Time to do the postman's work for him. I had to pick up a couple of kits from Trevor and he had a stand there. A quick look at the map showed the hotel venue was only a couple of minutes walk from the station which meant I should have pleasant day out. It's certainly a more appealing option than driving since my one and only attempt to do this for work years ago saw me miss the exhibition centre and find myself in the Telford one way system. I'm sure part of this runs through Wales...
Anyway, the venue itself is very nice. In fact you could describe it as posh. Plenty to see too for your 4 pounds with a nice mix of small layouts and lots of trade stands. Unusually it is narrow gauge that is the theme, not scale. This sees 009 and G scale vendors in the same area. Not sure is this is better for the later than a pure garden railway show but it's certainly one to look at for the outdoor crowd as the range was as good if not better than most of the gardens shows I've been to for a while. In fact only the 16mm AGM would be better.
7/8th scale we very prominent with a couple of layouts and traders present. The opportunities for detailing in such a large scale are really very impressive. The 6 inch high figures look very nice, if a touch cartoonish, and are full of character. It's still scale where you can model rather than model engineer although there were some very nice live steam locos running around for those familiar with lathes.
In the smaller scales, Backwoods Miniatures have just released a beautiful weed killing train for On30. I had to think very hard about not buying it for the layout, settling for the more sensible option of some wagons. We need rolling stock, not one-off "unusual" items. Mind you that's a mantra that had to be run through my head many times as the temptation was great !
Sadly my compact camera needs replacing (please click on the adverts on the side of this blog, they won't hurt your computer or expose you to depravity, they will give me funds towards the camera art no cost to you !) so the photos are limited which is a shame as some of the models looked really nice.
On the Black Dog Mining stand it was interesting that the stock on display was O16.5 rather than O9 more normally seen. I fancy a few of his wagons for the American layout in the future. Plenty of detail there. Quite a few ideas too.
All in all and very nice show. Good timing for those who carry on model making during the sunny (and wet !) months of the year, or those rushing to get a railway layout ready for the Autumn !
Telford NG Show Web site
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