About Us

Blandford St MaryDuke Street Clubroom

We are located in Duke Street close to the railway station right in the centre of High Wycombe.

  • the rooms are for our exclusive use
  • existing layouts are permanently erected
  • Four new layouts are on the drawing board, in O scale, OO scale and HO scale;
  • tools and equipment are available for members to use;
  • advice is always close at hand – tips are freely given, all you have to do is ask …
  • Come and join in at the design stage, or just come and run trains.

We are a friendly club with all sorts of varied levels of expertise and none. We run a Junior section for young people learning the hobby and put on open days and demonstrations where anyone can learn more. We don’t charge newcomers and later you can choose the membership level you want.

Our club nights are now up and running at our clubrooms on Monday and Wednesday evenings. Contact us here to find our more about us and join the fun.

Details about how to find our Duke Street Club Rooms can be found here.

Leigh Street – a retrospective

Our old clubroom, very recently vacated, was in many ways the making of the present club. Who would have thought when we moved in (2002) the club would expand the way it has. It enabled us to “think big” on many fronts, particularly with our layouts. Three of these were thirty feet long or more …

So was the Leigh Street era our golden age? When in October 2018 the premises fell to the developers’ sword we had to get out quickly and find ourselves somewhere else. We are very grateful to club members for adapting so briskly for the change, as this involved radical rethinking on several major layouts, built and under construction. Along with that came other implications and with them, new ideas. Several layouts are moving with us but there’s a lot of careful rethinking about how practical our large layouts were.

So no fewer than four new layouts are now being discussed. If you are not a club member but model railways interest you, now would be a great time to join in. We are particularly open to new ideas at the moment.

So great as Leigh Street was as a place to grow, the steps were dangerous, the courtyard dark and gloomy at night and the lift cantankerous. And don’t forget the windows leaked, there was no regular heating in winter and despite all our attempts it remained a grimy industrial garret with peeling paint and an undulating floor.

We didn’t realise it when it happened, but it was time to go!

Credits

Our special thanks must go to the demolition crew on the Leigh Street site; to Wycombe District Council for allowing us to negotiate new premises and to numerous other good people around the town who have helped look for premises, understood the problems and helped out in so many ways.