Warley NEC exhibition 23rd & 24th November 2019

[lapford34102]

Hi,

Firstly a belated thanks to the Warley Team for having Sheepcroft there, we had a really good weekend. Second time at the NEC and just as crowded, manic and slightly insane as the first time - great fun. Thanks to all those who stopped by for a look and a chat plus thanks to who have put up videos or photo's. My carefully thought out shopping list sank without trace about 5 minutes into my first walkround!

Regards Teamyakima's thoughtful comments I didn't find the layout until Sunday PM, no idea why it took so long. Not my area of interest but then I like looking at good modelling whatever the subject.

1 hour ago, Chris M said:

As for being invited to other exhibitions, well I have taken three layouts to Warley and got somewhere between none and very few invitations. I always seem to get a lot more invitations at the medium sized shows such as Taunton or GETS. Don't know whether anyone else has found this to be the case.

My experience as well Chris, picked up one confirmed and one probable over the weekend so happy with that. Previous visit resulted in one invite that arrived about 6 months later.

 

Cheers

Stu

 

 

[roundhouse]

Same here Re invites and this is the same for Ally Pally etc. Tend to get far more at smaller shows. I still do enjoy bringing the layouts to Warley and generally we get enough invites from other shows for the following year.

[Colin_McLeod]

I was not at Warley this year but I saw the Chineese layout on You tube and loved it. To model the multiple residential tower blocks was an unusual but very attractive feature on a layout. Maybe not so attractive on the prototype but in my opinion it was an excellent model that I would spend time at if I saw it at an exhibition.

Well done.

[PhilJ W]

3 hours ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

This an odd request ……………….. I would like to hear (by PM preferred as I don't want to take this thread off topic) from people who didn't like my layout, those who took one look and walked past, those who had no interest.

 

Why?  Because I want to make my layout more 'visitor friendly'. I want to know how I can improve the layout/display to engage with more visitors.

 

Let me explain ….. my layout is set in China in 2004 and whilst we did have visitors engage with us and say things like 'I was there at about that time and it looked just like your model' the number of Warley visitors who had a great interest in or knowledge of our prototype was probably less than  0.1%.

 

 

My layout is too big to set up at home and so it only exists to go to exhibitions and in order to get exhibition invites I/we need to reach out to a wider audience and TBH I/we got zero enquiries from exhibition managers visiting Warley and that is a bit worrying. Especially as I have already done quite a lot to engage with the 'wider audience'  such as …...

 

1. Info boards with photos of the prototype locations which inspired the layout and information about what the visitor is looking at

 

2. Four tracks of movement.. Continuous movement (in theory at least) on three tracks with shunting action on the fourth

 

3. Fully detailed and illuminated shops and restaurants to look at when there is no train

 

4. USPs include double headed 2-10-2's, 16 coach passenger trains and double banked steam trains on the 1/30 grade out of the station on the industrial line

 

5. Various 'gimmicks' which are triggered by the steam trains - but these features are so subtle that unless we point them out people don't notice them, when we point them out the family audience in particular love them.

 

Now I'm not saying that we didn't get a reasonable crowd at Warley, but what I am saying is if we are going to get the exhibition invites we need we need to reach out to a bigger audience. So what more can I/we do to make it bigger next time we go out - Aly Paly in March. I think that we have two target markets - the extremely small niche market of enthusiasts who know/love Chinese railways and the family audience who like gimmicks and detail and lots of movement and perhaps the family audience was not big enough for us at Warley.

 

I totally understand that with 90 layouts most enthusiasts will concentrate on their particular speciality - N, Modern Image, GWR or whatever - but what can I/we do to engage more with a wider audience?

 

Thanks in advance to anyone who sends a PM (preferred) or replies

I have PM'd you with a few suggestions but I will make a few general points here. Many exhibition managers have an aversion to large layouts. This has several reasons, lack of space, transport costs and why have just one layout when you can get two or three in the same space?  On the up side at Alley Pally theres a good chance of Chinese tourists visiting the show.

Edited November 28, 2019 by PhilJ W

[melmerby]

IMHO Beijiao (is that correct?) managed to convey the dismal Stalinist high rise blocks very well.

They were nicely portrayed complete with shops at street level.

I took a few pics and a short video which I'll post later.

