Chris M

Advance tickets for Warley will be on sale at the Farnham & District exhibition this weekend from the Dawlish Warren layout. This is the cheapest way to buy tickets for the show as you get advance price without any booking fee. A card reader will be available. The Farnham & District exhibition is being held at the Alderwood Leisure Centre, Aldershot and is always a great exhibition with some fine layouts on show. Highly recommended. https://farnhammrc.org.uk/?page_id=102

Luckily for me the milk marketing board no longer exists. While personal use is clearly ok how about exhibitions? I might or might not have some images from Google street view on my backscene. I’ve modified them quite a lot so the original source would not be obvious.

I'm B40 so I know where I am.

The Warley show has always opened on a Sunday. Way back in the 1970s we decided to invite the local mayor (of Sandwell) to our exhibition on the Sunday. Our logic was that council officials were unlikely to do anyone for Sunday trading in front of their mayor. We never had any problem so it must have worked. Inviting the mayor became more of issue when we moved to the NEC. We couldn't invite the mayor of Sandwell to an event on "foreign" territory so, in order to remain technically correct and follow protocol, we invited the mayor of Solihull as well. The NEC is in fact in Solihull and not Birmingham. Also back in those days the NEC was owned by Birmingham Council so in order to remain correct we had to invite the mayor of Birmingham as well. That's a lot of mayors, and they all decided to come!

How about bringing back early 1970s exhibition opening times? Many shows were 10am to 9pm Saturday and 10am to 6pm Sunday. Eleven hours running a layout would have been one hell of a shift!

Nah - all the Welsh speakers were in Abertawe.

That is a bit surprising. I thought we agreed last week not to put the floor plan out until a couple of weeks before the show. Never mind.

They all need a bit of light weathering.

The club raised £305 at the coffee morning and this has been donated to Macmillan. Just a couple of photos of layouts that will be at the show Bouillere - this layout is coming all the way from Belgium. Rosebury Goods

There is a chap who has made his layout surround look like a Western - that's quite quirky. I wish I had taken a photo.

All of the above is wonderful and aspirational. However, having been to an exhibition yesterday I have to set my desires a little lower. I would love to see the majority of layouts at a show running stock that was not straight out of the box and looking pristinely plastiky. Getting perhaps a tad picky I would love to see layouts that were not obviously some track laid on a flat board with some scenery put around it. I totally support that people can build whatever layout they desire but some exhibition managers do need to make sure they have a good spread of layouts. Yes have some "I could do that" layouts to inspire newcomers but also have some "wow" layouts to make it worth modellers going to the show. Some of the smaller shows that I have been to this year have not been great; I'm thinking of not bothering with smaller shows at all in future. GETS at £15 will be far better value than a small show at £5.

Yes - in the form of a class 22 and a couple of coaches. 🙂

It’s a whole week before we set off for the exhibition but the fleet has been serviced. Basically pickups decruded, wheels cleaned and gears very lightly oiled. Especially in N gauge checking the cleanliness of the pickups is crucial to good running. They had all been running on the layout and they will all get a lap of the layout again just to make sure I haven’t bu&&ered them up while servicing. I think this is a basic if you are going to be up and running quickly at the exhibition. i only need 12 working locos so i have plenty of spares.

We don't have a final figure but our Macmillan coffee morning raised over £200.

Awdry St Nicolas is course 00 not 0. I will attmept to post a trade exhibitor list in a few days time.

Photos of these layouts are being posted on the Warley club Facebook page pretty much every day. There also lots of other stuff being posted. See https://www.facebook.com/Warley.MRC.Exhibition and maybe follow us.

Here is a complete list of all the layouts due to be at our Warley NEC show on 25th & 26th November. The count is 83 at the moment. This excludes layouts that a brought by trade exhibitors which will form part of their stand. I expect stands such as Hornby Magazine will have a few layouts of their own on show.

Last minute change of personnel can be a nightmare at the hotel - nowadays I just give them the name they were expecting rather than try to explain that there has been a change.

The Wyre Forest show used to be a nice one.

For over 40 years I have been dealing with trade exhibitors and I have always found them to be a (mostly) friendly bunch. I have never found them to be unreasonable. I first met Roger Lewis, owner of Squires, 40 years ago and in my experience he is one of the nicest guys on the exhibition circuit. Squires would always be high on the list of traders invited to any show I put on. By the way I don’t run any exhibitions and don’t plan to ever again. I did look after the trade for shows for some years and during that time we had plenty of banter but only one trade exhibitor was given a life ban for giving me too much grief. That trader no longer exists.

I'm not sure trade exhibitors have committed to be there for the whole day. I would say they have paid for a space at the exhibition but it is up to them what they do with it. Its costing them time and money to be there and if they aren't selling anything they are wasting precious resources. They maybe paying staff who are just sitting around doing nothing because there are no punters. In such circumstances I can understand them packing up early. Not a good look for the exhibition but understandable.

Packing up a layout and loading it into a car can be quite physical and taking your layout to a show can create a bit of pressure so as we get older this becomes more of a potential issue.

My plan for the weekend after next From now to next Wednesday - run layout and check locos Wednesday - put stock into boxes in a logical order ready for loading to storage sidings at exhibition Thursday get all the bits ready to go. Get paperwork for van ready. Friday. Pick up van at 9:30, wait for colleagues to arrive, load van. Set off on what should be a 2.5 hour journey. We can have lunch first. It will Friday afternoon which is a bad time to be using the motorways in the UK. In my experience some Fridays you just zoom along at 70 and some Fridays what should be a 2 hour journey takes 5 hours. Arrive at venue circa 17:30 and set up. We like to set up slowly and carefully. All being well at 20:00 retire to hotel. Must remember to book a meal - or maybe not - there is a 'spoons just by the hotel. Have a few beers. Saturday. Early breakfast, over to the exhibition, give everything a run and sort out any issues that mysteriously appeared overnight. Have a nice day chatting to people while my colleagues operate the layout. Find a place for dinner and the odd beer. Would you believe Aldershot doesn't have a Miller & Carter? Sunday. As per Saturday except at just after 16:00 start destocking layout and carefully packing stock away. By closure at 16:30 there should be just two trains running. at 16:30 cut the power and dis-assemble layout. Target time is 45 minutes so should be on the road by 17:15 or thereabouts. All being well the Sunday journey will take no more than 2.75 hours so back to my house at around 20:00. Unload van and have dinner with a glass of wine while colleagues go home. Monday. Return van before 9:30. Spend rest of day being knackered. Tuesday. Re-assemble layout. Check it works and do a detailed survey for damage. Its just over 5 weeks until the next exhibition. On reflection I should have arranged to pick up van at 10:30 but never mind.

I taking my layout to an exhibition in two weeks time, reading all this this is starting to make me twitch a little.

Yes, my brother explained all this to me. Despite that, if a bird steals a burger/chips/sausage roll or whatever then it is still a seagull wot did it. Likewise it was a seagull that scored a direct hit on me last year while I relaxing on the beach. I think the actual species was the f****in seagull.