Chris M

I recommend that anyone with issues around the voyager system should go to their exhibition contact who may well be able to help. Such issues certainly can't be solved here. I booked myself in on voyager last year and it worked fine. I will be using voyager again this year but I won't be able to go onto the system until I know the registration number of the van. From what I can recall its about doing things slowly and carefully and fully reading what the screen says. I struggled at first but when I took time to understand the screens it was fine. It is not the easiest of apps to use but its the way the NEC insist on doing things.

Back to the plot. From what I hear everything is sorted and we are ready to go. A latest plan and stand list will be posted here in the next week or so. In the meantime we have made a "family friendly" poster.

By the way, I am not in any way involved in accommodation for the exhibition, but I'm only too happy to help Baz.

Premier Inn, Solihull South, B90 4EP

Barry, you can go to the ball. You should have an email confirming your accommodation.

There a a few Westerns still around today that haven't quite made it into preservation.

I have been going through the emotions with my Victorian footbridge. Contentment pre and during the last exhibition. Distress On getting home from the last exhibition Happiness restored. After buying some etched fencing from N Brass Loco and a bit of work.

Dawlish Warren was at Farnham & District show a couple of weeks ago. This is a very well organised show with high quality layouts. Everything went well but the Victorian footbridge copped a hit on the way home due to bad packing of things into the van. My fault - I should have checked everything more carefully before moving off. I've fixed it and now the next stop is Warley NEC on 25th & 26th November. I'm thinking of running 1980s for this exhibition, just for a change.

Moors View - a brilliant winter scene in N.

Now let me think...... ..... I've taken layouts to 4 exhibitions this year, 6 exhibitions last year and over 30 exhibitions between 2014 and 2019. Oh and I have attended the Warley NEC exhibition as a worker for the last 30 years. I also attended a good number of exhibition in the 1980s with various layouts. I think it is possible that my comment may have been light-hearted and I guess your comment is ion the same vein.

That is a good offer. Helping folk move on from out of the box a loco that is “in use”.

No, but a plan and stand list will be published here and on Facebook a few weeks before the show.

I'm sue there will be a lot of RMWebbers at the show, including some new subscribers.

Very disappointing - James front wheel is off in the bottom photo.

There is no exhibition magazine/guide this year. Nobody was prepared to volunteer to put it together so no guide. Putting the guide together is quite a big job. There will a plan and stand list on sale.

My friend bought one of these last weekend. It does appear to be a very good model but the “bling” did surprise me. After my initial surprise I thought well why not? Even without the bling it would not have the look of a cared for loco that was in daily use. So, as sold, it appeals to those who just want to run trains and the bling no doubt increases that appeal while helping to justify the price. Any serious modeller would be looking to add a good bit of weathering to this loco whether it came with or without bling. The bling appears to make good sense from a showroom appeal point of view.

As part of what I call my “serious” modelling I love to find out about odd workings through Dawlish Warren and emulate them. Here are two examples. The GBRf twin 50s took 3 off lease Caledonian sleeper coaches down to Plymouth for evaluation by GWR and the following day took one back. Who would have thought I could run Caledonian sleeper coaches through Dawlish Warren. On 15th September 1963 Bristol sent a Jubilee down to Newton Abbot on a freight working. Again, who would have thought it? The Jubilee is borrowed. It has been used once and will go straight back to its owner. It will never be allowed through Dawlish Warren again because the real event only happened once. It could be argued that “one offs” like these are untypical and so not serious modelling. Alternatively it could be said that such investigations are a mark of a serious modeller. I don’t really care whether it is classed as serious modelling or not - I just enjoy it.

I have different rules for different railways. It has to be said that my garden railway sometimes mixes stock from different continents. So long as the sun is shining it really doesn't matter; that is the essence of a garden railway for me. To illustrate this here is Folly Halt, with very typical US far West buildings with my PPM 50. I am trying to emulate Stourbridge Junction when the students are on their way home. On the other hand I just will not run any loco class that hasn't run through the real Dawlish Warren on my Dawlish Warren layout. I'm very strict about this. Some may find that strange but its a restriction I enjoy having. Despite what I do on my garden railway I really do enjoy the challenging of making a model of a real place and running it as correctly as possible. I strongly believe everyone should do what they want and not be pushed one way or another by others. Its good to be inspired by others but not good to feel pressure to run your railway in a certain way just because others have told you to. I think I would describe myself as a serious modeller but only when I want to be.

Serious modellers build layouts where everything is as it should be. All stock is correct for location and era; anything else is not allowed. All stock is weathered; nothing straight out of the box (unless factory weathered). The track plan is realistic and includes such things as trap points where required. All signals work of course and trains are strictly not allowed past a signal at danger. The land formation is both believable and dramatically portrays the area of the country being modelled. The layout created is a three dimensional work of fine art that includes movement. Non serious modellers build train sets.

Nah - he's only digging through Styrofoam.

Sometimes things start of relatively seriously But then get a little out of hand It didn't end well

Back on page 3 in 2020 I had decided I couldn’t really do a Motorail train. Well this year I changed my mind. I do N gauge and there were no Motorail carflats available so I had to do it the hard way and repaint/rebrand some Railease carflats. I ran these in a 5+5 set at Farnham last weekend and they raised a good deal of interest. At Warley NEC I will be running 5 coaches plus 6 carflats. Ok it’s still not right but it makes an impressively long and different train. Although I see this train as a late 1960s train I reckon it would also work well as a 1980s train with just the Motorail carflats and no coaches hauled by a 50.

At least the Warley show venue does it's best for the environment and sustainability. https://www.necgroup.co.uk/sustainability/environment/

One answer might be to give every person in the western world a carbon allowance that they can use on holidays (jets, cruises), social travel etc. Each form of transport would have a different carbon per mile rating of course. Once you have used your carbon quota no more travel until next year. And no buying quota of others. You would be mad to put on a model railway exhibition that was hard to get to using certain means of public transport.

Cycling into town is a cheap sustainable option - so long as no bu&&er pinches my bike!