Friday, September 18, 2026

The golden fishplate

 

Golden fishplate
With Andy and Louise's BBC Gardener's World Live layout in the current issue of Garden Rail, I should show you this souvenir of the show - the Golden Fishplate. 

Laying all the track for this mammoth project took many days, but by Wednesday afternoon, a few hours before the judges were due to arrive, Andy finally connected up the last bit of the circuit. With a clean fishplate, the golden (OK, brass) one. We all cheered, and then went back to work. 


At the end of the show, we pulled the tracks apart as quickly as possible. There was a lot to dismantle, and while LGB stuff will stand up to abuse, it's probably not going to like having real railway sleepers dropped on it. 

We stripped the layout in an hour, and at this point, I found myself presented with the section fitted with the Golden Fishplate. 

Phil is presented with some track by Andy

I'm not sure what to do with this next - maybe put it in a frame of some sort as a reminder of a very special event. It's touching that Andy decided to hand it to me. After a couple of days of hard playing trains, it was very welcome!

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