Men's Shed Association
One Steel reinforcing
Holcim Australia
Lawrence and Hanson
P&K Concreting Pty Ltd
BudgIT Solutions
Membership of the ACTMRS is open to all people with an interest in railway modelling, regardless of age or gender. All memberships are in fact "family memberships". The ACTMRS is registered with the Australian Men's Shed Association (registration #AMSA100931).
We currently have members modelling N, OO, HO and O scales, in both standard and narrow gauges. Our members and families are involved in the building and running of their individual home layouts, and have also developed a number of award-winning exhibition layouts for the ACTMRS. We now operate 2 layouts in our shed and have 2 exhibition layouts stored away until public exhibitions can once again resume post-covid.
Our 2 operating layouts in the shed are:
Our club meetings are held in our shed (the Evatt Men's Shed) on the second Wednesday of each month, starting at about 8:00 PM. Regular operating sessions on the club layouts are run in our shed 4 times a week and a regular layout work session is held once a week (see the calendar below for all the details). Visitors are welcome but we ask that you contact us before coming so that we are expecting you. You'll find a contact form below. Our shed is co-located behind the Mosaic Baptist Church (formerly called North Belconnen Baptist Church) at Chomley Court, Evatt, ACT, Australia.
We try to offer something of interest to all our members:
The ACTMRS holds regular meetings at our Shed each month at Chomley Court in Evatt, ACT. Details of upcoming events are shown in this calendar.
Visitors are always welcome at the Shed, but we ask members and would-be visitors alike to be of good health if they are thinking of coming to a session. For more information, a contact form is below.
The ACTMRS has a regularly updated Facebook page.
Those with an eye for detail and a creative flair, can produce amazingly realistic worlds in miniature. It might be the worlds of today, or those of yesteryear when steam engines ruled the rails. Other modellers with an interest in electronics and programming might concentrate on the complexities of digital command control (DCC) and wiring and configuring DCC decoders, lights, signals and point motors. Still others are more interested in operating locomotives and trains on realistic-looking layouts to realistic timetables that mimic real-world operations on full-size railways.
So whatever your interest, there's bound to be something for you.
Construction of the permanent club layout, Mytabeen, is now well-advanced (see our Facebook page for up to date information on club activities including more details of Mytabeen). It is a multi-level HO-scale club layout which has been configured as a folded double dog-bone extending across the Shed. Operationally the layout features a long mainline that winds around 2 peninsulars on 2 levels that are connected by a circular riser. This layout design gives trains a long run of around 10 minutes
at realistic scale speeds between the upper and lower set-up/staging yards on the right hand side of the Shed and also allows for continuous running. Separate branch lines interchange with the main line on both the upper and lower levels. Digital command control (DCC) is used to operate this layout and this, and the number of industries and intermediate stations being built allow club members interested in near-protypical train operations and timetabling to "roll up their sleeves".
(Part of the Little Woodland permanent DC layout can also be seen on the lower part of the left-hand wall that is shown in the photo above).
Yendys (that's "Sydney" backwards) won the award at the 2016 Sydney Model Railway Exhibition for Best Australian Prototype Layout. Yendys is based on a generic suburban Sydney location with a highly sceniced double-track mainline, a suburban station, electric carriage sheds and various industrial yard tracks encouraging lots of shunting of goods wagons.
Little Austria is an HOe-scale exhibition layout loosely based on the secondary railways of Austria, especially the narrow gauge lines of Styria.
Little Woodland is a point-to-point British OO-scale layout with a single track line connecting a small terminal station with a remote fiddle yard. Operation is by DC control.
So far we have taken our exhibition layouts as far north as Taree, as far south as Geelong and as far west as Adelaide.
For nearly 50 years we have also held our own exhibition in Canberra each year in association with the Malkara Special School.
For 47 years the ACTMRS ran the annual Malkara Model Railway and Scale Model Exhibition on the first weekend in August each year in conjunction with, and as a major fundraiser for, the Malkara Specialist School in Hughes, a suburb of Canberra. This exhibition was a Canberra institution. In addition to exhibiting its own model railway layouts, the ACTMRS always invited and coordinated a wide range of other participants. In addition to model railways, the Malkara Exhibition hosted displays of model boats and submarines in the school's hydro pool, miniature live steam train rides, remote controlled miniature tanks running around and shops to buy models, food and drink. It was always a great family day out in support of a great cause!
The End of the Malkara Exhibition
Unfortunately, after 3 years of disruptions caused by the covid pandemic, senior staff in the Malkara School decided in 2023 "for administrative reasons" to permanently abandon the exhibition. This has of course been a great disappointment for all concerned and a great loss of funding support for the school. But it now seems that the Malkara Exhibition is to be no more. 
The ACTMRS runs an annual Bring and Buy Sale in early November each year. This is a great event for people looking to snap up a terrific 2nd-hand bargain locomotive, carriage, wagon, etc or other model railway-related item for a great price. It is also a great place for modellers who find themselves with models that they no longer need, to pass them on to someone else.
The 2024 Bring and Buy Sale
The 2024 Bring and Buy Sale is scheduled for Saturday morning the 9th of November.
This year's event will be held at a new venue: the Mount Rogers Primary School at 52 Alfred Hill Drive, Melba ACT. The event will run from 9:00am to 12:00 on Saturday the 9th of November. Entry is free. Tables will be available for those wanting to sell their models or equipment at a rental cost of $10 (all proceeds from table hire go to the Mount Rogers School). To reserve a table please email enquiries@actmrs.org.au with the subject line "Bring and Buy Sale".
An interesting morning is sure to be had by all! .
You can leave a message using the contact form below
