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Developments on Baseboard Two Have been working on the above for the last few weeks, essentially a series of low relief buildings & 'flats' which I'm trying to blend into a painted back scene. A certain amount of visual trickery is required [& more work is still needed], plus the placing of a large tree between the yard and the 'mainline' to hide the fact it is not possible to to have three sides of a chimney on view, for example. The buildings are freelance, though influenced by prototypes in various photos of the the Clogher Valley Railway. The Tram Inn will be removable during transport, as it helps hide the joint in the back scene. I see it as a fairly seedy establishment, with who knows what going on behind the permanently drawn curtains. Over the road, by way of balance is the 'Temperance Hotel' with associated tea rooms for those not interested in the demon drink. A rather run down looking double fronted house comes next, followed by Coakham's establishment dealing in books and fine art. This was very much inspired by Bob Barlow's work on Inkerman Street. Finally, we have Fintonagh Metalworkers: on the CVR itself, there was 'Fivemiletown Industries', a kind of local co-operative, so the my model is a kind of homage to this. Essentialy I see it as a loose collective occupying the premises and offering things like wrought ironwork, welding, brazing & the like. The rather OTT wall clock and smaller weather vane act as adverts for their work. Both the latter are from Scalelink etches. The buildings are all made from foamboard. Fintonagh Metalworkers is covered in DAS clay & has scribed stonework. The others are deemed to be rendered & this is represented by a layer of good quality watercolour paper. Most of the doors and windows are scratch built in plastic sheet and micro strip, though the Metalworkers uses laser cut examples from York Modelmaking.

As a change from the railcar, have been working on a building to mask the baseboard and back scene joints. Hence this little removable pub, 'The Tram'. Pretty conventional in that is built on a foam board core, with doors and windows made up from plastic micro strip. The rendering is good quality art paper rather than DAS clay & is a much quicker alternative. There will be a stone wall in front of the pub, eventually, while an extra tree will hide where the right hand side of the model meets the back scene. Hopefully, the layout lighting will not cast the shadows seen on these photos...

Thanks fr the kind comments chaps, though it is not as good as I would like, because the glazing got badly marked during construction & I didn't notice it until after I had fixed the roof on. As the glazing is sandwiched between inner & outer skins, it is impossible to correct. However, it is ok from a couple of feet or more, so I will live with it for now. Fintonagh is booked to make its debut at Uckfield in October, so will hold off doing another trailer until the rest of the layout [and a decent amount of stock] is ready and all is running well. Stockwise, there are four open wagons being built. Ought to be simple, but festooned with rivets and plates. Each body has over 100 separate parts. Two sides and two ends they ain't! A butter van and three more guard/brake vans are needed. There is also a second Ragstone 0-4-2T to build - it will be done as Erne, which was green. Livery is just one of the delights of the Clogher. Locos were either maroon or green, the railcar brown, the Unit grey, coaches brown/maroon, wagons grey, guards van maroon. It must have been quite a paint palette!

Railcar No 1: Had hoped to get a set of etches from Worsley at EXpoNG back in October, but as they aren't currently available, decided to do a full scratch build instead. Have done a fair few railcars in my time - the first being a Taurgem Ford set in EM [etched brass], then a variety of 7mmNG freelance jobbies, a scratch built Waggon & Maschinbau railbus in 7mm scale, plus the railbus and railcar on Arigna Town. I ought to have remembered these things can be very challenging & this one was no different... The chassis was simple enough - coupling rod blanks soldered to nickel sheet and then drilled through to make everything line up accurately, with a Branchlines motor/gearbox and Slaters wheels on 21mm axles. I also used MJT hornblocks [from Dart Castings], so the chassis is compensated. The cab of the tractor unit is a mess of complex shapes & was made from plastic sheet & strip, though the roof is a resin casting I made when making the Unit [see earlier]. The passenger trailer was likewise complicated, especially around the [inset] doors. Again, it is plastic sheet and strip, with the 29 seats made individually as the castings I'd made for the SLNCR railcar are a different profile. The roof was equally difficult & in the end I've fixed it permanently to the body. This made it easier to file to shape [it is several layers of 80thou sheet, laminated together], but means I cannot correct the mess I made of the glazing. A mark two version is very much on the cards... In the hope that the paint job might improve things, I brush painted Tamiya acrylic for the brown bodywork and white [actually ivory] roof. Not exactly happy with the finish here either, though some work with T-Cut has improved things. However, have pressed on and been practicing using a dipping pen [fine nib] and white acrylic ink for the lettering. This was then gone over in fine tipped [dark yellow] felt pen and finally the black shading using a .01mm fibre tip. If you don't get too close, it is ok and still needs weathering, of course. The photos also show the Unit for comparison. The drive/tractor units were interchangeable on the prototypes.

