A good time in Tonbridge

A good weekend. The layout ran well with the improved trackwork making things even easier. There were no lumps and bumps as stock traversed it.

Of course you fix one problem and another surfaces. This time we need to look at the point in the fiddle yard. For some reason it has never been finally soldered together which explains why locos sometimes come off when running over it. Only in one direction and not every time, which is why nothing has ever been done about it. Still, before the boards are packed up and dispatched to the shed for the summer, that job is going to get done.

Some people at shows are strange. It’s good to stand and be told how marvellous your work is. After all, we all enjoy a good boost to the ego ! Which is why the visitor who strolls up, gives the model a cursory glance and then wanders off is annoying. I want to shout, "This model took over 18 months to build, and you have decided you’ve seen everything on it in 20 seconds ! Come back here and take a proper look !" but of course you don’t. No point really, they’ve gone off to look at some overpriced second hand stuff that provides the reason for their visit in the first place.

My favourite type of visitor though, is someone who isn’t really interested in railways at all, but wants to know what the fuss is about. Not the bored wife who thinks toy trains are stupid. The person who would look at the badge in the header of this blog and think, "You know, that’s right. Everything IS interesting." Get someone like that in front of the layout and they will chat and ask interesting questions. I can talk about the history of the prototype and the methods of construction. We even get a bit of philosophy with a discussion of WHY people make models.

Since we were fairly close to the prototype we met plenty of people who knew the line and picked up some useful information. T o be honest I’m not going to change the model now but it’s always nice to add to the pool of knowledge. Mind you, if the guy who knows the owners of the garage that operated out of the engine shed CAN get me a length of overhead than that would be interesting…