Badges

There's a lot more to organising a toy train exhibition than simply booking a few layouts and traders.

 

One of the jobs that always seems to get left until just before the day is making badges for those taking part. For more years than I care to remember, the L&WMRS has had a badge making machine capable of producing very nice 55mm diameter button badges.

 

After a bit of photocopying, and a few hours badge stamping we now have several hundred badges. Three colours of course - cream for Exhibitors, pink for Traders and a nice easy to see yellow for Stewards. You would be surprised how complex one of these is actually. There are 4 pieces:

•  Clear plastic front
• Printed emblem (the 2C logo in the picture)
• Inner flanged disk
• Back containing the pin (which technically counts as a 5th part but as it is supplied fitted to the back we'll ignore this)

and making each consists of two operations. This is far to exciting for today - I'll save actual badge making for a future post.

 

I wondered exactly why we make these badges. After all there is a separate area for exhibitors to partake of tea and coffee and we give them tickets for lunch. The best reason I can think of  is that if you find someone inside the barrier line, you can tell if they have a reason to be there. Also, if someone nips outside (not that likely in January but you never know) it saves the guy on the door asking to see their ticket.

 

Now you are probably thinking, "I wish our show/layout/group had lovely badges like those." Well the good news is that they can. Visit the club website and drop us a line and I'm sure we can give you a quote.