Layout badges

Layout badges
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

After the show, the souvenir. Most exhibitions present layouts with a badge to show where they have been exhibited. It's thank you from the organiser and useful advertising. Visitors to shows seeing a layout they like will often take a look at the displayed badges to see the shows that that sort of layout can be seen at.

The only trouble with this is that when your layout has been to over 80 shows you either have to build a huge board to display them all or do what we do and only show an edited selection.

Editing also allows us to avoid blighting the model with anything from the "gold plated taps are the height of good taste" school of design. It's not often you get this but I do have a particularly large slab of chromed and engraved plastic that would make a good shaving mirror...

On the other hand there are badges of real quality. York has produced some spectacular cast brass examples in the past. They weigh as much as a locomotive but are beautiful. Warley manages a very nice etched version as do several other shows. Occasionally you get a nice surprise - the Uckfield badge has been done on the cheap but is one of the best looking out there and will soon grace Flockburgh when we get around to doing a board for that model.

Anyway there is routine for new badges. Firstly we never fit them straight to the layout - that makes you look like a newbie excited at your first show. For us old hands, badges are received, the deliverer thanked, and then put straight into the top of the tool box so they aren't lost. Back home they go in a nice wooden cigar box with all the others (I never throw a badge away even if it is horrible). Every so often the badge board is updated and we go through the selection and lay out a new display. Those that appear are nowadays often chosen because a show is special, the first or an anniversary event or we particularly enjoyed the event. Sometime though the need to fill a gap gets some of the smaller plaques on and sometimes just because they look pretty.

And the best thing about layout badges ? The handing out process allows the exhibition manager a reason to get around during the show and have time to chat to all the exhibitors, something he might otherwise not have time to do. Appreciated by both sides, it's a little gesture that we all enjoy.