There was always a large interest in miniature engineering and model making on the Isle of Sheppey but it lacked a Club to bring these interests together. \u00a0This all changed in 1978 when two teachers came to the Island to teach at the new Sheppey Comprehensive School [now part of the Island academy]. \u00a0Both had a keen interest in miniature engineering and decided to form a Society. \u00a0John Wheeler researched interest by visiting newsagents to find the\u00a0names of those buying magazines associated with the modelling world such as Miniature Engineer, Engineering in Miniature, Model Boat Building and the like. \u00a0Armed with this information he set about contacting all the names\u00a0on his list after which\u00a0he along with Les Bryant, invited them to\u00a0a meeting held at The\u00a0Ship Inn, Queenborough. \u00a0At this meeting the Society was formed and it was to be known as SHEPPEY MINIATURE ENGINEERING AND MODEL SOCIETY. The constitution was agreed and its aims to encourage and promote the hobby of miniature engineering and model making in all its forms adopted.<\/p>\n
Further meetings were held at the school until the Society moved to its current location and we had a permanent home. To start with the clubhouse was with in the grounds of Sheppey Sea Cadets next door\u00a0to our site and we started to construct our railway track. \u00a0The body of an old box wagon was moved to\u00a0the site and used as a station building and this is still in use today. \u00a0In 1984 a wooden building was purchased and moved to our site for use as a clubhouse but this has since been replaced by a concrete building next to the station. \u00a0There is also a concrete store shed that was kindly donated to the Society by the local Council. \u00a0Boats were originally used on a pond within the Sea Cadets compound or the canal which borders our site but in 1986 we excavated our own\u00a0boating lake\u00a0and constructed a concrete landing stage. \u00a0During 2013 and 2014 this\u00a0lake underwent major renovation works to make it more user friendly.<\/p>\n
Over the last few years we have taken on several projects to improve the railway and the site in general. \u00a0Apart from the work on the\u00a0lake we have increased platform length, installed extra taps for the steam locomotives, built a large passenger truck shed, made improvements to our buildings and much else besides.<\/p>\n
We will continue to improve the site for members and the public experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There was always a large interest in miniature engineering and model making on the Isle of Sheppey but it lacked a Club to bring these interests together. \u00a0This all changed in 1978 when two teachers came to the Island to teach at the new Sheppey Comprehensive School [now part of the Island academy]. \u00a0Both had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheppeymodelengineering.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheppeymodelengineering.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheppeymodelengineering.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheppeymodelengineering.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheppeymodelengineering.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheppeymodelengineering.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheppeymodelengineering.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions\/115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheppeymodelengineering.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}