Wairarapa Railway Modellers

08/05/2026

08/05/2026

Starting life as a 8 x 4’ bare board, this is the latest update on one of the club’s teaching layouts. The team led by Graham has done amazing work.

08/05/2026

What do you do with old plastic wheel sets when they’ve been replaced with metal ones? Simple -
Weather them up and lash to a 60’ Bulkhead flatcar as an excellent load. Brilliant job Peter!

08/05/2026

At the club this week, Murray ran his passenger set around the G Scale track - this runs around the top of the building.

21/03/2026

The last of the three Allan Smith videos of a brilliant local layout. This one has a unique view, with the camera being chased by a Sante F3 - or F7. It’s hard for me to tell.

Santa Fe Passenger Train

20/03/2026

Here’s another look at the outstanding layout visited this week, this time with a military train. Video by Allan Smith again.

US military train with 29 flat cars on the HO scale Topeka Terminal Railroad.

18/03/2026

Visited a local layout this week and wow, just wow. I couldn’t do it justice with my gear, so here’s an amazing video put together by Allan Smith. Enjoy!

A cab view of a friends Santa Fe shelf layout. A 2 level dogbone with helix.

07/03/2026

One of the younger club members brought this ‘work in progress’ NZR DG loco with a mixed consist for a run this week.

07/02/2026

The club made further progress on the Greytown station diorama at Cobblestones Museum last weekend. The track was given a good clean (still needs a bit of work), wiring reconnected and checked and a successful test run undertaken.

Later projects include installing a shuttle relay system so that trains can run back and forth automatically.

30/01/2026

Club night this week was mainly spent on layout work: the HO scale fixed, two HO scale teaching layouts, a new N scale layout and a small n scale that will be raffled at WaiRail 2027.

Graham still had time to run this short Seaboard consist. The flat cars feature home made loads, particularly the engines.

The locomotive, Seaboard #804, is a Life-Like Proto 2000 GE U30B and is DCC. The prototype was built in January 1967. We found a note by Gerhard Anderson on Facebook, giving the history of the locomotive:

804's Seaboard Air Line career would be short lived due to a merger with Atlantic Coast Line on July 1st 1967 and would become Seaboard Coast Line 1708 this would last till December 29th 1982 when the Seaboard System was formed. [There is photo from] November 1984 photo [showing] the 804, 1708 now as SBD 5525. In the photo we are looking at a worn out 5525 now having 17 years of service and excess of more than a million miles on it. In another 2 years and 1 month the 5525 will be retired and stored until March 14th 1987 when the 5525 was sold to Addlestone for scrap.

Thanks Gerhard!