Pavilion End – Newport Model Railway Society

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Dave Hagger’s layout, Pavilion End, has flown the club flag at several exhibitions. Here is his account of its first time out at the Association of Model Railway Clubs Wales & West Of England exhibition at Thornbury 2-4 May 2014.

Here it is then.
For its first outing, the transport and assembly was relatively trouble free.

We like to present our layouts well with proscenium arch and lighting

You can see we did have an unreliable fluorescent tube in the centre of the layout. Fortunately the offer on eBay was 4 for the price of 3 so I had a spare that got swopped in.
The Mogul is about to run round the Bset.

*The coal train is ready to depart once the Bset arrives. If people are going to take shots from silly angles like this I’ll have to put the brick paper on the embankment wall.*

*The Pannier tank and panelled autocoach are Lionheart products and very nice too.*

*The minimal local freight ready to depart. Need to get the ground signals in.*

*Paul and Steve operating. The old Lenz controllers were perhaps not the best.*

*And Rob hard at work in the Fiddle Yard.*

Details of the layout for Exhibition Managers can be found he r e

PE 10 years on

The first post for Pavilion End is from 2014. So having exhibited at Cardiff in 2024, I think an update is due. First the classic shot from the drivers viewpoint

The coal train is still present with largely the same wagons as 10 years ago. However, pannier tank 5750 is a more recent Minerva product, and it is not attached to an autocoach but rather one of Alastair’s collection of Engineers Saloons.

There is a second pannier tank available, this one built and weathered by Fred Lewis. 3603 is on coal train duty and here it has propelled the brake van up to the end of the platform ready to push the full wagons on to it. Another new loco is large Prairie 6116, a Heljan product, which spends most of its time on the B-set. This shot also shows some improvements made over the years – the additional cloth ‘sky’ which is velcro-ed over the layout to cut out unwanted lights and shadows, as well as the ground signals and water crane.

The newest motive power is this Sentinel steam shunter. It originally came in BR black but has been repainted in the house colours of the works behind. Normally it is just coal or coke that is pushed into the boiler house but this time it’s a new piece of machinery. Advancing technology has the Sentinel battery powered and radio-controlled.

Pavilion End has to have a cricket team of course. In the 1950’s travelling by train to an away fixture was not a normal occurrence but did happen. The other members of the team are hopefully making their own way there.

In the background is Kerr-Stuart Victory tank 666.(Minerva Models) This has the later GW alterations to the tanks and boiler fittings. The prototype was rarely seen outside Newport Docks, but it is working the pick-up freight today.