Stafford Model Railway Exhibition

Holland Park
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

It’s a while since I’ve visited a model railway show purely as a visitor. Four or five a year behind the barriers usually is enough and besides, I’ve never been that keen on actually watching layouts preferring to chat to the people behind them. However I wanted to see EDM models stand, which meant a trip to Stafford exhibition.

The show is held on the County Showground, accessible from the station by a reasonably regular bus service. I know I’m probably the last railway modeller in the country to visit shows by train but that’s how I prefer it. Besides, between me and Stafford is Birmingham & Coventry - both places I prefer not to drive through.

Anyway, if I hadn’t caught the bus I’d never have found the sizeable aviary full of tropical birds or the hothouse with it’s banana tree complete with growing fruit in the park beside the station. These are the sort of things I love tripping over on visits to random towns and were almost worth the journey on their own. Nor would I have eaten later in the superb cinema conversion that houses the Weatherspoons pub. But I digress.

The show is held in two halls. Assuming you followed the correct signs and didn’t end up in the adjacent cat show, you enter the smaller one. Both halls follow the format of trade around the edge and layouts in the middle. There were several models I’d not seen before including Holland Park (photo, bit fuzzy sorry) which wins the prize for getting a model railway based around the Heljan operating container cranes on the circuit first.

Sadly the show was worse then most for non-operating layouts, at least while I watched. Apparently the hall had been bitterly cold on the set up day and the subsequent warming up had caused electrical gremlins for more than one model so this could explain matters and these would be resolved later in the day and on Sunday I expect. Quality was pretty good with a few very nice models I could watch again and would have had I not been limited to 3.5 hours.

Trade was as usual RTR heavy with few sellers of “bits” – although this might just be my opinion as the sort of person who would be happy with one purveyor of RTR and dozens of people flogging strange shaped bits of metal ! Getting to the trade was difficult so they were hopefully doing good business. Since I wasn’t really looking for anything perhaps that means the exhibition manager has better sense than me when balancing his show.

I haven’t been to Stafford show for years and that was as an exhibitor in a previous venue. My impression is that next year if I’m free another trip beckons.