[PaulRhB]

I’ve also rarely had much interest at Warley when it comes to invites, and I’ve taken Continental layouts three times before, this year was unusual in that respect as I got several taking details. Some of those took details because they’d said it was a bit difficult to fit in such a large layout and I could offer the two smaller part layout versions so they then took details. 

Difficult to say why it is but like the others smaller shows tend to elicit more chats to take details than Warley does. Certainly you put on a good show but maybe it’s drawing them in that might help with someone scouting? A bit of bold colour to draw them into the industrial as it does look, realistically I might add, grey from a distance? A small Chinese flag or drop banner to draw the eye to your layout sign or some dramatic steam shots on a display board at the end? I also did flyers with search  Rmweb for xxx on with a previous layout. 

Continental layouts are very marmite so don’t lose heart as most of my invites come from club members scouting who enjoy it and pass details on. Like we’ve seen it’s often a case of only realising you missed something that was crowded once you see the photos on this thread!  

[Hobby]

3 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

 

Unfortunately the vast majority of British railway enthusiasts - modellers or not - are utterly & totally Xenophobic about anything "Foreign", almost regardless of it's nationality. 

 

Really? That's not my experience and I've been exhibiting East European layouts for over a decade now. However I don't flaunt the nationality of the layout either, I let it speak for itself, it gets interest anyhow. The fact that Continental Modeller is still a going concern would indicate there are many British railway enthusiasts that have perhaps broader horizons than you think. There are always a minority of biggots in any walk of life but don't let them persuade you they are a majority because of the noise they make.

[MJI]

Regarding the non UK layouts, did not see the Chinese one, walked slowly past a few European ones, not much running, not my area of interest but worth a quick look at.

 

They were to be honest a bit tucked away.

 

I think the main reason for not area if interest is not being able to connect to it.

 

I would have looked at the CHinese one if I had seen it as it is totally different.

Edited November 28, 2019 by MJI

[Trains4U]

13 hours ago, melmerby said:

Several of the traders at Warley were complaining about the poor connection for their card machine.

 

We seemed to manage fine.    Our card machine was running on 4G all weekend with no issues.   We also had a wi-fi hotspot available to us, but didn't feel the need to use it.

Perhaps it was proximity to the HAA that was boosting the signal for us!

[TEAMYAKIMA]

3 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

 

Unfortunately the vast majority of British railway enthusiasts - modellers or not - are utterly & totally Xenophobic about anything "Foreign", almost regardless of it's nationality. 

What we do about it, I don't know. Welcome to what US-Outline modellers have faced for years 

 

Oh I am well aware of that - my previous three exhibition layouts have been American, but American is soooo mainstream these days that I wanted something unique.

 

My favourite comments was back in the early 1980's when I took my American O gauge layout to the big Bristol show. The guy in charge of setting up barriers (so a senior member of the organising team) took one look at my layout and turned to his assistant and said in a beautiful Welsh accent ' There's some people who like this sort of thing I suppose.' That has spurred me on over the years to break out of the foreign niche market and take foreign modelling to a wider audience - still trying! 

[caradoc]

3 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

 

Unfortunately the vast majority of British railway enthusiasts - modellers or not - are utterly & totally Xenophobic about anything "Foreign", almost regardless of it's nationality. 

What we do about it, I don't know. 

Welcome to what US-Outline modellers have faced for years - & not just at the larger shows either. I even saw an Exhibitor at one show take down the US flag from the front of his layout in a futile bid to get people to look at it before they knew what it was.

 

That's a rather sweeping statement, and certainly not borne out by my experience.

[TEAMYAKIMA]

3 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

 

Unfortunately the vast majority of British railway enthusiasts - modellers or not - are utterly & totally Xenophobic about anything "Foreign", almost regardless of it's nationality. 

What we do about it, I don't know. 

Welcome to what US-Outline modellers have faced for years - & not just at the larger shows either.

 

 

13 minutes ago, Hobby said:

 

Really? That's not my experience and I've been exhibiting East European layouts for over a decade now. However I don't flaunt the nationality of the layout either, I let it speak for itself, it gets interest anyhow. The fact that Continental Modeller is still a going concern would indicate there are many British railway enthusiasts that have perhaps broader horizons than you think. There are always a minority of biggots in any walk of life but don't let them persuade you they are a majority because of the noise they make.

