Fareham MRC

The time has come... It is with some regret that the Fareham & District MRC announces that we have decided to pull the plug on the 2020 Fareham RailEx that was due to have taken place over the weekend of the 3rd and 4th October 2020. If you read the details that I have shared as personal views in this thread you will realise the complexity that exhibition organisers have to grapple with and in the end, faced with having to commit a chunk of money to the advertising budget for display ads, we reluctantly concluded that we couldn't balance the uncertainty against the financial risk involved with going ahead. All exhibitors, traders and demonstrators have now been informed so we are able to go public with this announcement. We intend to be back on Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd October 2021. Regulars will know that we had another commemorative wagon in the pipeline for 2020, a 5 plank open wagon branded to Fontley Brickworks. We are currently considering if we should produce this in 2020 or put it back to 2021, if you keep an eye on the Club's website an announcement will be made there once we finished our considerations. Elliott Cowton Vice Chairman Fareham & District MRC

Posted to Modelling Musings and Miscellany because i can't see a better category to put it in. I looked at Club and Society Info but wasn't sure if it fitted there because I'm not intending to push out info about our Club, rather to share thoughts with other Clubs (or individuals) about how we keep people sane during the approaching lockdown and maybe help or prompt other Clubs to look at what they could do. Happy if you want to move it Andy. What Fareham have done so far; for some years we have run a Google group as a mailing list for official communications, calling for support for exhibitions and so on. We now have a second group set up as a discussion forum so that members can post pictures of the things they are working on and reply, comment and so on More recently we have acquired ourselves a facebook page as an advertising vehicle we now also have a private group set up as a discussion forum. One problem we have is that we have a number of members who believe that social media should be uninvented hence the need to split onto two platforms to accommodate both views. So far we have had a handful of photos of current projects put up on the Facebook group and the google group is still in the throws of organising itself so not much has happened there yet. Future plans are a little unsure but I am toying with the idea of "going live" on the facebook group to do some demonstrations of weathering and so on, things I keep getting asked to do as a themed evening presentation at the Club but can never find a diary slot to fit it into. So, that's Fareham's approach. What are other Clubs doing? Have you got any extension ideas for what we've got planned? Elliott

