Sussex Vintage Model Railway Collectors For people of all ages who like ready to run model and toy trains Monthly meetings are held at the Knoyle Hall, Preston Park, Brighton or at the Brighton Toy & Model Museum - 7.30pm Fridays. Who are the 'Sussex Vintage Model Railway Collectors'? We are a small club for people who like ready to run model and toy trains of any make or gauge, or any age, whether they are a hundread years old, or bought new this week. Currently we have about thirty members, which is about typical for a locally based specialist club, group, or society, where you usually meet about half that number at any given monthly meeting. Members range from school age to senior citizen and everyone soon gets to know everyone else, as a friendly and approachable bunch. We are not just boys and older lads, usually you will find the ladies, girls as partners attend too. On your visit you will find a themed meeting where we bring along model trains, or those tinplate toy trains from yesteryear, brought out from from our personal collections. We run these on our tracks for the others to see, and talk about them. Each “theme of the month” meeting for example could be “black locomotives” say one month or “suburban trains” another, where a member then gives a brief talk on something to do with the theme generating an interest to utilise the track & trains. Visitors are very welcome, and in the first instance you do not have to be a collector, anyone who is interested can come along for two meetings as our guest without committing yourself to joining. We are keen to interest children in our hobby. We want our national heritage of model and toy trains to be in safe hands in the future. Furthermore some of the trains we collect were mostly made for children in the first place, and have a strong child appeal. But please note that children must be accompanied by a responsible adult at all times, and that many of the items in use and display at our evenings have a sentimental value if not a monetary value that has to be respected. Our meetings are held at the Knoyle Hall or at the Brighton Toy and Model Museum, Brighton, or sometimes at a member’s home in Horsham. For members own privacy, we only describe our Brighton meeting places on our web pages. Our membership fees are, £10 a year (£5 for children). Senior citizens and concessions may also pay just £5 (at our 2008 rates). There is no charge for the partners of paid up members or for responsible adults accompanying child members if they don’t want to be full members themselves. The 'Sussex Vintage Model Collectors' club is not part of a larger organisation, although most of us belong to one or more of the following; Hornby Railway Collectors Association, The Train Collectors Society, The Trix Twin Railway Collectors Association, and The Bowman Circle, where we enjoy the back up and support we get from these orgainisations. Once a year we have our own annual exhibition at Knoyle Hall in June, which is our additional way to bring new faces into our club, with layouts and some related traders. We also take part in a few other exhibitions, such as Modelworld. If you’d like to help run an exhibition layout, you will certainly get an opportunity.