One of the highlights of this year’s Rotary club-organised railway exhibition, was a working layout of Troy Station.
The site, close to Gibraltar tunnels, is currently under review to accommodate 28 new houses and the exhibit has been carefully reconstructed from old photographs to reveal how the station looked like in the 1950s. It closed in 1964.
Other exhibits filled the new venue at Bridges Community Centre with rooms downstairs and upstairs commandeered to take the large number of exhibitors and dioramas which makes this exhibition one of the largest in Wales.
The Wye Valley Railway group members had a number of five inch gauge locomotives on display, including ‘3521’ a Class Broadgauge Convertible that Queen Elizabeth ll had requested for the 1985 Great Western 150 exhibition at Bristol Old Station. Only 40 of these locomotives were made, and gained a reputation for being unstable after two derailed at Bodmin and another elsewhere.
Another model on display was an Aberdare ‘Mafeking’ named after the town of Mafeking and an Aberdare goods engine of which 80 were made and ran up until 1948, were withdrawn just before World War ll for strategic reserve.