Talking garden railways at the Model Railway Club

 

A couple of weeks ago, I headed south to give a presentation I'd been asked for at the Model Railway Club in London. It was an interesting day. 

The talk itself went OK. There were about 20 people in the room and a similar number joined us via Zoom. There were a few technical issues with the setup, but eventually, these were overcome (although some made a later reappearance) so I could do my thing complete with a working next slide clicker, something the government can't do for their Covid briefings it seems. 

I think the audience enjoyed my waffle and I filled my alloted timeslots well enough. Maybe I've not convinced anyone to head out to the garden with their railways, but you never know. 

Exactly what to put into a talk was a challenge. Eventually, the first half was my story in the larger scales and how it was mostly driven in the early days by a lack of funds - proving that you don't need to be rich to model outside, quite the opposite in fact. 

After the tea-break, I covered some basic considerations to think about when looking to build a garden railway. It's a big topic, so I left plenty of time for questions, which mostly worked out OK. 

All this was despite a weird arrival in London. 

Marylebone station was being dressed for Christmas. Had I dozed off and slept on the train for a few weeks, shuttling back and forth between London and Birmingham? 

No. It's a film set. I'm not sure what they were shooting, but when I was dropped back at the station, things looked different. 

There's an awful lot of equipment in this shot!

Frustratingly, I couldn't hang around to watch for long as my train departed 15 minutes later, and I needed food. 

Having stuffed a burger into my gob, I got on the 10:30 train, expected in a nice ride back, but five minutes before we left, it started to fill up. And fill up some more. Worse, there was precious little mask wearing going on. I started to feel very uncomfortable.

Checking my phone, I worked out that there was another train in half an hour, which got me back only 20 minutes later than the previous one. So I bailed out and hoped for the best as it was the last service home. 

Of course, I'm now on the wrong side of the barrier to go and watch the fun. I notices that the posters on the platform had been replaced with festive images, so assume that later on that night, the camera would move on to the platforms themselves. 

Anyway, the train was quieter and I was back home and asleep by 1am. Good job the next day, I didn't need to be on the road until mid-morning!

If you'd like me to talk garden railway modelling at your club, send me an e-mail and I'll see if I can oblige.