On 15th January 2025 the Board of the South Dublin Model Railway Club met exactly 50 years to the day from the first Board meeting on 15th January 1975. Pictured below cutting a celebratory birthday cake are the six Chairmen who have served the club in those years.
South Dublin Model Railway Club wishes all it’s members and families as well as all our modelling friends a happy and joyful Christmas and best wishes for 2025.
Remember 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the club and we plan to hold our biennial exhibition in Blackrock College over the October Bank Holiday weekend.
Commissioned by CIE in the early 1980s to promote the proposed electrification of the Howth to Bray railway line this layout is older than the DART itself. To mark 40 years of the DART service the South Dublin Model Railway Club has refurbished the layout, upgrading the scenery including buildings and installing operating colour light signals.
At the recent Model Railway Society of Ireland exhibition the layout was on display. Murphys Models launched their proposed new model of the Alstom DART units. The prototype was displayed on the layout.
Already exhibited at the North Down and Wexford model railway shows this year, Belle Eclaire has drawn quite a bit of attention from the visiting public. This new layout from the club is a digitally operated (DCC) HO scale French rural station. It features various types of French (SNCF) rolling stock with realistic sounds including their distinctive two tone horns.
The SNCF stock includes a two car EAD Caravelle and some classic autocars (railcars).
Among other items shown on the layout were an operating track tamping machine, a Robel track maintenance machine with operating crane and an operating heavy duty crane.
Our biennial exhibition will take place in Blackrock College over the October Bank Holiday weekend each day from Saturday 28th to Monday 30th. The exhibition will be open from 11am to 5pm each day and will feature railway layouts from clubs all over Ireland north and south as well as stands featuring other hobbies and trade stands.
This is one of the biggest exhibitions of its kind in the country and not to be missed.
Admission prices will be: adult €10, child €8, family (2 adults +2 children) €20.
The club’s Kildare Station was one of the highlights of the MRSI show in Raheny over the October Bank Holiday weekend. Club members were delighted with the attention it received. With its large fiddle yard eight rakes of trains were to be seen running on the layout together with a working crane in the station yard. Thanks to the organisers for a very successful show.
As society has opened up post Covid so too have the various model rail shows and exhibitions. The club attended and exhibited layouts at the Wexford Model Railway Club Exhibition on 17th/18th April in Wexford Town and the North Down Model Railway Society Exhibition in Bangor County Down on 23rd/24th April.
The club exhibited its Kildare Station layout at the open day marking 175 years of Inchicore Railway Works on Saturday 7th May.
The club will be attending further exhibitions throughout the year and a list of upcoming shows can be found on the events page.
Work has started on installing a turntable on this famous layout. As originally built a location for a turntable was allowed for next to the water tower at the ‘southern’ end of the layout. This site has been excavated out to reveal a pre-existing pit below the baseboard surface. The photos below show the progress of the work. The new turntable is in kit form and produced by London Road Models.
The South Dublin Model Railway Club clubhouse reopened to members on Wednesday 29th September. For the time being the Covid-19 restrictions and precautions put in place in the clubhouse before the last lockdown remain in place.
The Board of the South Dublin Model Railway Club would like to thank all of the exhibitors and traders and especially our sponsors, Irish Railway Models, who took part in our biennial model railways and hobbies exhibition held in Blackrock College over the October bank holiday weekend. We would also like to thank all those members of the public who came along to the exhibition and hope that you found it to be interesting and that it stimulated your interest in the hobbies on show. Finally we want to thank our own members for the work they put in in setting up and running the show over the three days; that work helped to make it the success that it was.
Photos of the exhibition can be found in the Gallery section of this website.