 

I think you're both right up to a point - but I suspect that quite a lot of CM readership is overseas in other English speaking countries, not just the UK

 

I don't personally blame people who just walk by muttering 'Foreign!' because many/most of us have our own biases with regards scale, gauge, period etc. I remember an English friend of mine who only liked US layouts and so he stopped going to shows and concentrated on NMRA meets.  My only disappointment with people who just walk past foreign layouts is that they miss so much good modelling - but it's their loss.

 

My only interest in all of this, as I have said before, is that I have to prove to exhibition managers that my layout can reach out to a wider audience so that I can get more invites. Ironically I think the 'family audience' comes with far fewer pre-conceived ideas than enthusiasts do. Hence my previous comment that I am trying to reach out to the family audience as I accept (without any criticism) that a certain percentage of enthusiasts will not be interested in my layout no matter what I do - it's just human nature!

[Barry Ten]

Re: the interest in British modellers in foreign themed layouts;

 

I've mentioned this before, and it's going over (very) old ground, but way back in 2006/2007 Rmweb had a layout challenge to see who could build a model in six square feet or less. All of the entrants were required to create a summary topic of their layout build at the end of the contest, for the RMwebbers to vote on. Mine was the only non-UK prototype and the summary file got the least number of pageviews of any of the topics, indicating that, relatively speaking, a lot of readers didn't even bother opening the topic, let alone looking at the images and description. They saw "French" in the title and decided "not for me."

 

The second-least viewed topic was a British industrial narrow gauge layout, again showing that a significant number of RMwebbers, at least back then, were only interested in mainstream, UK, standard gauge modelling. Things may have improved but to me it was a real insight into how closed-minded a lot of modellers can be. I know there are exceptions, of course.

[newbryford]

29 minutes ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

 

Oh I am well aware of that - my previous three exhibition layouts have been American, but American is soooo mainstream these days that I wanted something unique.

 

My favourite comments was back in the early 1980's when I took my American O gauge layout to the big Bristol show. The guy in charge of setting up barriers (so a senior member of the organising team) took one look at my layout and turned to his assistant and said in a beautiful Welsh accent ' There's some people who like this sort of thing I suppose.' That has spurred me on over the years to break out of the foreign niche market and take foreign modelling to a wider audience - still trying! 

 

 I said the same about a GW BLT once...………...

[Phil Parker]

1 hour ago, PhilJ W said:

why have just one layout when you can get two or three in the same space? 

 

Because a large layout with 4 operators is cheaper than 4 small layouts with 2 each once you pay food and accommodation?

 

Because the public like big layouts?

 

Big shows need big layouts. Even medium shows need big layouts. And I like small layouts.

 

(And I have seen the layout in question and loved it.)

[298]

4 hours ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

Now I'm not saying that we didn't get a reasonable crowd at Warley, but what I am saying is if we are going to get the exhibition invites we need we need to reach out to a bigger audience. 

 

Invites are probably worthy of a new thread, but in the meantime considering you've done or are booked to do Stevenage, Warley and Ally Pally within 15 months (not sure of others off the top of my head) must mean that you've certainly been noticed...

 

Large roundy roundy (non-tailchasing) layouts have an obvious place on the circuit, if every show only had what one person could reasonably manage without resorting to having to use van hire and a large operating team then we'd all be poorer for it. It's certainly got me thinking what I ought to be designing as the next layout as there is a vast difference between what would work at home as a useable layout Vs what only what is needed to entertain the public, bit also draw them in in the first place.

 

As Paul (TeamYakima) knows I'm aware of his previous layouts and think it's a bold but understandable move to go from exhibiting his previous Canyon layout to building Beijiao, but both have qualities that are needed to entertain exhibition viewers.

[runs as required]

1 hour ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

My only interest in all of this, as I have said before, is that I have to prove to exhibition managers that my layout can reach out to a wider audience so that I can get more invites.

Ironically I think the 'family audience' comes with far fewer pre-conceived ideas than enthusiasts do. Hence my previous comment that I am trying to reach out to the family audience as I accept (without any criticism) that a certain percentage of enthusiasts will not be interested in my layout no matter what I do - it's just human nature!

 

May I support you purely from having seeing the pictures of your layout in this thread.

I posted earlier on the thread (page 22 above):

Quote

A big thank you to everyone posting about the Warley exhibits: critiques, photos and videos. 

