Welcome to the home page of the Leyland SME. The Society caters for all tastes in the ME world. We meet once a fortnight at the Farrington Conservative Club for talks, lectures or just a chat, and on Sundays and Tuesdays at the track which is located in the beautiful Worden Park on the outskirts of Leyland.
At the Park we have an extensive (1617ft) continuous raised track in 3½ and 5 inch gauges. The ground level seven and a quarter track has been redeveloped. The complete circuit (1 kilometre), station and sidings are now open. Come and have a run!
There is always a warm welcome and a cup of tea waiting for fellow model engineers, prospective new members and interested visitors.
If you would like to run your Loco, please bring a current club membership card, boiler certificate and Spark Arrestor.
See the News section
Two new arrivals on the ground level:
Bill and Steve Stockdale's lovely "Tinkerbell" and Trevor Collyer's highly detailed Class 2 Ivat tank.
(Photos G Baxendale)
It has been anounced that the Blackgates Club will NOT be running IMLEC this year as previously posted. We await details of a new venue/date.
A couple of new sites for your perusal:
The "Ranger", recently returned from its overhaul, (Thanks Bill and Steve) and three coaches tried out the new track on Tuesday (17/1/12). Every one agreed that all the hard work had been worth it.
There is still some work to do on the anti-tip rails, fencing and signalling. Work is now done on Sundays and Tuesdays
The raised track is still closed for passenger hauling, but watch this site!
Weather and locos permitting, running and passenger hauling will still take place on Sundays on the seven and a quarter ground level.
Here are some pics from Chairman Barr:
The raised track station minus track!
Adrian and Dave fixing stoops.
George assembling one of the n thousand sleepers!
The raised track station straight with new rail.
Click here.for this years programme of events.
I have just discovered that Model Engineer Magazine has a website
Well known Southport company, Phoenix Locos have a website full of useful info. We hope to see some of your stuff at Diesel Day Keith!
Welcome to the Leyland SME hosted by "Heart Internet"
This is accessible to the Webmaster by broadband, so updating the site will be much easier.
Please bookmark the new url http://www.leylandsme.co.uk and delete the old sarno.freeserve.co.uk/leyland, which www.leylandsme used to point to.
All the trucks are now painted in our corporate red and cream livery apart from three in brown and cream for the Great Western enthusiasts and are proving very successful, being easy to pull and comfortable and stable to ride on.
The trucks have an unusual coupling arrangement and whilst we have a stock of adaptors, including Geoff/Adrian's design of "buffer beam and hook" for those with scale couplings, it is recommended that you construct your own bar to suit your own loco. Here is the drawing:
If that is not very clear Click Here for a printable PDF version of the drawing.
The new disc braked unitary construction trucks for the ground level are now in operation and together with some new "Big" engines have revolutionised our passenger "shifting" capacity
Julie, Muriel and Pam try out one of the new trucks,
whilst new member Keith tends the fire on his superb "Thomas2".
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The good news is that, thanks to the sterling efforts of our President, we have received a substantial grant from the National Lottery's "Awards for All" scheme. This has funded a special riding car for disabled passengers (scroll down for picture) and we are also building some extra general purpose riding cars for the increasing traffic that we now carry. |
Update: The disabled truck now has a fully operational braking system and is proving a big success with wheelchair bound visitors.
Recently, active Leyland member Les Hurst has been confined to a wheel chair and has had to ride in the new disabled truck, pulled by his diesel "Sidewinder"
Les gets "loaded"
The new shed is proving of great benefit to operations at the track, particularly with the cold weather we have been having. See Recent Developments. (Needs Broadband because of big pictures)
BahnTV now seems to have vanished even from the Internet. There seems to be some of their programs on "YouTube"
This is a free dowloadable on-line railway magazine. Arrives as a PDF file. Go to Railway Herald web site You don't actually have to register, you can just download the files.
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Page last updated: 21/1/2012.