A couple of weeks ago I visited the Stafford show looking for inspiration.

I always find the Stafford show a good source. It's big enough to attract some quality layouts, but small enough not to be over-facing. You can leisurely meander, taking time to view the layouts.

When I first got there, around noon on the Saturday, the show was rammed, so I took the opportunity to visit the trade stands, stocking up with my favourite Heywood's buffers and wheels from Invertrains, thus the saving on postage paid for the entry.

The crowds thinned a bit in the early afternoon so I wandered around looking for those eye catching features.

I was disappointed by the lack of anything pre-grouping, in fact there were only 2 standard gauge layouts portraying pre-nationalisation. That said Merthyr Riverside displayed a considerable stock of pre-grouping wagons, enough to keep me entertained for quite a while. The owner is intending to model a wagon from every pre-grouping company in Wales, and by the looks of his stock is already most of the way there! I might try this for Three Shire's but model at least one wagon from every LMS constituent company.

What attracted my attention even more was the back scene.

I've been pondering a while what to do at Three Shire's Head. The current trend for full length photo scenes leaves me a bit cold. They look good in photos, but all to often look odd in the flesh, the colour render clashes with the scenery or the point of view looks odd from different viewing angles.

I was contemplating just a pale grey, an all to regular sky colour in that part of the Peaks, but that feels like a cop out.

The back scene on Merthyr Riverside seemed to fall perfectly in between, the rain effect nicely toning down the resolution.

The other item that caught my was David Wright's demonstration stand. I've seen Dovedale models at a few shows but never really spent anytime watching. Looking closely at the models on display the pub was astonishing.

Everything looked vey natural and toned to perfection. Needless to say I am now the owner of one of his books and bought the local craft store out of foamboard last weekend.........

Finally, with a filled goody bag I head off home.

Current status of various models shown below

The white metal cart, horse and wagon were picked up at Stafford. I am still using epoxy to glue these together, I must pluck up the courage and try out the low melt solder. Maybe next time.

The wagon does fill a hole though, in the timescale modelled (1890-1900) a significant proportion of the wagon fleet would still have dumb buffers, sadly these are quite hard to find in kit form. The Duncan models white metal wagon, now just awaiting couplings is joined by an HMRS resin body P.O wagon equipped with Bill Bedford W irons. These incorporate working springs in an easy to use ingenious design. I'll be using more of these!

The tip cart has been on the list to buy for a while, a lot of mines in the Peaks hauled their ore to the railhead in these carts. Three Shires Head will be no different. The Fluorspar loading dock will be used in this manner. A prototype for this operation existed in Monsal Dale in the Peaks. I used to regularly bike down the old mine track on my mountain bike.

Finally, hanging around at the back is the first piece of coaching stock, a Bore era 4w centre brake third. By the period modelled these would have been retro fitted with vacuum brakes which is leading to some head scratching as I can't find any details, but then I guess it will be difficult to argue with however I model this!