Railcar No 1: Had hoped to get a set of etches from Worsley at EXpoNG back in October, but as they aren't currently available, decided to do a full scratch build instead. Have done a fair few railcars in my time - the first being a Taurgem Ford set in EM [etched brass], then a variety of 7mmNG freelance jobbies, a scratch built Waggon & Maschinbau railbus in 7mm scale, plus the railbus and railcar on Arigna Town. I ought to have remembered these things can be very challenging & this one was no different... The chassis was simple enough - coupling rod blanks soldered to nickel sheet and then drilled through to make everything line up accurately, with a Branchlines motor/gearbox and Slaters wheels on 21mm axles. I also used MJT hornblocks [from Dart Castings], so the chassis is compensated. The cab of the tractor unit is a mess of complex shapes & was made from plastic sheet & strip, though the roof is a resin casting I made when making the Unit [see earlier]. The passenger trailer was likewise complicated, especially around the [inset] doors. Again, it is plastic sheet and strip, with the 29 seats made individually as the castings I'd made for the SLNCR railcar are a different profile. The roof was equally difficult & in the end I've fixed it permanently to the body. This made it easier to file to shape [it is several layers of 80thou sheet, laminated together], but means I cannot correct the mess I made of the glazing. A mark two version is very much on the cards... In the hope that the paint job might improve things, I brush painted Tamiya acrylic for the brown bodywork and white [actually ivory] roof. Not exactly happy with the finish here either, though some work with T-Cut has improved things. However, have pressed on and been practicing using a dipping pen [fine nib] and white acrylic ink for the lettering. This was then gone over in fine tipped [dark yellow] felt pen and finally the black shading using a .01mm fibre tip. If you don't get too close, it is ok and still needs weathering, of course. The photos also show the Unit for comparison. The drive/tractor units were interchangeable on the prototypes.

Spuds are they are intended to be, but [whisper it quietly] are actually a couple of 4mm scale Merit GPO sacks from the spares box. The Deutz builders plates are actually from an 08 shunter detailing kit and read 'Built in Derby'... Bexleyheath today. The new G Class, Deutz diesel acquitted itself very well today, in somewhat trying circumstances. Nothing wrong with the show, or indeed the hospitality, but the weather highlighted the problems of a winter show. The day began in pouring rain and 1c, soon turning to snow, so by the time I reached the venue at 8am, there was an inch of slush on the ground and it was snowing hard. Not the best recipe for getting a layout 50 yards from car to halls, especially when other exhibitors vehicles blocked the way necessitating sackbarrowing the boards across more mud and slush. With the doors open, the hall was pretty damned cold, but unfortunately it stayed that way as this was the entrance and, there was NO heating! Arigna Town lives in what was once an integral garage, but now my workshop, complete with central heating, so it does not enjoy the cold. Axles boxes seem to tighten, meaning the two small tanks especially suffer from wheel slip, while the turntable also tends to catch the coping stones around its edge. Add in a broken toggle on one of the points [meaning the wire in tube could only be push/pulled using pliers] and it was a more trying day than usual, with a fair bit of remedial work needed for the next outing at the end of January. Equally, such things are all part and parcel of the exhibition scene. Layouts lead a hard life on the road, with 7-8 hours of intensive use each day, so you tend to expect stuff to happen from time to time. If only it hadn't been quite so cold! However, the little G did itself proud, substituting for the J26 on the stores/coal trains. It could probably do with a bit of weight in the bonnet to help the four wheel drive, but has proved to be a smooth, slow runner, ideal for such duties. By packing up time, at least it had stopped snowing and the roads were mercifully clear on the way home. Many thanks to Harry and his team for their hospitality today in such challenging circumstances.

