There is always something going on at Wester Pickston! This section of our site gives updates of what we are working on, and other trust related information.
We are delighted to announce that we have announced the dates for our open days and model rail exhibition in 2024! Get your 2024 diary out and make some notes:
Open day: 31st March, 2024 (Easter Sunday) Open day: 26th May (Late Spring Bank Holiday) Model rail exhibition: 29/30th June 2024 Open day: 28th July Open day: 25th August (Late Summer Bank Holiday) More information about the open days and the exhibition are available on their individual pages. We’ll be updating them as we confirm …
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Our final open day of the year will be this coming Sunday, 27th August 2023! As usual for our opens days, our Wester Pickston site will open at 11am for the general public to join us on member’s steam and electric locomotives (7¼″ and 5″ gauge) for rides around our 2km of track.
The weather forecast, at the time of writing is for showers with sunny spells (much like the rest of the summer has been!). An up to date forecast is shown below, and you can find the Met Office forecast here.
Wester …
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Most people when asked what a Core Drill is will think of a special hollow drill bit which can drill out a large hole in wood, stone or metal. The drilling process results in a core of the material being produced and the device in effect trepans out the actual hole. Depending on the circumstances a magnetic drill, a stand-alone drill secured to, for example the wall, or a “Black and Decker” may be used to drive the bit.
A search on the “web” will produce lots of information regarding this …
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We’ve been delighted to have a Darjeeling Himalayan Railway B Class locomotive visiting us at Wester Pickston over the last couple of weeks. Expertly modeled after the prototype this beautiful engine is the creation of Mike Ball, who was kind enough to bring it to Wester Pickston, and have it take part in our July open day, pulling passengers around the track.
When another loco developed problems, Mike’s B Class took on two extra carriages, easily pulling four fully laden coaches! …
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We were delighted to have Fife Historic Vehicle Club visit us last weekend (Sunday 23rd July). Our resident photographer Andrew Gebbie was on hand to capture some of the highlights from the day.
It was a great meet up between two like-minded groups, and enjoyed by all. Thank you to FHVC for visiting us!
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Our resident photographer and videographer, Andrew Gebbie, was on site at our recent exhibition to record the layouts that were on show. He’s edited them together, grouped by scale, which you can view below. Also of note is that the voice over is computer generated, representing what is probably SMET’s first use of “AI”!
N scale layouts 00:00 - Intro 00:27 - Calla Fountain Crossing 03:31 - Crianlarich 04:46 - Mauchline 06:08 - Westertoun 07:34 - Canal Way 08:47 - Roxby …
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The curtain has come down on our 2023 modal railway exhibition - and what a weekend it was! We’ll have more photos and videos from the event, but for now we’d like to offer our congratulations to the award winners from the show.
We had four categories of awards this year:
The Harburn Hobbies Trophy for best in show as voted by the public went to Alisdair MacDonald for his layout Whithorn. The Ten Commandments/Greenscene Trophy for architectural modelling was won by The NOEL Group of …
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There is a little under a month to go until our 2023 model railway exhibition gets underway! Running on Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th June, at the Dewars Centre in Perth, the exhibition will be open from 10am to 5pm each day.
This year we have:
39 layouts show casing T gauge to O and everything in between. 36 traders for all your modelling supply needs. 17 groups and societies including modelling demonstrations. Tickets are on sale now, and can be purchased online using the link below:
Buy …
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We are delighted to announce that Perth Model Railway Group (PMRC), part of the Scottish Model Engineering Trust (SMET), won the Glenrothes Model Railway Club’s (GMRC) Silver Link Trophy at the recent Glenrothes model railway show. The Silver Link Trophy is awarded after a public vote over the two days of the exhibition and was awarded to our Whyte Hills Pass layout.
Designed and created by Bill Garden, Whyte Hills Pass is a North American themed N scale layout. While it was never intended …
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Recently there was a request for articles to interest both the non-members and the membership. It strikes me that such articles might also stimulate the enthusiasm of the relative beginners to our hobby. As usual this is not a new concept and I remember LBSC targeting articles for the “tyros” as he called beginners in the 1960s. Many clubs have formal talks together with displays of work in progress which seem to be very successful. At least in part this can now, of course, be shared digitally. …
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