| History of Twickenham and District Model Railway Club |
The origins of Twickenham and District MRC can be traced to the latter part of 1960, when a notice appeared in the window of Hodgson’s Toys and Models Ltd, of Hounslow Road, Whitton, proposing the formation of a local model railway club. Names were collected by the proprietor, Joe Hodgson, and an inaugural meeting was called for Thursday, May 11th 1961, at Whitton Secondary School, Percy Road, Whitton. A total of 38 people attended that first meeting and by June 30 th the club had signed up 43 Founder Members.
To begin with, meetings were held on a bi-weekly basis at Whitton Secondary School on Thursday evenings. There were no storage facilities, and the only layout – a test track in 00 – had to be carried by members to each club night. By the end of November 1961 the club had transferred to the Richmond Community Centre, Sheen Road, on the site of what is now the Waitrose supermarket. Meetings were now weekly and had moved to Friday nights. It was at this time, after permission had been sought to build a large storage cupboard, that layout building began in earnest.
The club remained at Sheen Road for over 20 years until the impending development of the building necessitated a move, on May 4th, 1984, to Room 42 of the Richmond Adult and Community College in Parkshot. The next 20 years passed relatively uneventfully until, in early September 2004, the club was suddenly given three weeks notice to clear everything out of Room 42 to make way for refurbishment. The building work was to take three months, but during this time the rent more than doubled and the club's storage facilities shrank to nothing. Luckily, one of our Founder Members was aware of a Scout group in the Whitton area whose hall was vacant on Friday nights. The club was therefore able to vacate Parkshot and move into its present headquarters on October 1 st, 2004. Since then it has invested much time and money in building storage facilities and an infrastructure that will give members, for the first time, a clubroom tailor-made to requirements. The club can now look forward to a long and secure future, and the opportunity to build new, high-quality layouts worthy of a well appointed clubroom.
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