Arigna Town has a new locomotive, in the form of a G Class, Deutz diesel shunter. I must admit to have long coveted one of these, so when I found at set of etchings on the Worsley Works stand at ExpoNG, they were too much to resist. Unusually for me, they were initially put to one side, but then with the Reading Trade Show coming up, it seemed like a good time to make a start. In fact, the etchings went together in an afternoon, although I then discovered that they were of the later version and I really wanted the G 601 series. The two main alterations were cutting out the two big windows [front and rear] in the cab & replacing them with smaller ones cut from brass sheet; cut outs above the front steps also needed filling in the same way. After that, it was a case of sourcing bits and pieces from Reading - a nice set of Markits sprung buffers, a less good set of axles box castings [cut down, but still too chunky], plus a horn. Folk on the irishrailwaymodeller.com website were very helpful in providing photos of the cab interior, soon fettled up from plasticard, while various bits of wire complement the handrail knobs - the loco is well sprinkled with them. The paint job [CIE silver] is from a Halfords spray can [aluminium], the heavily weathered, as all CIE diesels thus painted quickly became very dirty. As it happens, the photos don't really show this, but if you are able to visit the Bexleyheath show tomorrow [sunday], you should see the loco in action. It is replacing my J26. Nothing wrong with it, but I had to pinch two of the axles as Slater's don't have any at the moment.

Would love to do the Swilly JB, butI don't have enough space to do it justice, while in 7mm scale, the scratch building would be prodigious. Key reasons behind both the SLNCR and CVR projects has been the availability of so much commercial support - Alphagraphix for the former and Branchlines/Worsley/Ragstone the latter. If somebody has already done the research, that is fine by me! The idea of the proposed lines to Belmullet have long been a worm in my head [pretty much since I read your book] and with a terminus called Black Sod Bay, it has all the elements of what I like, not least the thought of doing an Achill Bogie. However, space is again a problem, so am currently playing with another favourite, the Timoleague and Courtmacsherry. Alphagraphix to the fore again, with Argadeen, St Mologa, No 90, plus coaches all available. Andy Cundick is busy doing it properly in 4mm scale & Courtmacsherry is actually far too big for 7mm, but a compressed version could look very nice indeed and the trains were not exactly large. However, there will then be the problem of what to do with Arigna...

It's been a while, so here is an update on my Fintonagh project. Not much seemed to get done over the summer, but a rake of wagons was started, using my own resin castings. These comprise six cattle wagons, half of which are in the Clogher Valley 'convertible' mode with their shutters closed to make them general purpose vehicles. However, their semi-open nature meant that it was not a case of assembling sides, ends and roof on a Branchlines chassis - there was a lot of additional work in terms of detailing & it wasn't until October that they were finished. Slaters corrugated plastic sheet was used for the roofs. Mid October saw the annual visit to the splendid Uckfield show & a reminder that a year's hence, Fintonagh is booked to make its debut. So, a good reason to step up work a bit! Initially things have concentrated on the baseboards and infrastructure and at least the layout now has a fiddle yard, while the purchase of two adjustable trestles from Screwfix, with the construction of two folding 3 metre beams a la Rice [the photos is from his book], means the layout has something to stand on at last. A full pelmet/fascia has been made too - hinged for transport and fitted with flush mounts for ease of setting up. A bit of work then went into the back scene on baseboard 2, plus improving the surfaces at the baseboard joint. However, with only one loco & the Unit as motive power, I've now started work on the Railcar. This was to become Donegal No 10, but before then ran over 300 000 miles on the Clogher. I built the Unit from a set of Worsley etches, but currently they are not available for the Railcar, so this particular project is a scratch build. While planning, I realised I'd built quite a few railcars in the past, starting with the Taurgem Colonel Stephens railcar set in EM, going through couple of freelance units in 7mm NG, along with the Branchlines Stephens unit. In standard gauge I scratch built a Waggon & Maschinbau railbus [just before the Heljan one appeared], while there have since been the SLNCR railcar & railbus. So, while they ought to hold no fears, experience has taught me that they are often complicated beasts which can make a steam loco's superstructure seem quite simple by comparison. Thus far, I've made a simple chassis from nickel silver sheet, while a start has just been made on the cab using plastic sheet. The latter has been causing serious brain aches due to the many different angles and levels, while the chassis already needs a rebuild because I drilled the axle holes in the wrong place. Hopefully, the remedy should ensure it will run even better, as I will correct it by using hornblocks & compensation. Here are some photos to show progress over the last three months.

