End of Warley National Show - but now it's not the end of a show at the NEC.

[john new]

3 hours ago, stewartingram said:

Changing the subject a little, but still relevant to the Warley NEC show...

 

Does anyone have a complete list of all the 1:1 exhibits that were shown over the years? Including not only the 'centrepiece, but the extras such as n.g. locos, wagons, and buses etc ?

Where would our 1/6 scale live steam “Orion” fit? We had it on the SLS stand one year.

[Les1952]

One thing that has occurred to me - the "not getting any younger" comments.

 

I spent 37 years as a teacher.  When I first started I had the ability to find one evening a week to go to a folk club (and sing), and another to go to the local model railway club.  As I got older the job didn't become easier, plus the arrival of Mr Simon and his younger sister also took time out.  I continued to make one evening a week for singing (plus show week, though that later became Easter week) but didn't join a railway club after moving to the East Midlands in 1980.

 

It was only when both offspring had gone off to University that I got time to join a model railway club again- and couldn't even think of becoming a committee member until I retired.  With other (music) groups I belong to the same effect is prevalent.  Those of working age don't belong to as many groups, and if they do sing/perform they certainly don't have time to be on the committee or be an organiser.  That tends to come with retirement.

 

I spent six years as show manager for South Notts show, and am now club chairman.  There is no way I could have found time to do that job while I was teaching- the paid job took too much of my time.  I appreciate just how much effort goes in to organising a show- and the increase isn't double the show size and double the effort- it is nearer square the effort.  

 

I take my hat off to the members of Warley club and express the hope that in the future there will be another Warley club show, but of a smaller and less stressful level to organise.

 

Les

 

 

[TheSignalEngineer]

7 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

With my Garden Rail hat on, we regularly feature articles on budget builds where even locos are created for less than the price of a OO coach. Cheap modelling is out there if you want it...

Budget modelling is ongoing here today. A while ago I picked a good condition China made Fowler 2-6-4T for a low price. A set of Mike Edge's etches, some transfers plus sundries and paint will give me a Limo Cab version for about £60. 

[33C]

8 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

With my Garden Rail hat on, we regularly feature articles on budget builds where even locos are created for less than the price of a OO coach. Cheap modelling is out there if you want it...

Jailer 2, "I know where you can get it, if you want it...." 

   See my threads. 

They're not bare.. ha!

[Listerboy]

1 hour ago, 33C said:

Jailer 2, "I know where you can get it, if you want it...." 

   See my threads. 

They're not bare.. ha!

What? 

[St Enodoc]

13 hours ago, MarkSG said:

Warley was an expensive model railway exhibition compared to other model railway exhibitions.

But it wasn't an expensive exhibition compared to other NEC exhibitions.

[Chris M]

Now here's a conundrum. Warley was the most expensive model railway exhibition but also the cheapest, it all depends how you measure it. The ticket price was the highest but at the same time, because of the 90 odd layouts on show it was also the cheapest per layout. It might well have been the cheapest per trade exhibitor too. I always used to get annoyed when people said it was too expensive because it was great value for money. Unless anyone can find better I reckon the Stafford show now provides the best value for money. Last year I saw a number of folk moaning about Stafford being too expensive at £15 for adults and free for accompanied children. I reckon that's great value for a whole day's live entertainment with 50 working layouts. We should all be really enthusiastic and spread the word to others about what good value model railway exhibitions are. 

[jjb1970]

I have paid serious money to attend concerts by my favourite musicians and of favourite compositions and never regretted it. I understand many enthusiasts struggle financially but when I see how many members of RMWeb have ££££££££££££s of models on pre-order not only does the Warley show look good value but it wouldn't appear much to spend for many of our members.

[rogerzilla]

Presumably Warley was organised through a limited company to avoid individuals taking the financial risk.  Even so, the amount of money involved must have been terrifying.  If they were aiming to break even, or turn a small profit, that's the difference between two very large income and expenditure numbers.  Bad weather or train strikes could easily tip it into the red by tens of thousands.  You can't operate an exbibition like a crowdfunded model, selling tickets and then cancelling if you don't get enough interest.

[Dunsignalling]

2 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

I have paid serious money to attend concerts by my favourite musicians and of favourite compositions and never regretted it. I understand many enthusiasts struggle financially but when I see how many members of RMWeb have ££££££££££££s of models on pre-order not only does the Warley show look good value but it wouldn't appear much to spend for many of our members.

