Syston Model Railway 2025

Brittannia Mills were built in 1902 for Samuel Bourne & Co. Ltd., in Netherfield east of Nottingham. Located alongside the GNR, Nottingham to Grantham railway line and next to Netherfield and Cowlick railway station.

Oldmarket 0O Gauge   Set in deepest rural Suffolk, Oldmarket is a small country town that boasts a quality racecourse, giving the local economy 2 boost on racedays and providing local employment throughout the year with training and stabling of the horses at the racecourse and some surrounding estates.  The railway came to Oldmarket in 1874, financed mainly by the local gentry to get the town connected to the outside world. A branch line was built from the main London/Ipswich line, and eventually became part of the Great Eastern Railway, duly passing to the LNER, then British Railways.  With the coming of the line, the farm produce was sold to an ever-expanding market, and many local landowners expanded their farms to cope. The railway also brought mail, newspapers, and goods, including domestic coal, more easily into the town.  Oldmarket gained its first factory in 1895, which produced agricultural items for both local and eventually national use, providing traffic for the railway. The town expanded, and new buildings for the bank and hotels, as well as housing, appeared. It was quite possible to commute to Ipswich from Oldmarket by railway.  The passenger service for the line was a regular train to and from the junction, mainline services calling there for onward travel on race day excursions would run direct to Oldmarket from various destinations.  The freight services were mainly farm produce to an impressive variety of destinations, including grain traffic in special wagons, much of which, of course, was seasonal.  All of the above of course is complete fiction and the layout is a figment of our imagination, we show things as they might have been in the ever popular 150s/60s period when the line was still viable although much agricultural traffic had been lost to road haulage the branch passenger trains and excursions still ran and the grain traffic was buoyant.