Chris M

The ground cover is great but those trees just aren’t right.

I checked about taking layouts to exhibitions when I changed insurance companies and Direct Line said that was acceptable "social & domestic pleasure". On a slightly different tack my old insurance company, Saga, would stress every time I spoke to them that as was retired and insured for SDP use only I would not be insured if I decided to help out in a charity shop and used the car to get there; I would have to add going to work to the policy.

I have found the best way to get a first invite is through your club. Let club members know you have a layout you want to take out . Club members know people from other clubs and often get asked if they know of any available layouts. Approaching managers at exhibitions with photos and details of your layout might work but I have never really tried this. Putting photos, videos etc on here and various Facebook groups has worked for me. The acid test is your first exhibition. If you get invited to other exhibitions then you have a good layout. If you don't get any further invites when you take it to an exhibition you have to ask why. It could be because the right exhibition managers weren't there (this does happen) or it could be because the layout isn't good enough. I usually get at least a couple of conversations about whether I could attend an exhibition when I take my layout out. Surprisingly the worst exhibition for getting further invites for me has been the Warley NEC one. Medium sized exhibitions seem to be best for getting further invites.

Looking forward to being there. Kato will have a stand and I'm told Mr Kato himself will be there.

I just got this in my joining instructions for a one day show:- "Insurance: Our insurer has advised us that they would be unable to cover the insurance of rolling stock left in the hall on Friday night. This is in the light of the awful damage incurred at the Market Deeping Exhibition. If you have no alternative but to do this then you must make your own insurance arrangements. Despite all of this let me emphasise that the Sports Hall is well secured within a locked compound and also that Senior Caretaker is totally committed to ensuring that there are no problems." I'm not surprised this has happened but its probably worth checking the status of insurance when invited to exhibitions in future. This is not a criticism of the show organisers but if one show has this problem then it is likely that others will so its about making people aware to check on insurance before accepting an invite. I don't think we need to go over old ground already covered regarding how we feel about the lads who did it.

Don't know whether this has been featured before. Seen in Belfast.

Absolutely nothing for 300yds.

The ideal would be to produce just the right number to meet demand but of course nobody has got crystal balls. My view is simple - pre order if you really, really must have an item . If not then wait and see what offers come along. I've only pre ordered a couple of times and then only when the item is on the boat. It's good to do this if you think something just might sell out but I think it is very rare for anything to be completely sold out before it is physically available.

Maybe telling yet another visitor exactly the same thing as you have told so many other visitors that day? How do you feel when visitors ask questions and the exhibitors answer ? Surely that is much the same thing.

That's about what I expected but it's worth a try. I'll give it a try at TINGS anyway. I'll add the URL.

This may well have been done before but I don't recall seeing it. In previous topics there has occasionally been a request for more information about layouts at exhibitions. I've made a YouTube video with a commentary about my layout. There are pictures of the layout but the idea is for visitors to run the video on their smartphone but just listen to the commentary while watching the layout. A bit like those audio tours you get at historic sites. In order get the video a visitor just needs to click on the QR code that I propose to attach to my layout. Just wondering whether folks here think this is a good or bad idea? It could well be that nobody will bother to click on the QR code but if I don't try it I'll never know. At the moment the commentary is about six minutes long. Would say five shorter ones be better? Like I say just after your thoughts. The QR code is shown so you can listen to what I have done do far. You will of course need to find a way of reading the QR code from this topic.

I retired at 59 and can see no downside. Ok I have less income but I have enough to do all I want to do. Biggest problem I have is that there are not enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do. One tip - always try to start the day with a number of things you want to do that day. These don't have to be big things, just things to give you a target for that day. Mine today was weed the paving in the garden ans I've just completed it. Luckily I have a garden railway so I was able to run a train while doing this. Next, after reading a couple of forums, is some voluntary accounting work for a charity. If it stays dry I might have a ride on my bike later. Sure beats working for a living!

It may well be that the proportion varies with scale. Purely anecdotally pretty much all the 7mm lads I know under 70 are DCC. The majority, but not all, of 4mm guys seem to be DCC . A significant majority of N gaugers I know are DC . One is ambidextrous and has one DC and one DCC layout.

The yellow warning panels were supposed to be applied urgently . Most locos had them by 1964 but some class 33s still didn't have a yellow panel by 1967. Swindon didn't go to full yellow ends until a little later so there were a fairly small number of blue western region locos with yellow panels rather than full yellow end for a time. If you are doing western region Warships didn't get maroon livery until 1965. Some warships went straight from green to blue. Also some green or maroon locos received a full yellow end .

I have run my late 50s/ early 60s branch line as a preserved railway which made a nice change. All the locos shown in these photos Are preserved although I’m pretty sure there weren’t all in the liveries I have at the same time. They probably have never even all been in working order at the same time. To do the job seriously a lot of changes to buildings and land use would be required. I find there is something satisfying about the deliberate mixture of liveries in the second photo. Possibly because I see preserved railways all the time whereas railways of the 60s are a memory from a long time ago.

I only own stock which is appropriate to the era and location of my layouts so I don’t run anything which is incorrect for the layout. Well except for a few visiting locos owned by others....

If I built a model of a preserved line I might set it a few years in the future. I could then legitimately run a class 22, an An Ivatt diesel, a GWR county, a Marsh Atlantic etc etc. Preserved railways are very much part of the UK railway scene and so I see them as a perfectly good thing to model. I drew up a track plan for an N gauge Bodmin and the old exchange sidings which I think would have been nice but it is not currently planned to be an actual project.

Back in the day I always thought the Trix commonwealth bogies were very nice. The alternative is to get yourself a Trix Western to pull them. Not a great model by today's standards but they were great at the time. They do seem to have a certain character that I like.

It's about what looks right to the builder. Various very different ways can work. In the photos below the first two are where a photo of the area was taken and printed and the scenery leading up to it was made to fit the photo. On the third photo the scenery was built and the backscence painted with a general non detailed look afterwards. Very different but both work for me. The important thing is to blend the actual back board and the scenery in front of it together.

Back in May (at the top of this page) I suggested September. I'm now feeling it might just be mid August. The word I heard was that the production run had been completed. Could just be a rumour though......

On my N gauge models I am very happy that the details come separately. Yes they are a fiddle to fit but it means that on locos that don't need to go backwards and forwards pulling trains you can have one reasonable looking end and one end with a dirty great coupling on it. Overall in these days of such excellent RTR models it is good to have a bit of work to do ourselves. I think everyone should fit the loose details to at least one end of their locos. And they should add a little bit of weathering to take away that plastic look at the same time.

At Swindon Museum exhibition. This layout is unusual in that it sits on its own framework. We once got the whole of this 16ft by 10ft layout into the back of one hatchback. And there was just about room for the driver as well! Stock had to be carried in a second car. Note the coding on the timbers so we know how it all goes together.

Some years earlier

In the GCR exhibition thread one poster wanted to see more exhibition set up and breakdown photos. So why not a thread where everyone can post snaps taken before and after the public come in? Here are a few to get started. All at the NEC last year The blank canvas Later that same day Get the big stuff in first How we transport big layouts.

The MG SV was a ridiculous flight of fantasy by Kevin Howe which wasted money MG Rover hadn't got. They bought an Italian company Qvale to use their basic design. This is the MG EXE -https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj6iaOPpfziAhVRBWMBHQiyAmEQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fhe.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMG_EX-E&psig=AOvVaw0TM6U4gPYAdygvI8l4rQHq&ust=1561265429285322 A Rover 75 coupe was planned but that was near the end and there wasn't enough cash to do it.