History of the Group

The Heywood Model Railway Group was formed in 1969 by two or three enthusiasts who wanted to share their knowledge about model railways and they originally met at one of the founder members houses in Heywood. Hence the name, even though the group now have their permanent premises in Rochdale.

Interest in the group gained momentum and it was soon realized that something more permanent was needed in order to have the ability to run models and house a complete layout.

Premises were found in St Johns Church Rochdale in 1970 but were far from perfect. The roof leaked badly and heating was none existent. It was plainly obvious that these conditions were unsuitable and something better was looked for by the members.
Eventually The Group was offered rooms in the present building at Champness Hall, Drake St. Rochdale where they were able to have model layouts permanently erected and work on them was not disrupted by having to pack them away after each meeting.

The Group began to exhibit their work first of all at the Drill Hall in Bury, which was used a couple of times and then at a Church hall in Radliffe on another two occasions. St. James Church in Heywood was used for one exhibition but these church premises could only be used on the Saturday as they were needed on the Sunday for normal worship.

Eventually in around the mid 80's the Civic Hall at Whitworth was booked where the exhibition could be held over the whole weekend, which made it much more worthwhile setting everything up. The only real drawbacks with Whitworth were
a) its location making it very remote from the main areas of population
b) its size which limited the number of exhibits that could be displayed.
Nevertheless this venue became the location for the annual exhibition until 2001 and the group had a reputation for producing a nice "Friendly Family" exhibition that was visited by around 800 to 1000 visitors each year.

It was eventually decided to test another venue that would be larger with a bigger "Capture area" and a trial exhibition was run in 1999 at Holy Cross Bury. The results of this trial were very encouraging and it was decided that the last Whitworth exhibition would be in the March of 2000.

2001 saw our first annual exhibition at Holy Cross and it was a raging success. Feedback from visitors was excellent and for the first time they had been able to get a full meal if they wanted from the College Refectory.

Building on this success the large Hall at Holy Cross was used for 2002, 2003, and 2004. After the 2004 event it was thought that because of the amount of extension work that was going on at the College, which was in turn reducing the available parking, that we should perhaps explore the possibility of using nearby Bury College instead.
Bury College were contacted but they too were about to embark on a large extension which would run until September 2005. So once again we booked the large hall at Holy Cross for our 2005 exhibition hoping that most of their building work would be completed by March 2005.

Work on models continued during all this time with the venture into the 0-16.5mm Narrow gauge field with the layout called Penn-Y-Ffordd. This layout was actually booked to be exhibited before it was anything like complete and it has been one of the most successful models the club has ever been involved with. A full list of the events that this layout has been invited to would be too long to fit this page and it is still being booked well into the future.

On the "0" gauge front the club has a model called "Wrye" which is a large end to end layout.

In 2004 the Todmorden Model Railway Club folded and they offered their large partly completed "0" gauge continuous run to the Heywood Group. This has now been altered and finished off ready for the 2005 exhibition.

Less than 6 weeks from the 2005 exhibition disaster struck!! Just by chance the information that the large hall at Holy Cross may not be available was discovered. Our Exhibition Manager called the College and they indeed confirmed that the hall was being refurbished and would indeed not be available to us!!!! Why had they not checked the bookings and notified us earlier?? They had obviously known about this work for many months.
Well it was all hands to the pumps that week and its amazing how the whole membership pulled together with members reporting back with venues available at short notice.
We finally decided on our own building which has several large rooms that would be suitable and approached the owner of the building who understood our problem. He has made two rooms available to us. The large room called "Rooftops" and a slightly smaller room below. After much planning and juggling the exhibition will go ahead at the new venue but how well we will do is something we have yet to find out.

Watch this space for feedback after March 2005 Well it all came good in the end!!
Dispite our worst fears we managed to avoid running our 2005 Exhibition at a loss and thanks to the faithfull followers of Model Railway Exhibitions we did manage to pay our way.
So the club can continue and we will for one more year be holding our 2006 Exhibition at Champness Hall. We are currently investigating other possibilites for events after 2006 which include Bury College and Heywood Civic Hall. Any news or developements on this will be reported here.

17th December 2005
The 2006 exhibition has again been booked at Champness Hall as Heywood Civic Hall is to undergo some updating during the early part of the year.
However we have now placed a deposit with the Civic Hall and have booked for March 2007. This should prove to be a good venue that we can use for some time to come with the prospect of well attended exhibitions.

2nd April 2006 Our exhibition for 2006 was again held at Champness hall and would have been one of our best had it not snowed heavily on the Sunday. This heavy snow had a dramatic effect on the attendance for that day with many people deciding not to venture out. We estimate that about 200 visitors chose not to risk the weather and stayed at home.
Feedback from those that did make it though was very good and many commented on our new display layout "Sumner Brook" which made its debut at the 2006 exhibition.
Work is now well under way on the modernisation of the Heywood Civic Centre where we will be exhibiting in 2007 so unless there are any unforseen disasters along the way you can look forward to a good exhibition at this new venu.

31st January 2007 As I pen this everything is in full steam getting ready for the 2007 event at the new Venue of the Heywood Civic Centre. In an attempt to make local people aware of the event we have negotiated with Dunnes Stores who are quite happy for us to put our "Thomas" layout on display the weekend before the Exhibition and it will be available for customers children to "have a go" driving the trains.
There will also be a childrens colouring competition run with the help of the "Heywood Advertiser" and a Hornby "Thomas" electric train set will be awarded to the winning entry.
This 2007 Exhibition should be the best ever presented by the group with plenty on display for everyone. There will even be a free Routemaster bus laid on from the Heywood ELR sation to ferry people arriving by train to and from there to the exhibition.

22nd April 2007 The "Thomas" display at Dunnes store was certainly worthwhile with more than 200 children being awarded the "I have driven Thomas" certificate over the weekend. I'm sure that it made many families aware of the exhibition the following week and increased the turnout to the show. In addition there were a lot of entries for the colouring competition which again helped the public awareness of the forthcoming exhibition.
As far as the visiting public were concerned the March exhibition at our new venue of the Heywood Civic Centre was a great success and feedback from them was very positive. However from the clubs point of view it was a lot of work for very little gain and without the sponsorship we received from the Heywood Township and the sale of two of our disused layouts we could almost have made a loss at the event. A lot more care and planning will need to go into the 2008 event if we are to continue at this venue in the future.

May 2007 Sumner Brook is exhibited at The Stockport show and is awarded the cup for "Best in show".

August 2007 Rochwood is exhibited at the Skipton show and is well received by the visitors with many good comments made.

September 2007 The station on Sumner Brook is ripped up and work starts on replacing it with a better and stronger version before its next exhibition showing at Hazel Grove in October.

April 2008 A very successful exhibition was held during March where the attendance level was better than the previous year. Feedback from our visitors was very positive with many saying that they would be returning next year. Thanks are once again due to Dunnes Stores who let us but the Thomas layout on display the week before our show.
Work has now started in earnest on the new DCC layout after completion of all the baseboards. The web page for this layout will be updated as the model progresses.

John Essex Webmaster Heywood Model Railway Group


This page updated 5th April 2008