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 Farington 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.
It is with great sadness that we announce the death on the 11th of April of LeylandSME stalwart Alan Priddey. Alan has been a regular at the track and meetings for many years, his only absences were when he was on holiday in his beloved Pembrokeshire. His "Silver Shed" locomotive has earned many a penny for the club. He was a great ambassador for the club and always willing to encourage new members. We send our condolonces to his wife Sylvia and his son and daughter Ian and Heather.
Club Chairman John Barr commented "Alan was a long standing member of the Society whose chatty nature and knowledgeable personality will be missed by many, he was nearly a permanent fixture at our Worden Park track on Sundays and Tuesdays and the place will just not be the same without him."
The funeral will be held at Howbridge Crematorium (M46 0PZ) on Friday the 19th of April at 10:45.
Leyland SME is hosting this prestigious event on the 12/13/14th July 2013. A special website has being set up to keep people informed. Click Here. (Needs JavaScript.)
There will be limited space for camping/caravaning. If you intend to stay on site please contact us. Click Here
Click here for an application form (PDF)
The track is now finished and is fantastic! Trains are now running on Sundays as usual.
I have done a few laps with various locos and can only say that it was worth all the hard work. It is so smooth and easy running. Thanks must go to all the members who have worked so hard over the winter.
Take a ride around the new track behind Chris's "Sweet Pea" courtesy of Dan's video. Click here for YouTube video,
No, we haven't relocated to a safari park, just some friendly characters on Leyland Festival Day. Thanks to Russ for the picture.
Thanks to Cameron you can now follow us on "FaceBook" if that is your thing! Click here
This was judged a great success by most people. Our stand was excellent and thanks must go to Lee and his team for a job well done under difficult circumstances. (We were informed two weeks before the show that there would be no mains power available which ruled out some of the proposed displays.)
Two local clubs have joined us on the World Wide Webb:
At last I have updated the Picture Galleries. There are now two:
It seems impossible but the pictures on the old gallery are over ten years old!
Mike Taylor recommends a visit to this museum near Poyton. See their website for details.
Vic tries out his magnificent almost complete "King"
Unfortunately there were problems which were caused by a split commercial fitting and a faulty centre cylinder casting. Vic has since rectified these problems and the loco now runs very well. A tremendous achievement Vic!
A fine day (!) on Tuesday 9/10/2012 saw Vic's King on the track again:
Pictures by Alan Wilson.
Click here for this years programme of events.
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 have also built 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"
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: 15/04/2013.