John Ahern’s historic railway will be running on a select few days a year at Pendon Museum to help preserve this incredible creation.

Built entirely by John Ahern, this layout dates from the 1940s and is an historical relic of the early days of scenic railway modelling. It pioneered the idea of scenic craftsmanship. It showed others what could be done and many model light railway and branch line layouts built in the last fifty years are its descendants.

It was not an absolutely precise dimensionally accurate replica of a real prototype and featured models of narrow gauge locomotives from the Isle of Man, Wales and Devon built to run on 16.5mm gauge track alongside models of standard gauge stock. The buildings were based on buildings that had caught John Ahern’s fancy “Most of my buildings are derived from something, but they are not exact copies”.