After a couple of false starts I made it to the Nottingham show just before mid-day. This year the event has returned to the Harvey Haddon Sports Centre meaning that the show is back to being all in one room, rather than spread out around many rooms in a school. I had thought that this change would make the show extremely crowded as there was less room for the crowd to be dispersed. Certainly my previous experience of shows at Harvey Haddon have been like this, with large crowds in front of the layouts. However this year's show was nothing like that. The hall seemed very quiet. Whether this was down to the generous walkways between the layouts or a lower attendance is debateable. I do hope that, over the weekend, the organisers attract a decent crowd because the show deserves to succeed. The event had a good mix of layouts that were well grouped together. The pick of these were in the modern image area with the much travelled "Farkham" probably being the stand out model with the way part of the line is glimpsed through the tower blocks placed at the front of the scene. A nice little Del Boy and Rodney cameo scene included too.
Loughborough Midland, London Road and Towcester were also good examples of 00 gauge diesel era. I liked the lighting on Towcester and the long stretch of raised embankment that ran alongside the fields at one end of the layout. This looked extremely realistic.
In N gauge "Neely" was another impressive modern image layout with very interesting lighting. I was so glad to see it operating well on my second visit as it was fairly static for the whole of my first visit to the model.
Static layouts did seem to be a bit of a feature during the early part of my visit. The part built 0 gauge layout "Lancaster Green Ayre" never seemed to have anything running on any of my visits. Perhaps I just appeared at the wrong time. The 00 gauge LMS era layout "Ilkeston" also seemed to be pretty quiet in terms of traffic. They did seem to have some running issues, with only the trams at one end of the layout actually running well. I think I am a jinx on this layout as it often seems to run badly when I am there. I hope that they fixed these problems as it is a very good layout indeed.
There were plenty of other highlights. The procession of trains on the 0 gauge circular layout "Scout Green" made impressive viewing. The passing A4 on the Pullmans and the crimson Jubilee being the stand out models. As a steam era modeller I found "Coton Sidings" of interest. This has two shunting levels in an urban setting. The Western region was well represented by "Farringdon". This layout represents the changeover period from GWR to BR and makes a good job of placing the railway in the scene.
I enjoyed seeing the narrow gauge layout, "Low Tor". The appearance of the Bachmann model of "Skarloey" in original form, and another which had been converted to Talyllyn. This is a very nice model, and it was nice to see one for the first time.

There were so many good layouts that I cannot mention them all. I did visit the foreign layout section, but as its not my area of interest it was only a brief visit. There was a good mix of trade with plenty of new and specialist items for sale. I went with a shopping list and, sadly, found nothing from it. I did come away with some items including the new Hornby catalogue which is much smaller, and cheaper, than previous years.

Sadly I did not take my camera as the trip was rather last minute. Just one IPhone shot shown below of the Del Boy and Rodney cameo.

BEST LAYOUT
1. Farkham - impressive the way the railway picks its way through the scenic section. Great cameos.
2. Towcester - well lit, nice scenic section capped off with sound fitted locomotives.
3. Faringdon - had to have a steam era layout in there somewhere!

BEST MODEL
0 gauge Jubilee on Scout Green.

THINGS TO MAKE YOU SMILE.
Bachmann "Talyllyn" and Skarloey on Low Tor (2 of my favourite locos from my childhood....yes I want one!)
Del and Rodney cameo on "Farkham"