About Us
Our GroupThe CM&EC group has been around for quite some time now, and many of the original members have been too! They all come from a variety of backgrounds but with one common interest; running live steam in the garden. We meet most Friday evenings at a member's railway (indoors during the winter months) and run our trains until our host boots us out. We also meet on the first Sunday of every month for open events to which anyone interested in our hobby is invited. The group has a core membership made up of the most hard-working and enthusiastic members. Their current employment status (retired) means that they can devote considerable amounts of time to the hobby and the group. All are slightly barmy but also have a good sense of humour, something we have found to be essential. We consider ourselves to be warm and friendly and always give visitors a good welcome.
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LC Hammerton of the Weal Barrow Railway passes the old seed merchant's warehouse before crossing the lift-bridge on the Argoed Light Railway. Brian Spring |
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| For many years
the group has owned a portable layout, Rowlands Lodge, which experienced a
complete make-over about 11 years ago. Since then it has been extended and
added to and is now a firm favourite with the organizers of several model
railway shows. We are currently developing an electronic magazine, OnTrack OnLine, resurrected from the ashes of our defunked hardcopy magazine. It is hoped that this will be published every other month and will be available exclusively from this site. |
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A matter of scale
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An impressive Fowler loco enters the main line on the WBR. Brian Spring |
Our trains,
engines, layouts etc are all built to the same scale, ie 16mm:1ft and
run on the same gauge track, ie 32mm (2ft). For those of you that find
this confusing, let me explain.
The scale determines the size of just about everything. The 16mm part means that for every foot in the real, full-size world, our model has just 16mm. For example, a 6ft tall person would only measure 96mm (about 3¾") tall on our layouts. This brings us onto gauge. This is the distance between the rails on the track. Mainline railways have a gauge of 4ft 8½ins. Anything less is termed narrow gauge and so varies a lot more. Most Welsh narrow gauge lines had a gauge of 2ft. Therefore, on our layouts, the gauge is 32mm. Only one problem remains; why do we have a metric: imperial scale? We have absolutely no idea, but it can make things interesting sometimes! |
| Just to make things worse, many of us also dabble in other scales! For example, G Scale (45mm gauge), 5" gauge & 7¼" gauge model engineering, 7mm scale (O gauge) and 4mm scale (OO gauge). | |