 

I haven't been to the Warley show since 2019, but it's been nothing to do with the cost. The NEC is what it is and I've usually taken some refreshments of my own to reduce the outlay on food. The price of admission has never seemed excessive.

 

The deterrent for me has been that I nowadays lack the stamina to appreciate the entirety of so large an exhibition in one day! 

 

My plan for this year was to stay a few days and take in the bike show on the Wednesday and Thursday, rest day Friday; the Warley National over the weekend and home on Monday, so avoiding the overcrowded Saturday trains. Sadly not to be...

 

John

Edited January 14 by Dunsignalling

[Chris M]

30 minutes ago, rogerzilla said:

Presumably Warley was organised through a limited company to avoid individuals taking the financial risk.  Even so, the amount of money involved must have been terrifying.  If they were aiming to break even, or turn a small profit, that's the difference between two very large income and expenditure numbers.  Bad weather or train strikes could easily tip it into the red by tens of thousands.  You can't operate an exbibition like a crowdfunded model, selling tickets and then cancelling if you don't get enough interest.

Without going into details you are absolutely right. The aim was to make a relatively small profit compared to the turnover and this was always achieved. The small percentage profit compared to turnover always left us quite vulnerable to outside events turning things sour. We were very lucky that we never had snow over our November weekend. In 2021, with Covid still causing problems, Warley held a local show at our clubrooms on the usual weekend of the NEC show. Guess what - it snowed! I made it to the show but it was a bit hairy on the roads in the morning. Being a little show at our clubrooms with virtually no costs the snow didn't matter to us. We were lucky not to have had an NEC show that year.

The train strike had an interesting effect in 2022. There can be absolutely no doubt that a lot of enthusiasts couldn't make it with no trains running and ticket sales were lost due to this. The Saturday was the quietest I have ever seen it. There was a bonus however. Our publicity team managed to get the local TV news programme to come along and we got a slot in the local evening news programme. This was basically along the lines of there aren't any big trains running but there are plenty of little ones at the NEC. Following this the Sunday in 2022 was probably the busiest Sunday I have ever seen and there were plenty of families. The club has tried to get TV coverage every year but 2022 was the only time we succeeded. A TV advert has always been out of the question due to cost. Radio advertising in the earlier days, and even a radio programme about our show on the local BBC station didn't really have a noticeable effect on visitor numbers.

[Ninefingers]

10 hours ago, sixteen 12by 10s said:

having read I a lot of comments on this subject, and been privileged to know some additional information, the problem is not the lack of young people getting involved in the hobby, but the lack of young people who have the skills or the aptitude to carry it out running a large exhibition 

That's just ageism.

[brushman47544]

16 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

With my Garden Rail hat on, we regularly feature articles on budget builds where even locos are created for less than the price of a OO coach. Cheap modelling is out there if you want it...

I wouldn’t recommend card kits in 5he garden, though.

 

5 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

But it wasn't an expensive exhibition compared to other NEC exhibitions.

 

I’ve just received an email announcing Key Model World Live as a new exhibition in April at the NEC, with adult ticket prices at £19.00. I don’t know how that compares with NEC exhibition prices generally but it doesn’t seem expensive to me. And an annual exhibition at the NEC May live on…

[Jol Wilkinson]

3 hours ago, Chris M said:

Now here's a conundrum. Warley was the most expensive model railway exhibition but also the cheapest, it all depends how you measure it. The ticket price was the highest but at the same time, because of the 90 odd layouts on show it was also the cheapest per layout. It might well have been the cheapest per trade exhibitor too. I always used to get annoyed when people said it was too expensive because it was great value for money. Unless anyone can find better I reckon the Stafford show now provides the best value for money. Last year I saw a number of folk moaning about Stafford being too expensive at £15 for adults and free for accompanied children. I reckon that's great value for a whole day's live entertainment with 50 working layouts. We should all be really enthusiastic and spread the word to others about what good value model railway exhibitions are. 

Value for money really depends on what you seek from an event. Whilst Warley probably had the greatest number of layouts and traders per pound, only a proportion of the former and very few of the latter would be of interest to me (relatively few of the smaller suppliers (kits, etc) attend) , so Warley wouldn't represent good VFM. That is not to say that the layouts weren't well modelled but my interests lie in 4mm and essentially pre-group so that is what I can appreciate and relate to most readily.

 

Hence the EMGS and S4 Society shows represent best VFM for me where the layouts tend to feature older period layouts and the specialist smaller suppliers attend.

