The Festival of British Railway Modelling 2014

[leopardml2341]

An alternative to the free shuttle bus (which I have found sometimes involves a wait and the bus may well be crowded, NOT a criticism of it btw) is to go left out of the station to the adjacent bus station (Doncaster Interchange). FirstBus run frequent buses that stop at the roundabout by the racecourse, routes 55 & 57 come to mind. And if you have a Grumpy O;ld Git card like me (aka Bus Pass) it is free too.

 

Stewart

Stewart - Not part of the Grumpy Old Git Brigade :-) ............ yet !

 

And....... last time I ventured out of Doncaster Station - Deltics were still running and the Interchange was probably not even a twinkle in someone's eye. There were also buses of all shapes and colours - not just 'Barbie boxes' :-)

 

Thanks for the info.

[BRMExhibitions]

Please can you help?

 

I followed this email link, ( salld@warnersgroup.co.uk ) from the 'contact us' page at the brm website ( https://www.model-railways-live.co.uk/Exhibitions/10-5/The_Festival_of_British_Railway_Modelling/Contact_Us/ )

 

With this query:-

 

Dear Madam,

 

Please be kind to advise departure and journey times, frequency and rail station pick up / drop off points for free bus service; your website simply states:-

 

'SHUTTLE BUS SERVICE

A FREE shuttle bus service will be running continuously on Saturday and Sunday between Doncaster station and Doncaster Exhibition Centre.'

 

Especially for my return trip I will need to plan the time I leave the exhibition as missing one train for part of the journey home can lead to a 3 hour wait for the final leg of the journey.

 

Yours Faithfully,

Andy Sharpe

 

and received this response:-

 

Sorry, we were unable to deliver your message to the following address.

 

<salld@warnersgroup.co.uk>: Remote host said: 550 5.1.1 <salld@warnersgroup.co.uk>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown [RCPT_TO]

 

Please can someone here answer my question?

 

Also, does the 'contact us' person really not exist? or is that a 'web' glitch?

 

Rgds

 

Hi all

The free shuttle bus will run between Doncaster Railway Station and Doncaster Racecourse on Saturday and Sunday. They will run continuously between 8.30am – 5.15pm on a round-robin service. The bus stop will be just outside the main entrance of the railway station. The last bus from the venue will be 5.15pm. Hope this helps.

[colin penfold]

looking forward to the show tomorrow, especially Black Country Blues and Hospital Gates

[SteveCole]

Just finished setting up the BRM stand and looking forward to a great weekend. If you're visiting the show we have the following offers available on the BRM stand:

 

• Books from just £1 each
• DVDs at £5 each or 3 for £10
• The new Ramsay's Guide to Model Trains Catalogue 8th Edition will be on-sale for the first time!
• The March 2014 issue of BRM is also on-sale!
• We have a great subscription offer! Subscribe for just £9.99 a quarter and we'll give you a goodie bag worth over £50!

 

Be quick though. We have limited stock.

 

See you over the weekend.

 

Steve

[SEM63A]

I ,for one hope, to see you lads in front of "Hospital Gates" as you check it out prior to it's trip north to your show in June. Yours truely will be fighting my own "wall of death" layout AKA "Meopham East Junction" just to the rear of Hospital.

Breaking one of my cardinal rules, I have volunteered to go north again to Perth. How could I not after the wonderful time I had last year. 

Yup, I will look forward to seeing Hospital Gates and look forward to a chat too!

 

Stan

[Brit70053]

this weekend? llike tomorrow?

 

 

 

Id have thought BMWeb would have been full of it

Not sure if you're really not sure Mickey, but yes, Its tomorrow and Sunday the 8th & 9th Feb 2014 Doncaster.

Heading down tomorrow and looking forward to a great show.

 

Regards,

 

               John

[Waverley47708]

Just back from the show, enjoyed it and it was good to see what for me were some new layouts.

 

Bit of a long day but was worth it. By the time we reached Waverley, the 10 of us had coach C of the East Coast service almost to ourselves. The connection North was a different story, it was standing room only. A nice end to the day was the driver of our very busy ScotRail service out of Waverley was a former club member. Glad to say he drives real trains better than he drove model ones!

[bluebottle]

_{A few snaps from Saturday's session at Doncaster. I had even more trouble than usual with the white balance, for some reason, so it's getting late and I'm off to bed with a large cognac.}

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: tweaked colour balance

[black and decker boy]

Thought Black Country Blues, Wansbeck Road and Sutterton were excellent. Loughborough and Peak Dale were fun to watch.

 

Finally bought a TMC mk1 horse box and had it converted to EM and running on NewHey within 10mins.