Although my daughter lives close by, I don’t think I could ever cope with the scale and crowds of the NEC.  Somewhere like York race course is plenty big enough for me! 

 

As an old town planner, an aspect of layouts that often grates is the lack of comprehension about the surrounding environment  ...  I’d honestly prefer abstraction/nothing at all but the railway to such irritating distractions from otherwise outstanding observation of the railway ...

 

I'd like to suggest that in  trying to reach out to the family audience  you could make much more of the teeming life always visible along the railway in the areas I visited on an exchange programme between 1990 - 1993 (Beijing/Chengde/ Tientsin in particular still had a lot of steam ). 

After our Chinese colleagues discovered I preferred trains to China Airways, I got booked onto the overnight sleepers (E German built cars).  

It was the endearing human scale of China that provides my most vivid memories: for example the thousands of people of all ages lining the railway for mile after mile in front of the flat blocks all doing their synchronised Tae exercising in the early morning sun (together with their pets and birds in cages).

The abiding Daoist maxim in my head is  "the Small in the Large and the Large in the Small" most tellingly seen on the identical balconies of the flat blocks - each had their residents' unique little world - always including their beloved bonsai tree in a pot.  

All these things seem to be rich in potential for cameos.

Also the view of mountains (barely visible in the smoke haze between the blocks) seemed to be a 'feng shui' must have forever boasted about between cities. 

dh

Edited November 28, 2019 by runs as required

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, Trains4U said:

 

We seemed to manage fine.    Our card machine was running on 4G all weekend with no issues.   We also had a wi-fi hotspot available to us, but didn't feel the need to use it.

Perhaps it was proximity to the HAA that was boosting the signal for us!

Maybe the location affected some, in the same way my tablet couldn't lock into the free WiFi in several  locations

[Pacific231G]

5 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

 

Unfortunately the vast majority of British railway enthusiasts - modellers or not - are utterly & totally Xenophobic about anything "Foreign", almost regardless of it's nationality. 

What we do about it, I don't know. 

Welcome to what US-Outline modellers have faced for years - & not just at the larger shows either. I even saw an Exhibitor at one show take down the US flag from the front of his layout in a futile bid to get people to look at it before they knew what it was.

 

There's some truth in that though I'm not sure it's the vast majority. My impression has long been that many British modellers regard US RRs, three thousand miles away with absurdly large trains without buffers that run on the right, as far less foreign  than those in say France, 25 miles away , running on the left sometimes even on bullhead track, many originally built by British engineers and you can even get  there by train. But I have heard people at Ally Pally, where we often have a stand, looking at the area of overseas prototype layouts and saying "Oh that's all foreign" and walking away. This attitude seems less true of narrow gauge modellers, possibly because so much of what was easily available for 9mm gauge was based on Austrian, Swiss and German prototypes, and ExpoNG always has a good number of layouts from Europe.

Thera are also exhibtions that seem determined to include nothing that isn't Anglo-Saxon among their layouts and it's also sad to see that the Eurotrack exhibtion in the Southampton/Eastleigh area has vanished. 

 

OTOH we do have a monthly magazine devoted to non- British Isles prototype modelling and it's interesting that the equivalent split for Loco-Revue was to spin off  Voie-Libre a magazine aimed at narrow gauge and to some extent SG light railway modelling and that does include a fair number of British outline layouts . We also have specialist Societies for those interested in French, Swiss, German, Italian, Scandinavian, Iberian, Austrian and American railways (I suppose the NMRA's British chapter counts as a specialist society)  and a few others I've omitted. I've not seen that in any other country. 

[markneilp14]

7 hours ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

This an odd request ……………….. I would like to hear (by PM preferred as I don't want to take this thread off topic) from people who didn't like my layout, those who took one look and walked past, those who had no interest.

 

Why?  Because I want to make my layout more 'visitor friendly'. I want to know how I can improve the layout/display to engage with more visitors.

 

Let me explain ….. my layout is set in China in 2004 and whilst we did have visitors engage with us and say things like 'I was there at about that time and it looked just like your model' the number of Warley visitors who had a great interest in or knowledge of our prototype was probably less than  0.1%.

 

 

My layout is too big to set up at home and so it only exists to go to exhibitions and in order to get exhibition invites I/we need to reach out to a wider audience and TBH I/we got zero enquiries from exhibition managers visiting Warley and that is a bit worrying. Especially as I have already done quite a lot to engage with the 'wider audience'  such as …...

