A couple of weeks back I attended a meeting of UK FREMO members. It was a weekend running session following the FREMO norms as far as possible, although our group is quite small and our arrangement (the way the modules are combined into a minature railway network) was fairly modest. Lots of our modules don't yet have scenery, but we were able to borrow a set of club-built modules allowing us the luxury of a pretty large terminus complete with a running shed. We did have a phone system, and ran to a timetable using a clock running at five times real time, but we don't yet have enough wagon cards set up to allow us to get into the nitty gritty of sending and receiving loads at each station.

There was though quite enough going on to keep everyone pretty busy. I ran my own station, Wasserbach (alas so far totally bereft of scenery). I found that, despite the fact that I had a pretty light set of services to look after, getting shunting done in good time to clear the arrival road in time for the next passenger train was a challenge (that I wasn't always up to).

We were fortunate to have a video of part of the session so you can get a bit of an idea of the event. Thank you to Ewan's Trains and Buses.

The photo shows a BR 41 running light engine in reverse, back from Wasserbach to the depot at Regensburg through one of the modules with finished scenery. It couldn't be used on a return freight service as my station doesn't have a turntable and the loco had no front coupling!