 

A very enjoyable weekend.

[bluebottle]

 

[40F]

Some very nice layouts and a good selection of trade. Shame about the overloud sound on one or two of the layouts. We do not need to be deafened by the rather loud noise of a pair of twentys which got rather irritating after a while

[Mallard60022]

I too thought BCB was excellent. There were many other layouts worthy of praise but I've seen and commented on almost all of them before.

There was plenty of room to roam on Sunday afternoon and there is carpet in both areas now (have not been for a couple of years). Not easy for the cleaners I am sure following the punters' contributions on any racing day booze session, however it made for a more comfortable walk and probably helped exhibitors. When I used to help out at Donny my legs and feet were knackered by late Saturday!

Unfortunately for the traders I was not tempted to buy anything; ........... well maybe I was, on the Hereford Models stall, where there were about six, pre used 'Packets' in excellent condition and  at least two Arthurs; I don't need another Arthur!

Good show, thanks everyone involved.

P

[BRMExhibitions]

Thank you to everyone who joined us this weekend at The Festival of British Railway Modelling. We had a great weekend and hope you did to.

 

You can let us know what you think about the event (what you enjoyed, what we can improve?) by filling in our digital survey here.

 

Don't forget our London Festival of Railway Modelling is coming up next on 22 - 23 March at Alexandra Palace. Find out more.

[chrisf]

I would rather share my comments with anyone who cares to read them than complete a survey which does not ask the questions that I wish to answer - so stand by!

 

Exhibition guide - much better than the printed tablecloth but should have included the times and subjects of the presentations.  There were too many spelling mistakes: for future reference 'Deltic', 'Wirral' and 'Wensleydale'.

 

Layouts - a wide spread, not all to my taste but this is inevitable.  Plaudits go especially to the Great Train Robbery diorama which was different in terms both of concept and presentation.  I see from the latest BRM that someone has cancelled his subscription in protest.  Miserable git!

 

Presentations - I attended two.  Andy Y assisted by 2ManySpams told the BCB story.  I was going to say "again" but that would be unkind since it is different every time.  Howard Smith's Penmaenmawr is going to be a very interesting project.  Correction; it already is.

 

Trade - a reassuringly high proportion of finescale content complemented the inevitable box-shifters. I was surprised at how many booksellers there were.  The book I bought was discounted.  Having got it home I conclude that it was not worth full price and may set about compiling an errata sheet if one does not already exist.  To keep me out of court I shall not disclose which book it was!

 

Social - in addition to meeting Mallard60022 for the first time, which pleased me greatly, I discovered that someone I've known for a while through one of the societies to which I belong used to know an old school chum.  It's not just RMweb that shrinks the world.

 

Chris

[Judge Dread]

On behalf of the Meopham team, I would to thank in no particular order, the staff of BRM, Andy York and his merry men, the members of the Doncaster club and anyone connected in any way with the weekend just passed for making it such an enjoyable experience for us.  

[Mallard60022]

I would rather share my comments with anyone who cares to read them than complete a survey which does not ask the questions that I wish to answer - so stand by!

 

Exhibition guide - much better than the printed tablecloth but should have included the times and subjects of the presentations.  There were too many spelling mistakes: for future reference 'Deltic', 'Wirral' and 'Wensleydale'.

 

Layouts - a wide spread, not all to my taste but this is inevitable.  Plaudits go especially to the Great Train Robbery diorama which was different in terms both of concept and presentation.  I see from the latest BRM that someone has cancelled his subscription in protest.  Miserable git!

 

Presentations - I attended two.  Andy Y assisted by 2ManySpams told the BCB story.  I was going to say "again" but that would be unkind since it is different every time.  Howard Smith's Penmaenmawr is going to be a very interesting project.  Correction; it already is.

 

Trade - a reassuringly high proportion of finescale content complemented the inevitable box-shifters. I was surprised at how many booksellers there were.  The book I bought was discounted.  Having got it home I conclude that it was not worth full price and may set about compiling an errata sheet if one does not already exist.  To keep me out of court I shall not disclose which book it was!

 

Social - in addition to meeting Mallard60022 for the first time, which pleased me greatly, I discovered that someone I've known for a while through one of the societies to which I belong used to know an old school chum.  It's not just RMweb that shrinks the world.

 

Chris

I have been terribly rude in not mentioning my very pleasant meeting with Chris F. Such tales of wandering bog carts and their strange arrangements were very entertaining.

Glad to see he made it back to civilisation safely.

Quackers.