 

1. Info boards with photos of the prototype locations which inspired the layout and information about what the visitor is looking at

 

2. Four tracks of movement.. Continuous movement (in theory at least) on three tracks with shunting action on the fourth

 

3. Fully detailed and illuminated shops and restaurants to look at when there is no train

 

4. USPs include double headed 2-10-2's, 16 coach passenger trains and double banked steam trains on the 1/30 grade out of the station on the industrial line

 

5. Various 'gimmicks' which are triggered by the steam trains - but these features are so subtle that unless we point them out people don't notice them, when we point them out the family audience in particular love them.

 

Now I'm not saying that we didn't get a reasonable crowd at Warley, but what I am saying is if we are going to get the exhibition invites we need we need to reach out to a bigger audience. So what more can I/we do to make it bigger next time we go out - Aly Paly in March. I think that we have two target markets - the extremely small niche market of enthusiasts who know/love Chinese railways and the family audience who like gimmicks and detail and lots of movement and perhaps the family audience was not big enough for us at Warley.

 

I totally understand that with 90 layouts most enthusiasts will concentrate on their particular speciality - N, Modern Image, GWR or whatever - but what can I/we do to engage more with a wider audience?

 

Thanks in advance to anyone who sends a PM (preferred) or replies

 

Hello I did look at the layout but could not stop for long as i was exhibiting my own layout as well (Bembridge SR IOW). I am the show organiser for the Alton Model show and i would like to ask do you have a layout information sheet so i can consider the layout for a future show.

 

I think the single biggest issue is that the subject is out of the ordinary in terms of location, the locos and trains etc. Most people are used to USA, European and UK model railways and as such to have something that is this unusual is potentially the reason as to why some did not stop and watch. I did watch and i also had a good look at the fiddle yard. Always my first port of call on any layout. The average person spends 3-5 minutes looking at a layout.

Please feel free to PM me and we can discuss the layout as potentially coming tot eh Alton Show in Hampshire at some time in the future.

 

Cheers Mark

 

[Hobby]

In every country I have visited either in real life or via a forum the majority of their modellers model their own country. Theres nothing untoward about that, its what you'd expect. The bit of that post I feel is wrong, though,  is thst there is hostility towards models of foreign railways. Indifference perhaps but not outright hostility! 

[Brian Hawkins]

Paul, as you know I'm very enthusiastic when it comes to everything about Chinese Steam, I have watched your superb layout Beijiao grow into something very special over the years and I congratulate you in your hard work into putting a rather specialist subject available for us China enthusiasts, please keep up your excellent work. 

Edited November 28, 2019 by Brian Hawkins

[Dr Gerbil-Fritters]

On 27/11/2019 at 08:42, TEAMYAKIMA said:

 

Personally I thought this was one of the best displays at Warley.

 

WHY??????

 

Because I had never seen anything like it before - it showed enormous originality and imagination - absolutely brilliant in my opinion - and no running problems!!

 

It reminded me of the displays that used to be in the basement of the Science Museum, including one I think was an early impression of the Channel Tunnel - long before it was actually built,

[PhilJ W]

3 hours ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

 

 

 

My favourite comments was back in the early 1980's when I took my American O gauge layout to the big Bristol show. The guy in charge of setting up barriers (so a senior member of the organising team) took one look at my layout and turned to his assistant and said in a beautiful Welsh accent ' There's some people who like this sort of thing I suppose.' That has spurred me on over the years to break out of the foreign niche market and take foreign modelling to a wider audience - still trying! 

Because the locomotives were not green with copper capped chimneys perhaps?

[Compound2632]

8 hours ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

the number of Warley visitors who had a great interest in or knowledge of our prototype was probably less than  0.1%.

 

 

That's probably true of most layouts where

 

14 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

the locomotives were not green with copper capped chimneys 

 

which is why at a major exhibition such as Warley it is important to have a wide range of layouts, in an effort to broaden the mind.

 

However, I was doing all my layout watching on the Saturday afternoon and found that I couldn't get close enough to Beijiao to have a hope of appreciating it properly. So the best way of making it more "Warley visitor friendly" would be to make it even longer!

Edited November 28, 2019 by Compound2632