Stamford Model Railway Show draws 2,000, celebrates hobby’s range and resilience

A turnout of about 2,000 gave Stamford Model Railway Show the kind of energy that makes a regional exhibition worth the trip: 28 layouts, 21 trade stands, a children’s zone and plenty of hints, tips and take-home ideas for anyone building or buying for a layout.

Held on Saturday and Sunday, 9 and 10 May, at Stamford Welland Academy, the show mixed serious modelling with a broad family crowd. Visitors came across layouts that ranged from realistic prototypes to fantasy stations and scenes, a spread that showed how much room the hobby still gives exhibitors to stretch out. The result was less a single-issue display than a working snapshot of the whole scene, from building and weathering to buying and operating.

That breadth is exactly what makes shows like this matter. The trade stands offered the parts, detail items and practical kit that keep projects moving, while the layouts gave visitors a chance to compare ideas, techniques and standards in one place. The school setting, spread through halls, corridors and classrooms, added to the sense that the event had outgrown a simple village-hall model meet and become a full-scale hobby fixture.

The weekend also carried a heavier layer of history. William Ivory, also known locally as Billy Ivory, opened the show as his play about the 2019 vandalism at the club’s Stamford exhibition headed toward a world premiere at Nottingham Playhouse in July 2026. Ivory’s stage piece tells the story as a warm-hearted account of community and British eccentricity, but the incident itself was grim: teenagers smashed up layouts in the early hours of Saturday 18 May 2019, causing about £30,000 of damage and destroying hundreds of hours of work. One damaged layout was said to have taken 36 years to build.

The response to that attack still shapes how the club is seen. Sir Rod Stewart donated £10,000, and the club received more than £100,000 in donations, money that helped repair what could be saved and supported a local youth club. Market Deeping Model Railway Club has since been described as one of the largest organisations of its kind in the country, with one report putting membership at 82, including 15 children, and later coverage saying ages ranged from nine to 90.

After 50 years of running, the Stamford show has become more than a sales day or a display weekend. It has become proof that the hobby still has depth, new blood and enough local commitment to fill a school and keep the layouts rolling.