 

Sadly, it seems to still be very much the case that some show visitors regard a realistic entry fee excessive, despite threads like this highlighting the effort and expense that goes into organising a larger and more comprehensive show.

[bourneagain]

1 day ticket £21

2 day ticket £38

1 day ticket Junior (under 16)

2 day ticket Junior (under 16)

Not that much more considering that Warley was a much larger sized exhibition.

[bmthtrains - David]

Both the Warley news and Hatton’s announcements have naturally stoked a lot of worry as it is very tempting to extrapolate two specific events as evidence of a trend.
 

The three main worries seem to be cost (is the hobby too expensive), an ageing demographic, and a reticence of the young to get involved with exhibitions etc. These are not just recent concerns and have been around for at least the three decades I’ve been involved in the hobby.

 

In terms of Warley all we can really say is that this specific club feels it hasn’t got enough younger members to pass on its enormous workload. Other clubs may be in exactly the opposite position, so any generalising is really being done blind.

 

As for costs, yes, some people are finding it very expensive and have no doubt cut back. I certainly balk at the cost of new releases, and yet Facebook is full of much younger modellers than myself proudly showing off the £800 rake of wagons they’ve just received.

 

The point I am trying to make is that there likely isn’t one single trend in the hobby at the moment and there will always be a huge range of different experiences. RMWeb is very much an echo chamber of a relatively elite and proportionally very small element of those actively involved in the hobby, and model railway clubs will be an even smaller group, so I would encourage anyone worrying for the health of shows, the hobby, etc, to remember that all of this is only a tiny part of a much wider, diverse, and robust pastime.

 

David

[TEAMYAKIMA]

2 minutes ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

Value for money really depends on what you seek from an event. Whilst Warley probably had the greatest number of layouts and traders per pound, only a proportion of the former and very few of the latter would be of interest to me (relatively few of the smaller suppliers (kits, etc) attend) , so Warley wouldn't represent good VFM. That is not to say that the layouts weren't well modelled but my interests lie in 4mm and essentially pre-group so that is what I can appreciate and relate to most readily.

 

Hence the EMGS and S4 Society shows represent best VFM for me where the layouts tend to feature older period layouts and the specialist smaller suppliers attend.

 

I think that may be a factor in some cases - as modellers become more serious they have a tendency to specialise and then focus purely on their particular speciality. Obviously, this is not true of everyone, but I can accept that some people specialise so much that general model railway shows hold little/less interest. I am not promoting that view, I am merely accepting that it can exist.

[Chris M]

The Model World Live show is a general model show but it does look as though it will be strong on model railways. They plan to have around 35 layouts I think. As I have said previously bringing layouts to an exhibition is very very expensive. Warley had 90 layouts, 55 more than Model World Live. I’m sure Warley could have had a much lower entrance price if it had less than half the number of layouts. Model World Live is a business exhibition put on by paid professionals with the backing of a reasonably sized publishing company behind it. It will have support from many model traders and I expect that Airfix displays and war dioramas are significantly cheaper to bring to an exhibition than model railways. Model World Live will also benefit from many pages of free, very professional, editorial coverage in all the relevant magazines within the publishing group. That makes it very different to the Warley club show  and a very different business model.

 

Warley club fully supports Model World Live and will have a presence there. Personally, I am looking forward to being at Model World Live and hope it is a success.

[Les1952]

1 hour ago, Chris M said:

Without going into details you are absolutely right. The aim was to make a relatively small profit compared to the turnover and this was always achieved. The small percentage profit compared to turnover always left us quite vulnerable to outside events turning things sour. We were very lucky that we never had snow over our November weekend. 

 

The year I went with Jim Ross and his layout (201x) we had to brush snow off the car at the hotel in Tamworth before setting off back to the NEC, and there was a thin covering on the ground when we got to the NEC.  I can't remember whether it was the Saturday or Sunday or both.

 

You did manage to avoid snow like the Beast from the East, which effectively wiped out big Nottingham shows.  That Sunday morning I came out at 6.30am to start the van to go back, and couldn't get in as the lock had frozen.  It took 45 minutes to get into the van, and having slithered across rural Nottinghamshire to pick up one of the other operators, we decided to leave the van unlocked in the car park.  I had visions of the show closing and our layout (Rise Park) being stuck in the Harvey Haddon Centre until we could get another van to go and collect it on Monday.....

