Today was Pendon museum day, almost every modelling magazine holds up Pendon as the pinnacle of modelling excellence. I have been reading about this model and viewing pictures of this for over 25years and was expecting it to be good. However the pictures in this and all the magazines do not do it justice.

I went with Paul (my brother) and expected to be there for maybe an hour or so, then we could then go on to visit the Swindon Steam day. However once inside the museum it was so enthralling it was hard to move from scene to scene, and we ended up being in there for almost 3 hours.

Pendon is modeled in 00 scale (4mm to the foot) and as you can see from the pictures each model is an individual masterpiece with many individual contributors to the museum. Some of the models take many months to complete.

Roye England was so enamored with the English countryside of the 1930's he started by recording his observations and making models of the buildings he saw. He can be seen in this picture where he is modeled on his travels recording a cottage. When this cottage was made each individual tile is hand laid, each leaf on the ivy climbing the walls is individually cut and positioned on the house.

Given the length of time we were in the museum we did not have time to go to Swindon and decided to go to the nearby Didcot GWR museum. Whilst not as extensive as either York or Shildon it is very well worth a visit to see the exhibits. The workshops are open to be visited and lots of restoration projects can be viewed.