The OO9 Group of Farnham and District MRC will hold an Open Day on Sunday 6 July 2025 at Wrecclesham Community Centre, Greenfield Road, Farnham, Surrey GU9 8TJ, from 10 am until 4 pm. Refreshments available. On-street and some on-site parking.
Entry adults £5, accompanied children (5-16) £1.
Layouts cover 009, HOe and TT9 scales in a variety of guises from Britain, Ireland and Austria, giving a good overview of what is possible in this family of scales. The following layouts are expected:
1. Ty Dwr (009) – Dave Holt. Ty Dwr is a 009 scale model based on the Talyllyn railway. The water chute situated at Ty Dwr between Abergynolwyn and the end of the line at Nant Gwernol is shown on the layout and is the inspiration for the layout name.
2. Yr Elen (009) – Mike Le Marie. 
The setting is an imaginary place somewhere in Wales. The line served various slate quarries but with the decline in demand it was cut back to Yr Elen and now serves one remaining quarry and a small Army depot which supports a training range. A limited amount of local freight remains and the passenger trains carry a few locals and a lot of tourists. Today Yr Elen is a through station with a passing loop as it is connected through a special joining board to Julian Evison’s Selborne.
3. Selborne (009) – Julian Evison. Set around 1925 in the village of Selborne in the Hampshire Downs, this is the terminus of an imaginary line connecting the village to Tisted station on the Meon Valley railway. The station has its platform set beyond the loop and sidings. This adds operation inter-est and reflects that at Haverhill (Colne Valley Railway) in Essex, which had similar ambitions to extend, never fulfilled. Today Selborne is a through station with a passing loop as it is connected through a special joining board to Mike Le Marie’s Yr Elen.
4. Devil’s Bridge (009) – Andy Cundick. Devil’s Bridge is the terminus of the Vale of Rheidol Railway, a two foot gauge line from Aberystwyth to Devil’s Bridge. Built in 1902, it was subsequently owned by the Cambri-an in 1913, the Great Western in 1923 and British Railways in 1948, becoming the last BR operational steam line until sold to the present owners in 1988. The layout is set in 1904.
5. Freem009 Modules (009) – Paul Steedman and Friends. Freem009 is a modular system so a group can join several of their layouts together to make a different layout each time in a variety of sizes. This is inspired by the Lynton & Barnstaple and Ffestiniog railways.
6. Bowcombe (009) – Nic Arthur. Bowcombe is a fictional station set in the 1930s of South Devon connecting the town of Kingsbridge to Slapton Sands. The layout features a through station with goods sidings serving the local village of Bowcombe. Although fictional, the area would have been just right for a narrow gauge line to take tourists down to Slapton Sands as well as collecting marble, quarry stone, oak and grain all produced within the area. The railway company is the Frogmore light railway (FLR)and the next station along from Bowcombe in my mind would have been Frogmore. The layout runs mainly small locos and stock to a gauge of 2ft 3 inches. It features a through fiddle yard at the rear of the layout and is DCC operated.
7. Kaninchenbau (HOe) – Iain Morrison. Kaninchenbau is set in the rolling Alpine foothills of Austria where commercial narrow-gauge trains are still very common and was designed using the ‘rabbit warren’ principles for fully automated running using iTrain. The layout runs 5 trains continuously within the 22.5m of track, all controlled automatically by a laptop running the latest iTrain automation software. The convoluted ‘rabbit warren’ style ensures that trains do not always appear from the expected tunnels and this provides great interest for viewers who often try to guess where the train will come from – they are generally very surprised when the ‘wrong train’ appears from where they expect the ‘right train’ to appear.
8. Five Foot Town (TT9) – John Chase. This is loosely based on the 3ft narrow gauge Clogher Valley Railway, which connected towns along what is now the border between Northern and Southern Ireland, including Fivemiletown (hence the name). It partially ran along roads, so the public, and particular-ly horses, were protected by cowcatchers and skirts to cover the locomotive running gear. The model is at a scale of 1:100 on N gauge track, with the rolling stock 3D print-ed on Kato chassis.
9. Fail’s Yard (009) – Stephen Fulljames. Built on a laser cut “Layout in a box” baseboard from Scale Model Scenery, the model represents a remnant of the once extensive narrow gauge Fail’s Tramways (sic) on Purbeck which has been retained to service crude oil prospecting in the 1950s or 60s. A loading wharf to a standard gauge siding provides a connection to the outside world, although showing signs of disuse.
10. The Cement Works (009) – Chris O’Donoghue. The Cement Works is a small shunting layout inspired by the paintings of the 20th century artist, Eric Ravilious. For several years he visited a fellow artist near Lewes, in East Sussex and created a number of paintings of the nearby Asham cement works. The track formation is essentially a stretched inglenook shunting puzzle, but is operated with two locomotives – one brings in a rake of wagons through the tunnel from the chalk pits, the second shunts the wagons for loading/unloading.
The OO9 Society Sales Stand will be in attendance.