY EXHIBITION
By far the most important date in the diary every year – and it’s been circled on the calendar permanently in red ink for some 15 years now - is the club’s annual exhibition held at the Brandon Park Community Centre (649 Ferntree Gully Road Glen Waverley, just over the road from the Brandon Park Shopping Centre) on the King’s Birthday long weekend (this year, 7-9 June).
Alan’s involvement, as exhibition manager, becomes a near-fulltime job as he books, arranges and co-ordinates the 30 exhibitors – from both the Waverley club and around the state - to ensure a smoothly-run showcase of the model railway community’s finest.
The effort required probably doesn’t fall that far short of managing a full-scale suburban railway system.
“We set it up so that, from the moment you walk in the door, you can look right and you can look left and you can look straight ahead and there’s something going on,” Alan said. “It’s the ‘wow’ factor. You want the general public to be entertained.”
Despite the many detailed displays on show, one of the most important displays, Alan said, is a smaller ‘you-drive’ layout where budding young engineers are allowed to take the controls and have a go themselves – encouraging a new generation of enthusiast to get involved.
CLIMB ABOARD
The Waverley Model Railway Club is always delighted to share its passion for small scale railways, and welcomes any budding enthusiast to join its ranks. Find out more about session times and venues:
Waverley Model Railway Club
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/waverleymrc.org.au#
Website: https://waverleymrc.org.au/
The club can be contacted via its website
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