Preparations are well underway for the Somerset Railway Modellers Club annual exhibition Rail-Ex Taunton, which will be held at Taunton School in Staplegrove Road on the weekend of October 21 and 22.

This year there will be 34 layouts on show, making it one of the largest model railway exhibitions in the South West.

A wide variety of layouts has been chosen showing Britain’s railways from the past up to the present day.

Visitors will be to see the pre-Nationalisation scene before 1948 and British Railways in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s, and post-Privatisation up to the present day.

There is a layout named Beijiao, whose inspiration was a visit by its builder to China in 2002 and shows the last days of steam operation around an industrial city, and another called Red Hook Bay, which is a representation of an American short line terminus in the late 1950s.

The exhibition has layouts constructed to very high standards in all the common scales and gauges. In addition there are demonstrations by experienced modellers.

And there are railway modelling traders selling everything needed.

To find out more check out their website at www.railextaunton.