Hi Barry Sorry, I'm afraid I don't spend enough time on this forum; I've only rocked up here now because I'm looking to start setting up for our next exhibition in October 2020. I'm consciously doing this under our Club login as well (rather than as the Duty Druid) as this is advice we were given early on in my tenure as Club Chairman and Exhibition Organiser. Firstly, the "Bible" for this stuff is a publication known as the Purple Guide for Event Management - but you won't find the definitive answer you seek I'm afraid. Our experience: When I first started to get involved in this stuff we had a 10 layout, 3 trader, 1 society show in a hall that measured 40' x 70'. I was worried about the provision of fire fighting appliances in general in the hall and so I asked the local Fire Prevention Officer to visit and advise. He gave the venue rocks - as I thought there were insufficient fire extinguishers. He did also ask me to talk him through what we were planning to do. I explained how we were going to lay the hall out, including saying "6 foot gangways". He asked me to explain why I acknowledged that it would be tight but that we thought that in that gap we could have one person standing looking at the display on each side of the aisle and just have room for two people to pass in the gap, adding that we knew what was likely to be a busy display and what quiet one, and that we were planning to put quiet opposite busy. His answer was "That's fine, move on". I asked him what the Staff Answer should be and he said "There isn't one, but you've clearly thought about this and made an informed decision, I would hope that you will keep an eye on things during the event and if you think it was too tight then in your event review meeting you will make a conscious decision to increase it for next year". Now with a 100'x100' hall, 30ish layouts and 20ish traders we work on minimum 10' for main aisles and 8' for side routes. Routes to Fire Exits are always at main aisle width. One of the annoying things I find about event management is that there is no real guide, you just have to make it up as you go along and be prepared to justify yourself when the wheels fall off. To illustrate this here's a story about one of my bet noirs - First Aid provision (I am a FREC3 Medic - Community First Responder level - and I work at hippy festivals as a medical response driver). I have endless arguments about this with people at all sorts of events from our exhibitions through the village fete to full on festivals. In the context of a Model Railway Exhibition: There is NO legal requirement to have First Aid Provision but what there is a requirement for you as an event organiser to have taken reasonable care and acted responsibly, and you MUST DOCUMENT your rationale for decisions made in a formal risk assessment, usually backed up by your Method Statement if it's a big show. For Fareham RailEx it's simple, we are in a Leisure Centre and we have a cardiac panic button and radios, if there is an incident we simply call up the Venue's Emergency Medical Response Team (typically the same qualification level as me) and let them sort it out, albeit they are aware that they can call on me for assistance if I'm around. We have actually activated this plan once with a "cardiac" during build up and it actually worked very well, response car on scene in about 3 minutes of the first call. Another exhibition I sometimes demonstrate at in a school sports hall have realised that the school is no longer providing the first aid cover that they once did, they are talking about having me with a running bag and defib behind my demonstration table so that I can leap in if there's a problem until the County Ambulance Service can provide a Med Tech to relieve me. There is a problem with this though, my insurance to practice only covers me when I am out with the organisation I work with so I'm not entirely happy with the situation unless I can get cover through some other organisation such as the show insurance. There is another exhibition I am aware of which simply nominates 2 stewards with ordinary First Aid at Work qualifications (the one day a year type) and NO running bag or defib to walk the floors every half an hour or so and intervene if needed until the County Ambulance arrives. They have no hiviz that identifies them as the First Aid Team and they don't carry radios so if they are in the crew room at the back of the site and there's a problem at the front of the site it could be 10 minutes before they are found and a further 5 before they get to the scene by which time a member of the public will likely have called 999. I'll leave it to you to decide what constitutes best practice and who you might think about suing if you were taken ill at their exhibition. The bottom line here is simply this: If something goes wrong there will be an investigation or an inquest of some sort. At that - let's call it a - Board of Inquiry your documented plans and risk assessments will be examined and you will be asked to account for your actions. If you can argue and demonstrate that you have acted reasonably and taken all reasonable care then you can reasonably expect to be - at worst - admonished. If you can't you're possibly looking at a charge of Manslaughter Gross negligence. Hope this has helped, although I fear it has muddied the waters still further for you.

Just to announce that we now have the figures from the box office at our exhibition venue. It's official! We broke the 2500 visitors art our RailEx 2019 event on the 5th & 6th October! A very big thank you to all our visitors who contributed to this record-breaking event!

By way of a footnote, we now have the box office figures from the venue and this is just to announce that the footfall this year has broken the 2500 barrier. A very big thank you to all our visitors who have contributed to this milestone event!

Yep, they got there safely, just to prove it, a photo just sent to me about saving aviation fuel.

And to get the ball rolling, our Children's Layout is out at OxRail today - in all the rain and wind. Hope the guys had a safe drive up the A34!

A new idea folks! The plan is that when the Club is invited to take part in an exhibition or other event it will be posted in this topic so that word gets out about Club activity. If you want to keep up with what we are doing simply follow this thread and you will receive email notifications about our activities as they are posted. Good idea? Let us know what you think

Hi, thanks for the vote of confidence - but - the Fareham show was last weekend, I think you might be at the other F&DMRC Show that takes place in Hampshire - the Farnham show.

Hi, thanks for the vote of confidence - but - the Fareham show was last weekend, I think you might be at the other F&DMRC Show that takes place in Hampshire - the Farnham show.

It was a pleasure to have you there!

So... Thanks to everyone who supported us over the weekend, we still don't have the final results - a feature of letting the venue do the ticketing for us - but the omens are looking good for it being a successful event. And what better way to round off this year's show than the flyer for next year's show?