Just prolific.

Farnham is 14/15 October, Joseph. Egham is 20th January.

September 30th 1957 saw the closure of the GNR route through Enniskillen to Omagh & Derry. As a result, the Sligo, Leitrim & Northern Counties Railway promptly perished too because its sole line from Sligo to Enniskillen now had nowhere to go. There were proposals to keep the line from Enniskillen to Omagh open as a [very] long siding, to enable the SLNCR to still have an outlet, but this came to naught and of course would not have lasted for long as Omagh lost its railway in 1965. In my version of the SLNCR, the railway would almost certainly have had a future for many more years. Between 1902 & 1914, the railway considered various proposals for a line to tap the Arigna coalfields. Nothing happened of course, but my model assumes a line was built, jointly with the Midland Great Western. Running south-east, then south from Dromahair, it skirted the shore of Lough Allen, before turning west to reach Arigna. A short branch to the foot of Kilronan mountain [meeting an aerial ropeway from the coal mines] would have no doubt scuppered the Cavan & Leitrim's narrow gauge branch. However, being wholly in the Republic the SLNCR Arigna Branch may well have survived the 1957 closure of the mainline. Indeed, from 1959 onwards, Arigna coal was sent to a small power station on the shore of Lough Allen & given the Arigna branch would have gone past its front door, it seems safe to assume the railway could have survived until the power station closed in 1991. Now, Arigna Town's fiddle yard is actually full & has been for some time, but I still have hopes of doing a diesel period one day. Maybe the mine engine, 'Lark', would have kept going long after the end of steam on the branch. Alternatively, a G Class [Deutz] diesel could have been just the thing. Any mixed freight would presumably have been in the hands of C class or 121 diesels, while one would hope Railcar 2B would have stayed on to deal with local passenger. Having a DCC controller, I could even add sound - assuming someone does a chip for for a Deutz and a Gardener diesel that is. Anyway, to commemorate the anniversary, I've taken a few new photos, from slightly different perspectives. The usual 'exhibition' trains all feature, though some are a bit longer than normal, as I don't need to be limited to five wagons and a brake in this instance. Depending on what order the photos upload, there is the map of the system as I imagined it [which now comes up on a Google search for SLNCR!], then the mixed train, cattle train, excursion, MGW excursion, coal train, stores train & the railcar. The SLNCR was a fascinating, unusual & highly individual railway, so this is my tribute 60 years after closure. Arigna Town's next outings are Farnham, Brighton & Bexley this year, then Egham, Lincoln, Derby, Chatham, Guildex [Telford] & Warley in 2018

Splendid as ever. Well done Sir!

VERY impressive - especially in 4mm scale, where any errors are much more noticeable than 7mm in some ways. The subtle curves of the prototype seem well captured, again not easy. Will look forward to seeing it painted! Arigna Town's 'B' will be at the Woking show in a couple of week's time for anyone interested in the Irish scene.

The passenger train is now is a bit more substantial now with the addition of a first class coach. Shorter than the 3rd/composites, I'd originally hoped that one would either make a short mixed train of at least two wagons & a van, or indeed the combo in the photo below. However, seems I did not get my measurements right & though the above will fit in the loop, they will foul the road to the turntable. So, either some additional shunting will be needed, or I have an excuse for an extra loco, so one will always be on shed and engines are swapped each time a train arrives. Anybody know where I can find drawings of the ex Castlederg loco which was bought by the CVR? The coach is of course the Branchlines kit, still going strong at around 30 years of age now.

Try either the Irish Ordnance Survey or our own equivalent, Dave. Being in Northern Ireland, Fintona might well come under the latter. www.oldmaps.com may get you something.

Fintonagh is booked for Uckfield in October 2018. Depending on progress, it might appear at the Chatham exhibition in June. However, as I keep reminding myself, completion is not a race - I'm supposed to be enjoying myself!

