The Longest Day
Entry posted by andyram
854 views
According to my diary the “longest day” is the summer solstice in June when we have more daylight than on any other day. For me the longest day was, without doubt, Saturday 10th November, the date of the Weston-on-Trent model railway show.
The show has been nine months in the planning, and the subject of many a blog entry here on RMWeb. Now the day has been and gone. And what a day it proved to be!
It all started the night before as I began to pack up Skaleby West for transportation. The layout has never been out to a show before and so this was a learning experience. I really did not know how much stock I would need. I filled a single Bachmann stock box with freight vans and wagons, and another with locomotives. I do have a vast collection of locos and so it was a tough choice to decide what to take. I decided that I wanted to take as many factory weathered locos as I could, and that I wanted to run with a Midland Region feel. After a lot of decisions I settled on a collection that featured Fairburn tank 42267, Standard 4 tank 80120, Standard 4 75065, Black 5 44762 and unweathered Ivatt tank 41324 which I “borrowed” from the working fleet on Skaleby, my permenant home layout. I also added unweathered Midland 3F 43474 and Jinty 47279 to a bag of stock to act as spares.
Things did not start well. As I loaded up the stock box I managed to drop my milk tanker on the floor, snapping the coupling off. Gutted! The wagon has never been operated and will now need repairing before I can use it. Not the start I wanted – and it was the first of several mishaps.
On the morning of the show I was up at 5am. After a fairly relaxed breakfast I began the task of loading up the car. Having never done this before it took a while. The task was made more difficult by the need to do the loading up in the dark, and as quietly as possible to avoid waking my wife and daughter. Thankfully I was able to complete the job in time to get to school for just after the 7am opening up time. I was rather surprised to find a stallholder sat on the doorstep. It seemed the caretaker had opened up and then disappeared. After sorting the stall holder out I began to unload Skaleby West. Sadly the journey had taken its toll. Some of the trees had shed their leaves, part of the station fencing had fallen over and two station lamps had become detached.
The next couple of hours passed by in a blur as I set about erecting the layout and repairing the damage, in-between directing exhibitors and stall holders to their “pitch”. Things did seem to be settling down until one of the other staff members, Chris, came though to tell me that the gas boiler wasn’t working in the kitchen. I’m not quite sure whether that was before or after she had contrived to lock herself in the staff toilet! She did have quite an eventful morning!!
A few frantic phone calls for help and we did get the boiler relit so we could fire up the ovens ready for the lunch run and also begin supplying the thirsty with valuable teas and coffees. I left them to it and raced around distributing lunch and exhibitor passes, ensuring the show guides and voting forms were ready at the front door. Then someone asked the question…where are the toilets? Whoops. Forgot to put up the signs! I hadn’t actually made them! A quick bit of delegating and that was sorted!!
After a quick intake of breath it was back to the classroom to finish erecting Skaleby West. By now there was about an hour until opening. The stock was placed on the layout; the controller connected up and……NOTHING! The whole layout was dead! I set about cleaning the track. Still nothing! I tried substituting the controller. No good! More track cleaning, more controller testing. Still nothing!! The Famous Trains group who were setting up next to me almost saw a grown man cry. After all this work, surely I wasn’t going to have to leave the layout as a static exhibit! I had been looking forward to running it! Off went the power at the plug, the connections taken apart and then reconnected. The power turned back on and……..IT WORKED!!! The relief!! I then ran a couple of test trains before heading off around the school to see how everyone else was getting on. This was about the only time that I got to see some of the exhibits. Whilst I had seen some of the layouts at other events there were a few, exhibited by other RMWeb users, that I had only seen in photographs. I have to admit that I was pretty pleased. All the layouts looked great.
At 10.30am I checked that everyone was ready and we opened the doors. It was a little disheartening to see only a handful of people in queue. I suddenly feared that there was a risk of an embarrassing failure on our hands. Thankfully the show started to fill up during the first hour, and there was a steady stream of people throughout the day. Spending the day operating Skaleby West, it was great to meet some friendly people including some who had been following this blog. A big thanks to all of those people who gave feedback. I knew we would not get it right first time. Clearly the road signs were not clear enough, and many felt that we could have charged a little bit more for the food and the tickets. I thank people for their comments. It was great to hear so many positive comments too. I hear that people were impressed with the quality and number of layouts on show. So a big thanks to all of the exhibitors. Here are some shots from the day.
Irton Road
Ilkeston's Thomas layout.
Chris Trafford's "Board Lane"
Alan Cheadle's "Friarsgate".
Two shots of the impressive N gauge layout "Guy's Cuttings".
Summat Colliery
Busy times at Summat Colliery
Malcolm Hughes' Suitcase Layout.
Ken Jones and his Waterfall Junction layout.
Belper Modular Layout
A Layout in a T.V!!
Famous Trains' Darley Green layout.
Rolleston on Dove
A busy tiime at Skaleby West
So then, nine months ago I did not have a clue how to organise an exhibition. I didn’t even know if I would get any layouts, let alone enough to fill a show. RMWeb has been a great help. I would like to thank all of the users who offered their advice and to those who brought their layouts a very special thank you. Without you there would have been no show. What a great website this is!
Nine months ago I had never really considered building an exhibition layout. But Skaleby West has been developed during this time and made its debut at the show. Admittedly it was not finished but I hope it passed muster! After its early niggles it ran fairly well. There were a few stalling issues and the Standard 4 tank derailed constantly as it crossed the points at the start of the fiddle yard. The loco had never been run before and it was with sadness that I had to take it out of service. This did allow the Jinty to step in and it ran impeccably all day. I must admit I thoroughly enjoyed operating the layout for the public. This may be its one and only exhibition outing but I do intend to finish it. I will add the extra detail, wire the points and plan some kind of box to transport the scenic section safely should it ever venture out again. I will also complete the fiddle yard as the track was just loosely laid for the Weston show. You never know when it may be needed again….
Well actually it could be next year!
The show certainly can be considered a success. We made just under £700 profit for the school which helped us to reach our £5,000 target for the year. 8/10 people who left the show apparently said “see you next year” and I believe there were other positive comments. So it looks certain that the show will happen again next year…date to be confirmed. I feel quite relieved that we were successful and quite proud as well. But I would like to thank all those who made the show a success. All of the staff worked tirelessly in the kitchen, all the layout owners and traders who supported us. Also a big thanks to all who visited for your support and comments. I hope we will see you next year!
Finally I would like to congratulate David Rae whose layout, Irton Road, won the best in show prize after the votes were counted.
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