Cake: Excellent. Chocolate muffin with white choccy bits and gooey choc in the middle. Offered as the second course at lunch. You could have had yogurt but why would you ? Made excellent afternoon tea.Best bits: Meeting lots of people who read this blog (Hello everyone, thanks for dropping by). Hearing lots of people say nice things about the layout. Getting away at the end of the show by twenty to six thanks to some fine organising of the traffic.
Worst bits: Opening at 9am thanks to the motorcycle show. Apparently biker are scared of railway modellers so we have to go in first in case we rough them up. Being clobbered by a falling 3mm Society stand. The steam locos on the layout gradually giving up due to various mysterious ailments.
Favorite Layout: Mannin Middle. Top pun for a name (the operator, a man, is in the middle of the layout, gedditt ?) but most importantly, a cracking little Isle of Man layout. Looked good. Ran well.
Favorite Moment: Watching Chris Nevard apparently setting up a photo of; nothing. Just an empty test track. I'm sure there was a reason.
Basically, it was a good weekend, although I was shattered by the end of Saturday. The attendances were as good as previous years which would seem to be a good thing. Lots of people were carrying lots of goodies.
The layout was a bit problematic. Diesels ran well, steam a lot less so. I really can't build reliable compensated chassis and when you want to rely on them this is A Bad Thing. We have thought about this and with a bit of reworking, the layout could accommodate more early oil burners. Extend the head shunt, move the church a couple of inches and we can get a loco and two wagons in and we have a plan.
Thanks again to everyone who said hello. Special thanks to Mike for being our third operator and doing a heck of a lot of playing trains over the weekend. He seemed to be enjoying it though. Perhaps it was something in the muffins.
More photos on Flickr
Anyway, I picked up a few other ideas so stay tuned for the rest of the week.
2 comments:
I didn't realise you were there also Phil! Agree with your comments around opening times everyone was totally knackered come Sunday morning. Especially as we had to get in for 7am for the privilege of queueing for 40 minutes to get a breakfast! However the quick get out did go some way to making amends! I must admit I didn't find the punters as friendly and communicative as at other big shows I've attended. All I seem to experience was ignorant old men who barged into with ruck sacks without apologising!
It was an early start both days with the alarm set at 0445 to travel up from teh London burbs via Coleshill to pick up the rest of the crew.
Saturday night we were so knackered we didn't even make it to the pub after dinner - that's a first! Then up again at the crack of dawn on the Sunday to let the loonies in whose only interest is filling up their rucksacks with grown up toys from the manufacturer's bargain bins. A sea of greasy grey comb-overs!
Post a Comment