Milton Keynes is a lot closer than Margate. Even when you discover the road through Towster is closed, and the diversion simple sends you back 5 miles, and dumps you at a roundabout with no useful indication where to go. An hour-long journey that took 90 minutes, and quite a lot of shouting at the satnav.
Anyway, I got there. Joined the massive queue to get in, and half an hour later, was joined by Debbie, my boss.
We'd decided that a trip to The Great Electric Train show would be useful. It's important in this business to keep in tough with the trade, and at Warners shows, we're both too busy to get around to everyone. With many recent changes at Hornby, Debbie hadn't met any of the new team, and I'd only seen some of them once, so time for a catch up.
The only problem is that we spent the day rushing around, and didn't really see anything. I managed two minutes on the barrier beside the Waterman behemoth, and didn't see a train run at my end of the layout. There were trains, but in the distance.
While chatting to Revolution Trains, I did get to have a look at the VoR loco being produced by ModelRail. Revolution has taken over the project management, and there was the pre-production model in front of me. I've seen it, and sadly, it's brilliant, so I still want one. In unlined BR blue please. Time to start saving pennies.
We didn't even have time for lunch, but I had managed to score some excellent cake while waiting at the start of the day.
Paul Isles on the Accurascale stand handed over the last of their lemon drizzle, and it was very nice. Despite this, I couldn't persuade them to delay the new Buckjumper to give me time to finish my kit. I mean, it's only been paused for 30 years...
One thing I will say about walking around a big show with your boss, it stopped me spending money. All that chatting meant I bought three Christmas cards. Possibly the cheapest event I've been to this year!
5 comments:
So how tough do you get with the trade? :-)
At a show? Not tough at all. This was all about putting faces to names. These are all tiny businesses, so we need to know each other.
If you walk up and punch someone in the face without talking to them, it doesn't foster a useful relationship, no matter how much it might please a tiny number of people. Oddly, those same people never seem so belligerent when they see people in person, than they do from the safety of their keyboard.
Phil: I was making a joke about a typo in para 3.
Sorry - yes! Didn't spot that :-)
And I was tough - I nicked their last piece of cake. No keyboard warrior, as seen on forums and especially YouTube (why do the real nutters hang out there) has done anything so brave.
They are also doing a DS88 shunter in 0 gauge now I have to get my Judith Edge kit built before it comes out.
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