Hi,

Well, as some of you know, Hythe Parkway was out at the Abingdon Show yesterday.

We had packed up Hythe at the club on Friday evening and got it along to Abingdon, in convoy with Graham_muz and his Fisherton Sarum. Generally, setting up and testing went well, up until we tried to test the extension, but the problem was finally tracked down to myself, putting in some wires in the wrong way! But we left it running well and ready for the show ahead.

We got to the hall on Saturday morning along with our operators and a few visiting pieces of stock, well 4 in fact! They were a Class 171 in Southern livery, a A1 4-6-2 in British Railways apple green as 60163 'Tornado' (yes with it's boiler in place! ), BR Standard 5MT 4-6-0 No. 73082 Camalot, all owned by Daniel Tipping and a BR Standard 4MT 4-6-0 No. 75065, owned by John Hipwell.

Anyway, back to the layout, after a quick test, we found that the layout was doing what it should be doing, so we went off and got a bacon butty. But when the doors opened at 10:00, we encounted a few problems, the new extension was shorting out and 2 points kept sticking. We found that Platform 3 had developed the same fault as at Churchrail last year, in that we could put trains in, but it would short out when we tried to get them out again. So the engineers where called and they unfortunaly, had to work on the line all day. The layout continued to run like a bag of bolts all morning, but settled down in the afternoon, but it still ran poorly.

We had some interests throughout the day, but there were several times when we had no-one looking at the layout for 5 minutes or so. Unfortunatly, we didn't have a single invite or enquiry about exhibitions. About half way through the day, as I operated the extension, I looked over to the fiddle yard to find 2 boys (punters), maybe 12 or 13, fiddling with my voyager without permisson, then went off, nobody had stopped them or questioned why they were there! I was extremely angry that they weren't controlled :angry: . But thank you to everyone who put up with our problems and made some complementy comments and hello to RMwebbers who came along and said hello!

But after the exhibition, the take down (or get out in my Tech crew terminology) went quickly with us on our way home within an hour of the show closing. But during that we manged to lift a section of track that leads to the turntable and I managed to drop the control panel!

Overall, I wasn't happy with the way it performed and I'm looking into ways it can be fixed, more on that when it comes to light! Anyway, enough of me moaning , here's a few piccies:

Overall view of the layout before the show opened:

Ex-BR Standard 4MT 4-6-0 No. 75065 (owned by John Hipwell) stands at Hythe MPD duirng the SESR's gala to celebrate Marsh Distributions opening of it's Hythe Rail freight terminal:

The Photographer has spied the rear end of a famous vistor along side the SESR's T9 4-4-0 No. 30285, new build A1 4-6-2 No. 60163 'Tornado' (owned by Daniel Tipping):

Ex-BR Standard 5MT No. 73082 'Camolot' (owned by Daniel Tipping), visiting from the Bluebell Railway, comes to a stand at Platform 4 having brought a service train in from Dungeness:

Southern Class 171 'Turbostar' No. 171724 (owned by Daniel Tipping) stands at Platform 1 with a service to Hastings while Virgin class 220 'Voyager' No. 220035 'Grampain Voyager' stands at Platform 2 with a service to Birmingham New Street:

Newly built A1 4-6-2 No. 60163 'Tornado' (owned by Daniel Tipping) has caught the attention of some normal passengers as it stands 'on the blocks' at Platform 2 having brought a SESR service from Dungeness:

Having uncoupled from it's train, 'Tornado' (owned by Daniel Tipping) stops to allow the turntable to be aligned so it can be turned, coaled and watered. In the background is the SESR's L1 2-6-4T No. 67717:

Peppercorn A1 4-6-2 No. 60163 'Tornado' (owned by Daniel Tipping) is attached to it's stock ready to form the final service to Bigporth while the SESR's 2-BIL wait to form the final service to Dungeness:

Having brought in a service from Hastings, Southern Class 171, 171724 (owned by Daniel Tipping) gets ready to form the return service:

EWS Class 60 No. 60018 'Alexander Fleming' stands at Marsh Distributions Hythe Railfreight terminal, waiting for it's train of 'unkown load' from MoD Lydd.

Comments Welcome

Simon