 

Les

[Aire Head]

10 hours ago, sixteen 12by 10s said:

having read I a lot of comments on this subject, and been privileged to know some additional information, the problem is not the lack of young people getting involved in the hobby, but the lack of young people who have the skills or the aptitude to carry it out running a large exhibition 

 

That's a failure of the older generations to engage with the younger not the other way around.

[St Enodoc]

2 hours ago, Chris M said:

We were very lucky that we never had snow over our November weekend.

You were indeed lucky. In years gone by, snow was guaranteed on the last weekend in November, as that was when the RAC Rally took place.

Edited January 14 by St Enodoc
lucky not luck

[SHMD]

I've been to a few "Warley" shows, as a paying punter, and will miss it in future - even if I wasn't going!

I was invited to help operate "a large layout" but life, family, and the universe got in the way. Sounds familiar? I now really regret that missed opportunity to witness the event "from the other side".

 

I fully understand (and support) the reasons for pulling the show in future but can't help thinking that they have "missed a trick" in having one last show. I'm sure everyone would have pulled out all the stops and many of us would have made a special effort to visit it one last time.

 

 

Kev.

 

[APOLLO]

19 hours ago, Ian J. said:

As for young people, they are in the hobby. I saw that in the attendees for Warley in November 2023 on Sunday when I was there.

 

But I can't believe they will ever reach the numbers of the boomer block (born 1945-1965) who are the ones now hitting the average age of dying. The younger ones also have less disposable income, and more things to spend it on.

 

For me, the above post just about sums up in a few words the situation regarding our hobby, exhibitions, manufacturers, retailers etc. We are, and will see, (as always throughout time) change.

We all need to support our hobby, when we can, positively through these changes.

 

It's not all bad news. I miss my own local exhibition, Wigan, an always excellent one I have attended for many years.

But 8 or so miles from me away is Leigh, and in 2022 (my first visit) and again in 2023 they held a quite excellent exhibition at the Leigh Sports Village, a 2 day event with free parking, around a fiver entry, and a good selection of both interesting layouts and traders, many local(ish). There was a smattering of non railway modelling also, good stuff it was too.  The venue seemed just about "the right size". I am looking forward to the next one, around September.

 

Brit15

[009 micro modeller]

Firstly, I’d like to add to the previous posts to say how much I’ve enjoyed visiting Warley over the years. I also liked that the organisers came back after Covid and then ended the show when they chose to, rather than it just fizzling out during the pandemic. I had stopped attending annually a few years ago (partly just being a bit busier, but also the travel time and cost - the exhibition admission cost itself was not really the issue).

 

13 hours ago, sixteen 12by 10s said:

having read I a lot of comments on this subject, and been privileged to know some additional information, the problem is not the lack of young people getting involved in the hobby, but the lack of young people who have the skills or the aptitude to carry it out running a large exhibition 

Plenty of young people involved with the hobby in some form and plenty with the relevant skills or aptitude for exhibition organisation, but fewer with the time to devote to this and circumstances that are conducive to it. (Though I suspect that, regardless of age group, there’s a rather smaller sub-set of people who can manage the organisation on the vast scale needed for something like Warley anyway.)

 

In my 009 Society group (so not a traditional model railway club exactly, as we cover a relatively wide area and don’t have a permanent club room in a fixed location, though we do have monthly in-person meetings) we have a wide age range, from me in my 20s (plus others in their 20s and 30s) to retirement age. It used to be a wider but more polarised range about 8-10 years ago, since some of us were younger but there were fewer middle-aged people; lots of them have got involved more recently, possibly drawn by the higher profile of and improved RTR availability in 009. And within our group there are many different approaches to railway modelling.

 

We did have a small exhibition/open day until a few years ago (which I helped with, both as a steward and exhibiting my own layouts) but the gentleman who was most involved with its organisation very sadly passed away, and we’ve since scaled back to smaller events featuring more of our own layouts. Which is not to say that there isn’t anyone able to organise it, but he was the driving force and also had connections to the venue we used to use. As a counter example, one of our other younger members once organised his own show local to his house, but did it as a one-off rather than annually.

[stephennicholson]

On 13/01/2024 at 12:46, John M Upton said:

I have just returned from the excellent Bognor Regis MRC show, I was there for doors opening and for the first twenty minutes/half an hour it was okay but after that it became tightly packed and busy which was a shame a there were some very good layouts and trade there which became near impossible to see.

 

Comments noted about our show and will be included in the planning for the next one.