Since 2000 the Mary-Ward-Grammar School in Günzburg (Bavaria/Germany) has had a model-railway group with a very big home-made layout of many modules. This project is unique for a catholic girl’s school in Germany.

This project started with a competition of the organisation “model railway and school” (“Modellbahn und Schule”).

Between two cupboards in the physics - hall the girls of the group developed two modules (per 100cm x 60cm) which showed our grammar school, the so-called “cow-tower” (a building next to our school), a coulisse of a baroque church and three bridges across the river Danube) on it.

The schoolgirls – most of them attended the physics basic class of the 12^th class – were so eager with working, that even Mr. Fock admired them.

By buying many rails and some ROCO-Beginner-Packages Mr. arranged everything for an exhibition of a little layout at the day of the open door at our school with a driving operation after a half year.

After a further exhibition of the smart layout at a festival of Günzburg the model railway group changed “from a one-year-project” to a real institution of our school and more and more girls took part in this group and we even got  a prize for the biggest girl model railway group in 2001.

Since 2001 up to ten modules have been built every year.

The girls who founded the group absolved their school leaving examination years ago now but hey are still visiting the expositions.

The group of today meets every Friday afternoon to build new modules.

We tinker little houses, paint smart figures, design terraces, carpenter big wooden boxes for the modules, lay tracks and form landscapes. We model these landscapes on the basic of photos of places.

Thanks to our new principal Mrs Weltz, we have had an own room for building our modules with a view on the railroad station of our city since some years.

Mr Fock, who loves time tables, sometimes drives the trains following  these timetables with the girl team of up to 25 girls.

The whole layout consists now of nearly 40 modules and a static part. It shows sections of the railway line Augsburg-Günzburg-Ulm, the train stations of Günzburg, Leipheim, New-Ulm and Augsburg Oberhausen and also the bridge across the river Danube  in Ulm, the bridge across the autobahn in Jettingen.

We have round about 40 trains to drive, which are all digital.

These trains are of the model era V (1980-2006)with a lot of international trains and some historic ones. Most of these wheelers have been bought by Mr. Fock.

The layout is not controlled by a computer but by the girls.

The layout and parts of it were often used in the school lessons, particularly in physics (e.g. speed measurement, energy and capacity ratings, accelerating and brake behaviour, digital technique) and mathematics (e.g. radii of circles, flare-outs, scale and reduction, computer science) and also in geography (e.g. landscapes in the region, city-country-comparisons), biology (e.g. reproduction of trees) and art education, where the artistic abilities of the girls could be proved impressively.