Crewe Area Group (CAG)
While Crewe is clearly the right place to have such a thing, the Crewe Area Group (CAG) of the S4 Society covers a fairly large area centred on south east Cheshire but spreading well beyond it. This certainly contains Crewe, but few of our members actually live there. In practice we currently have members from as far south as Whitchurch and the south side of Stoke on Trent, as far north as the Manchester suburbs (and arguably Aberdeen) and as far West as the Welsh Borders. Our current membership is fourteen and they are all active P4 modellers and includes a few representatives of the trade, S4 Society luminaries and even the odd body who is both at once.
Most of our Area Group meetings are held at member's houses, but we're not beyond going visiting other places of interest instead. Normally meetings start at 14:00 on the afternoon of the second Sunday of each month, and are usually themed. So we often ask one of our members to pass on the fruits of their hard earned wisdom, while an increase in the number of layouts owned by members of the group over the years means that the opportunity to just run trains comes up reasonably often. We do have a few repeating meetings which come up each year, and our other halves are invited to these:
- Our annual dinner, held in November,
- A summer cream tea meeting.
- An opportunity near Christmas to eat mince pies and play trains.
Eating seems to be a theme here.
The Group produced an 18.83 Layout Challenge entry, Knutsford East Junction and following our first appearances at the 2005 Scaleforum, we have had a regular supply of exhibition invites. Regrettably our last outing was the 2014 Scaleforum. What happens next has yet to be decided. For those who haven't yet come across the layout, it’s a bit late now but you could try the ‘Layout of the Month’ in October 07 Railway Modeller, “Knutsford Possessed” in Snooze 183 and “Pillbox for Knutsford East” in Snooze 187.
So there you have it, this is an active area group which in some ways operates like a normal club. It is unapologetically P4 and is a friendly place to get fired up about modelling properly in 4mm scale. If any Scalefour members would like to join us, we would make you very welcome. If you want to come along to one of our meetings, contact Will Litchfield our Area Group organiser, via the blue sheet.
Knutsford at Scaleforum 2014 with the final exhibiting team. The smug looks are explained by the MRJ Chalice won at this last opportunity and displayed on the layout.
Blue Sheet (PDF, members only)