Day one. An easy 25 mile journey. We set up and everything seems to be working. There’s a bit of moaning from the next door N gauge layout because we are cluttering up the control panel at the end of their layout while getting ready. In our defence the panel was covered up when we arrived and there isn’t much space.
The show opens with a small queue and soon busies up. Through the day the crowd are quite chatty but there are never that many of them. The layouts are really top quality so it’s a shame. Trade isn’t so good – to many box shifters and DVD stalls. If you want loco kits or anything specialist apart from card buildings or scenery, tough.
The layout develops a dry joint beside one point. I fix this but another appears. Since this is during the busy morning period I solder a point blade to the stock rail and leave a siding out of use. This gets fixed at the end of the day when the “crowd” is other exhibitors wandering around. Frustratingly the fix takes less time than the bodge but I needed the thinking time first.
Apart from this things go well. A couple of the locos are a bit sticky but that’s just lack of use. Some of the couplings suffer the same problem. We loose a wagon thanks to contact with the floor but as we carry far too many spares this isn’t the end of the world. I just need to replace a buffer and it can go back in the box.
Lunch is good – chicken and chips. For a leisure centre the snacks and drinks are reasonably priced and very nice too.
At the end of the show there is birthday cake to celebrate the clubs 40th birthday and a presentation of the public vote cup to a nice O gauge layout.
No comments:
Post a Comment