[Phil Parker]

I didn't get out from behind Edgeworth much, but did manage to snap a few photos.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45131642@N00/sets/72157640817706305/

 

Both puddings defeated me!

[Judge Dread]

I didn't get out from behind Edgeworth much, but did manage to snap a few photos.

 

 

 

A great photo montage, I'm glad you also found the "tin shed" outside!

[Andy Y]

Both puddings defeated me!

 

Now that's something new but they were somewhat 'large'!

[Middlesea John]

My wife and I went to the Doncaster show for only the second time. Generally impressed - a good mix of layouts; as someone said before, not all to my taste but that isn't a problem. Black Country Blues was excellent. I haven't been following it so it was a nice surprise. I also liked Bambury which I hadn’t heard of.

A really good mix of trade stands- and prices on some of them. I model BR Southern but I fancied a Hornby Hawksworth Brake 2nd for a Western Region train I am putting together. I saw the same model for £33 £31 £27 £21 and £20.

Agreeing with Chrisf above and preferring to share my thoughts publically rather than anonymously (though I’ll have a look at the survey with pleasure), I have 2 criticisms really if you don’t mind. One is the food – nice but wow, the price. It wasn’t quite lunch or buy a new loco but not far off. 2 sandwiches and 2 J2Os for £16 40. Sorry but the words rip and off come to mind.

The other thing I didn’t like was The Great Train Robbery. It looked like superb modelling but the sound was so bad that we couldn’t make a lot of it out. Eventually we said this to the guy operating the laptop which controlled it. After a while another gentleman came in and started talking about it, which made it totally impossible to hear so I’m afraid we walked out. I did hear one of them say something to the effect that they hadn’t had time to load a new version of the commentary or words to that effect.. Well sorry guys but if it ain’t finished, don’t exhibit it.

Rant over. Please accept my criticisms in the best possible way. We did enjoy it and I bought my first new loco for about 5 years.

[Judge Dread]

I have been terribly rude in not mentioning my very pleasant meeting with Chris F. Such tales of wandering bog carts and their strange arrangements were very entertaining.

Glad to see he made it back to civilisation safely.

Quackers.

I had a conversation with ChrisF which wandered off to the forthcoming 100  year anniversary of WW1 and we ended up singing (Well he did) "Hanging on the old barbed wire!"

[Respite]

Whilst it is a very good layout indeed I get very frustrated at the lack of action on Driffield. Apparently it used to be very busy place but standing at the layout you wouldn't think so. This is the first show I have seen anything move on it and I've seen it many times now! 

 

With three sidings onto the coal drops couldn't we have some activity on those in between trains please?

[ThaneofFife]

Whilst it is a very good layout indeed I get very frustrated at the lack of action on Driffield.

Ditto BCB. 

 

Nobody expects to see trains rushing by every two seconds but movement/shunting/passage of trains is rather slow (maybe my timing has always been during an intended lull).  Maybe the ops are going for a truly prototypical modus operandi - that or they feel viewers are more inclined to spend a greater amount of time focussing on the scenics.

[Andy Y]

Ditto BCB. 

 

Nobody expects to see trains rushing by every two seconds but movement/shunting/passage of trains is rather slow (maybe my timing has always been during an intended lull).  Maybe the ops are going for a truly prototypical modus operandi - that or they feel viewers are more inclined to spend a greater amount of time focussing on the scenics.

 

It was conversely said (by someone I respect who's operationally minded) that the intervals were too short and there was certainly more often than not something moving out front and often two trains so it's certainly not possible to keep everyone happy.

[Phil Parker]

The other thing I didn’t like was The Great Train Robbery. It looked like superb modelling but the sound was so bad that we couldn’t make a lot of it out. Eventually we said this to the guy operating the laptop which controlled it. After a while another gentleman came in and started talking about it, which made it totally impossible to hear so I’m afraid we walked out. I did hear one of them say something to the effect that they hadn’t had time to load a new version of the commentary or words to that effect.. Well sorry guys but if it ain’t finished, don’t exhibit it.

 

I think the GTR sound, and some issues with the lighting, was a temporary technical problem. It was wobbly although comprehendable. when I heard it at the end of Sunday but appeared to be better earlier in the weekend. It's worked well at other shows so presumably an unfortunate issue. The guys with the stand were very chatty and happy to explain everything that wasn't obvious from the recorded sound.

 

As for people talking over it while in the tent - I suspect they are the sort of person who also wears a backpack in crowded areas. They care nothing for anyone other than themselves so yakking while others are listening won't bother them in the slightest. I'd have either asked them politely to shut their face or, if they were particually smelley (that sort of person often is), left and come back later.