DOZENS of miniature trains steamed their way around a track in Kidlington to raise about £3,500 for a scout group.

About a thousand model railway enthusiasts visited Kidlington Scoutrail 2018, which generated funds for the 33rd Oxford (Kidlington) Scout Group.

It is believed to be the 35th annual gathering of model railway enthusiasts to raise money for the group since the mid-1980s.

It took just a couple of hours for Exeter Hall in Kidlington to be transformed into a model railway fan’s paradise on Saturday morning, with impressive displays on show.

The group’s Scout active support manager, Giles Puleston, said: “Over the past three or four years, it seems to have got more popular.

"We always run it in the weekend after Christmas and New Year.

"It’s become a popular event at which you can see the same people.”

Displays included Nockingbigg End, created by the Abingdon Group, while John Gay from the High Wycombe and District Model Railway Society brought his impressive exhibition of ‘Byway’, a fictional urban depot in the late steam era.

Mr Gay showed visitors how he had modified locomotives to install LEDs in them to create the impression that there was a coal furnace burning inside it.

Others had speakers installed in them to demonstrate different sounds, such as the familiar rhythm of a steam train.

All of it was powered by Digital Command Control (DCC), which ran through an iPad, linked to a web server and to a Raspberry Pi computer.

Mr Gay said he had been interested in model trains since he was a child, when his grandfather had built a model train set on the back of a door.

He initially lost interest before rekindling his interest in model trains about eight years ago.

In his day job, he works designing electronics to be used on the real-life railways.

Fellow club member, David Fryer, showed off his new display of trains and their surroundings at Frampton-on-Severn in Gloucestershire.

He had created his layout to portray what it would have looked like in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when steam locomotives were being phased out and replaced with ones powered by diesel.