I wonder how many small villages can boast two different model railway exhibitions a year, in two different locations, organised by two different groups of people. I doubt there are many. In fact Weston-on-Trent in South Derbyshire may just be unique in that sense.

Last year I organised our first ever exhibition, located in the village school. This was successful enough for a repeat to be planned for this year (Saturday 16th November). This weekend sees another event in the village. WestonRail takes place on the Ukrainian camp on the edge of the village and is organised by the NMRA.

Now I have been working in the village for 13 - 14 years and I have only recently found out about this show, which I believe has been running for several years. The first I heard about WestonRail was when speaking to someone at our event last year, who claimed to have visited this show in the past. The second time I heard about it was from a trader who booked a stall for our event for this year. Apparantly they had stood a previous WestonRail event.

For the first time I actually saw an advert for the show. It featured in the "show diary" in the last two issues of the Hornby Magazine and as it fell on a weekend I was free I thought I would go along - take a look, and also try and leave a few publicity leaflets for our event.

Now I will be honest at this stage. My expectations for the show were very low. Both the people who I had spoken to previously had rather negative things to say about their experiences. I was also aware that the show catered for people with an interest in modelling American railroads - something which is not necessarily my cup of tea.

I am pleased to report that the show more than exceeded my expectations. I was made very welcome at the door and there was plenty of space to walk around the two halls of exhibits. To be fair, the show is mainly aimed at members of the NMRA, but non-members are more than welcome. It is described as a "modular meet" and many layouts were of the modular type. There were certainly some very large models. The N gauge modular layout was huge, almost an entire model railway system in miniture. This allowed for some rather lengthy train formations, and I happily watched the action for quite some time. It was very entertaining.

There was a very nice model of "lumber company" layout in the second hall - complete with a barge being loaded and unloaded by rail. The name of the model escapes me, but it featured some very impressive scenics.

The event featured a number of specialist trade stands as well as the Bachmann stand which sold spares and returns from their international range. I did hang my nose over one of their 00 gauge tramcars, but resisted the temptation to buy.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed my visit and I certainly feel that those people who spoke to me in the past were unfair in their criticism of the event. If you like American layouts you will love this - and I recommend you get across to visit the second day tomorrow. As a non-American modeller I have to admit I did enjoy the event too. I would like to thank those people on the door for making me feel so welcome. The hall is very spacious and ideal for a model railway show with seemingly plenty of parking on site. My only criticism is one that I know our show suffered from - signage! I know where the Ukrainian club is - but others don't and it is easy to drive past. A couple of road signs would help others find the event.