Great Garratt Gathering

Workbench
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker

or: "Phil's Workbench on tour"

For the last few days I've been based at the end of the Mercian Model stand situated in the Manchester Museum of Science & Industry for the "Great Garratt Gathering". This event celebrated the production of the first Beyer-Garratt locomotive in 1909.

Part of the event involved bringing together as many Garratts as possible so we were in a room with lots of them - and since Trevor (Mercian) currently produces a kit for William Francis, and I have built a couple of these, we were invited along too. This was especially useful as William Francis had been hauled out of Bressingham Museum and brought to its birthplace in Manchester.

At the moment, I'm still feeling a bit boggled from the weekend - suffice to say is was very busy. The crowds we interested in what I was doing - so much so that on Saturday I looked at my watch and saw 11:15 and thought, "Must think about getting some lunch soon" and the next time I saw it was 2:35. Good job we'd had a big breakfast !

The crowds were my favorite sort, not full of model railway enthusiasts but made up mainly of normal people. Even better, normal people with well behaved and polite children. This meant questions rather than challenges about the placing of rivets. Fascination that anyone makes things any more and some ego boosting compliments about my work. If you are reading this and were one of the people who saw me soldering or riveting, thank you.

If you are reading this blog for the first time after picking up one of my cards, you might be interested in the following links:

My William Francis Garratt locomotive building.

Building the Gauge 1 Ruston.

Mercian Models.

Or if you want to see more pictures from the event, I have a gallery on Flickr.