Invicta Informant

At the Erith Model Railway Society’s AGM on Thursday 28th March, the members of the club who were present have elected Alan Bone as Chairman, succeeding Iain Nunn who has stepped down from the Committee. Paul Plummer, Clive Simpson and Stan Monger-Godfrey are still Exhibition Manager, Secretary and Treasurer respectively and the other ‘ordinary’ Committee Members still remain David Bone, Michael Chipperfield, Janet Jackson and Peter Wells.

I attended the show on Saturday and I found this year's show bit overwhelming at times, and I have been to every Ally Pally show since 2011. I am not sure if it down to an increased visitor attendance or the fact that many 'big hitters' in the industry (Hornby, Bachmann, Dapol, Accurascale, Hatton's, Kernows, Rails of Sheffield, Gaugemaster and DCC Concepts) all had something worth having a look at on their stands. The layouts as always are excellent, if you got the chance to see them properly. I only got a glance from afar with a few of them and I completely missed The Bridge at Remagen. Johnstown Road and Burntisland 1883 are amongst my favourites. Lighterman's Yard always appeared to have had a crowd people around it. Not surprising as it has excellent details for a 2mm scale layout and when it was exhibited at my club's show back in January it won the People's Choice Award. Also, I approve of the extra seating in the hallway. Roll on next year's show.

Having visited this exhibition on a number of occasions, the only issue I have is there are too many exhibits in the Jubilee Room for its size. I struggled to get out of there this year. Nonetheless, it was another excellent exhibition with many quality layouts and congratulations to the Tonbridge MRC for their hard work.

The date for next year's show is Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th January 2020. Thank you to SP Rail and lardenr123 for uploading your films of the show on YouTube.

Thank you to everyone who visited and supported our show this weekend. From my understanding we have had a pretty successful weekend. And thank you to those who have already posted photos on this thread. Anymore is more than welcome. North of England Line - Scarborough Junction by Mike Johnson and his team from the Scarborough & District Railway Modellers won the Bill Murphy Memorial Shield for Best in Show and Lighterman's Yard by Pete King and his team from the Kent & Essex Area Group of the 2mm Scale Association won the John Muskett Memorial Shield for People's Choice. ​Please feel free to add anymore comments about the show and we will consider them and other feedback we receive to see if we can make any improvements for future shows. Cheers.

We have had a very good day today. It was pretty busy and I and my colleagues were kept busy trying to find spaces for everyone in the car park (even with no football on we still clutching at straws for a few moments). Those temporary traffic lights on Main Road just off the roundabout for Whitehall Road and Fawkham Road have now gone. Hopefully tomorrow will be as successful.

Set up this evening has gone very well, though there will be plenty to do tomorrow morning before we open at 10am. From what I have seen, this year's show looks very good. Also the caretaker/site manager has told me there should not be any football this weekend, which makes a change from previous years. There is some temporary traffic lights on Main Road just off the roundabout for Whitehall Road and Fawkham Road. Have a safe journey.

Setting up for the show starts this evening. The only planned engineering works this weekend in the vicinity is between Orpington and Sevenoaks, where replacement buses will be running.

With our exhibition next weekend, visitors to the exhibition can vote, using the feedback forms, for their favourite layout. The winner will receive the John Muskett Memorial Shield. The Bill Murphy Memorial Shield will still be awarded by the club for what the judging panel think is the Best in Show (our own layouts are excluded from this award). Some of the layouts due to attend include: Dovington Camp, who feature on the exhibition flyer, Stand No. 59 in the Sports Hall; Harlyn Pier, Stand No. 55 in the Sports Hall; North of England Line - Scarworth Junction, Stand No. 62 in the Sports Hall; Sandford & Banwell, Stand No. 76 in Anderson College; Argina Town, Stand No. 27 in the Theatre; The West Sussex N Gauge MRC's Modula Layout, Stand No. 72 in Anderson College; Our very own Fleet Lane, Stand No. 70 in Anderson College, and Herringsham, Stand No. 18 in the Main Corridor; Our Children's Have-A-Go layout Slades Green, Stand No. 89, can be found in Galileo College.

Unfortunately Invicta Model Rail have had to withdraw from the exhibition.

Hi Bill. Which part of the Access Statement does this refer to? A few of our members have undergone safeguarding/CRB/DBS checks and there should be somebody with a site radio on the front desk throughout the course of the weekend. I have forwarded your query on to Paul and he will look into this.

Good spot sir! Now amended. The date was correct, but the year was wrong. A case of copying and pasting last years details and failing to update that particular detail. Though we have less stands compared to last year, we are still using roughly the same amount of space in venue.

One additional thing we have done this year is to produce an Access Statement. Prompted by a letter I saw in the January 2019 edition of Railway Modeller, I thought it would be a good idea to produce one. Using the example found on www.accessibilityguides.org/ as a template we adapted it for our own purposes. Access Statement for the EMRS Longfield Show.docx

You better contact the Exhibition Manager Paul Plummer just to make certain.

I attended the show on Saturday and they had some excellent layouts there. Like the two previous shows at this venue, it was definitely worth the visit.