THE Bridport and District Model Railway Club’s annual new year exhibition has been hailed a success after it returned to Beaminster.

Visitors came from Bournemouth, Southampton, Exeter, Yeovil and Salisbury to see a range of exhibits and layouts.

All popular scales were represented from the large ‘O’ gauge through to the much smaller ‘N’ gauge with a variety of scenes depicted, including an ‘Axe Valley Mill’ layout by Ken Banks and a ‘Rolstone’ layout by the Junction 72A Club from Exeter. This was a tribute to former club member, the late Pete Rolstone.

Christian Blundon from Yeovil displayed his steam era ‘Avon Halt’, showing a fictitious station, and the old Somerset and Dorset line was depicted by Ron Randall’s ‘Shillingsford’ layout and Bob Machin showed his ‘Allington Branch’, a late Victorian scheme.

The Welsh narrow gauge scene was presented by John Edge with his ‘N’ gauge layout entitled ‘Lands End’ and Douglas Beazer showed his static display about the royal train.

This year the club welcomed John Day from Bridport who displayed models made from Meccano model construction, including a clock.

Also at the show was Maurice Still with his ‘On a Red’ model of an ambulance station showing many of the different activities in the garage and various models made for the club’s competition were also on show. This was coupled with a demonstration and advice by Geoff Trenholme on how to make the scenery and models.

Douglas Beazer, the club’s publicity officer, said how fortunate they were to have exhibits in Beaminster of such high quality, compatible with the national level of modelling and this was a reflection of the very high standards on show.

Bob Ahrens, the club’s exhibition manager, commented that there was something for everyone and was pleased with the generous support of the local public and visitors.

The club’s next exhibition will be in Bridport on Saturday, July 27 at the Sir John Colfox Academy.