And its over - until the next outing...
Entry posted by drduncan
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After a very hectic 3 days Friday to Sunday, the Ally Pally show is over! And despite our fears on Saturday that we weren't putting on a good show for the public, people were extremely complimentary about Empire Mills thought the exhibition and we came away with about a couple of enquiries about magazine articles and half a dozen or so invitations to other exhibitions in the future - so we can't have been as bad as we through we were! We also managed to get a few photos taken before the public came in which I'll scatter randomly through this post in the hope that between the pics and my ramblings there will be something of interest...
So to the Friday... 0900 saw the layout at Ally Pally, Gareth, Ivan and Les in London either on the way in to the venue or would be there in the afternoon, and me in Portsmouth with all (and I really do mean all) the stock about to get in the trusty MG and hopefully about to avoid the worst of the traffic around the M25. I got the MG out of the garage, loaded it up with stock boxes, tool boxes, come in handy stuff, hope it isn't needed stuff, oh and some clothes. I then went to shut the garage door and found a large pool of fresh engine oil where there had been none the day before. Worrying. I opened the bonnet and found this:
The oil cooler had blown and spayed oil everywhere. Clearly the MG was u/s but I was 100 miles from Ally Pally with all the stock. Trains were out - too much gear to carry. Just over three hours later than planned I left Portsmouth in the cheapest hire car I could get.
Time passed on the M25 and the North Circular.
I arrived at Ally pally about 1530 to find that the lads had done a sterling job getting the layout up and starting on the all the pre running checks as well as the list of last minute jobs that needed finishing, including fitting diffuser sheets to the lighting rig - well worth the effort. Meanwhile I went into overdrive checking and adjusting all the Alex Jackson couplings on the pre-grouping stock and making some last minute tweaks to one of the locos.
With the almost layout ready Gareth and I nervously got out the GWR pre grouping locos that we had been working on in every spare minute in order to meet the organiser's demand for not BR hydraulics. Gareth's 850 pannier tank went first and bounced clear off the track - its csb spring was too soft and we also found we had a dodgy power supply to a point frog too. The dean goods went next and promptly shorted everything out. I went and found a darkened corner to cry for a bit - there not being a cat handy to kick. It was about this time that Andy York came round for a chat...Gareth smiled and pretended nothing was wrong (I hope - I was off regaining what was left of my temper) and Andy was very complementary about the layout. (Thanks Andy, your kind words were a great lift to us all.)
Decision time as the clock approached the hour we were going to get thrown out of the hall: Gareth and I felt that the only option would be to run the diesel hydraulics on the Saturday while we tried to fix the pre-grouping locos in time for Sunday. The tiny problem with this was that we had spent several hours checking couplings on the pre-grouping stock, not the BR blue period stuff. But we'd been using it regularly at the MRC so it was bound to be ok - not that we had an option at this point.
0800 Saturday saw me behind the layout frantically adjusting yet more AJ couplings only this time for the BR blue period stock, while Gareth was under the layout trying to produce a more reliable power supply to the troublesome point frog - although test running showed the diesels' wheel bases were long enough to bridge the gap - unlike the short limbed 850 Pannier.
0930 saw the public come in and operation start. It also saw me start a 6 hour period of running repairs to stock and couplings....by the end of the day couplings had been broken (and replaced), back to backs had gone out of gauge (and been re-set), AJ hooks had become misaligned (and been adjusted several times). With hindsight nothing worse than happens when you use stock very intensively, but at the time it felt we were letting the side down - the only relief came when it my turn to play trains (and fume at the whichever wagon was playing up this time).
Yet the public (amazingly) seemed happy and even complimentary!
With all the work on stock during the day, neither Gareth or I had been able to work on the GWR locos, so Sunday saw more BR blue stuff, but now after the intensive TLC it had received on Saturday it all behaved a lot better and we managed to get the GWR locos working in the final few minutes of the show (well almost - the dean goods ran on DC but not DCC, cause to be identified...).
Then it was just packing up, getting the layout back to the MRC and for me anyway getting me and most of the stock back to Portsmouth.
Now to start getting everything ready for the MRC open day in May...., oh, and the South Hants MRC show in Portsmouth 28 November 2015...., and we need to get work started on the next phase (a colliery for the next set of lift out boards)...., and there is the possibility of an extension to the layout too....
But I'm sure it will all be easy, work first time and be ready without any headaches.....
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