While there is still some final detailing required [in particular figures, clutter, etc], Baseboard 1 of my Clogher Valley project, ‘Fintonagh’ is now complete. Recent work has centred around the train shed, ladies’ waiting room/toilet block and platform details, in particular trying to present them in a well weathered appearance with peeling paint, rust & so on. When the figures eventually appear, it is planned to include a couple of workmen engaged in repainting – the locoshed is fairly pristine, but the other buildings are awaiting their attention. With my surname, it seemed appropriate to add a touch of ‘Colonel Stephens’ [Holman Fred] to the scene, so this is the inspiration behind the ladies waiting room/gents toilet. Corrugated iron was a favourite with the Colonel and popular in Ireland too, of course. My fiction for the station is that, apart from the overall roof, no facilities were available when it first opened, but the locals soon petitioned for something better. The ladies’ waiting room has a toilet reached by an inside door, while the gents’ is accessed from outside, hence the full length awning. Under the train shed itself is a bench seat and also a chocolate machine, otherwise, passengers are perhaps better off waiting in Forbes Bar across the road! Construction was fairly conventional, using a mixture of Slaters [walls] and Wills [roof] corrugated sheet on a thick card frame. Like the train shed, painting and weathering was ‘inside out’, in this case starting with a coat of gunmetal, then two coats of white, let down with a hint of brown. Once this had dried hard, Liquid Poly was brushed on, causing the paint to blister. After letting this harden, the surface was attacked with various abrasives [wire brush, scrapers etc] to expose the gun metal beneath. Dry brushing with gunmetal, white and rust then help to highlight the raised & peeling paint surface. Before I go on to Baseboard 2, I’m thinking it will be good to ring the changes and do some rolling stock. At the moment, I have one loco, plus the ‘Unit’, as motive power, but only one coach, two wagons and a guard’s van. I really ought to do some test running before any more scenic work, so a bit more stock will not go amiss. In preparation for this, I’ve starting installing uncoupling magnets. I’m using Kadees, but don’t much like their ‘plank’ magnets which unless posing as a barrow crossing are a bit obtrusive. On RMWeb there are several entries on using ‘rare earth/neodynimium’ magnets, which are both smaller and stronger. Despite the exotic name, they are available quite cheaply and in a wide variety of sizes. I ordered some 3mm diameter, 3mm thick, rod type, on line & was pleasantly surprised to have them arrive in the post the next day. To uncouple Kaydees, their magnet polarity is perpendicular to the track. Using rare earth magnets, all I had to do was place one each side of the track centre in 3mm holes drilled in the ballast. I fixed them in place with Lazer glue, though on reflection, I would have been better off buying longer magnets [say up to 15mm], so they could have been let into the baseboard surface, but so far, my 3mm ones work fine and are almost invisible from normal viewing distances. you might just be able to see them in front of the van. As far as I can tell, I will need six pairs of magnets to cover all the shunting moves, so I may well use some of the other magnets to do things like hold loco cab roofs in place. Having half the scenic boards completed is certainly nowhere near half the project as a whole, for as well as needing to build the Railcar, another steam loco & the Atkinson Walker tractor, I also need two more coaches and a dozen or more wagons. Then there is the fiddle yard to build, plus fascia, pelmets, lighting & so on – so plenty to keep me occupied…

Proper job - the scale couplings really gild the lily methinks.

It seems to have been a very long time since I started this pair of buildings and probably is. A combination of weather [far too hot in the workshop] and holidays, plus the fact that buildings like these, despite being low profile, demand a high amount of work & detail. Anyway, just about done now, so worth sharing. Initially, I made the shells for the pub and shop separately [from foam board], but once the DAS clay rendering began, I fixed them together, so they have been treated as a single unit since. The pub and shop windows/surrounds are all plastic strip, building up the profiles in layers, before eventually painting in enamels. The upper walls are just DAS clay, sanded smooth, then given a coat of cement colour [for the pub] and white for the shop. In fact, pure white looks too stark, so I toned it down a bit with a touch of ochre. Upper floor windows use a technique described by Gordon Gravett, where self adhesive address labels are stuck onto clear perspex, the glazing bars drawn on in pencil & then the window apertures cur out with a craft knife. It is then easier to paint the glazing bars with acrylics, as any paint on the glazing itself is easier to remove. I pondered long & hard about what I was going to do for the interiors of the buildings. The pub was fairly easy - a piece of card across the window to represent the back of a wooden settle; then everything else [bar, fireplace, clock etc] just drawn on another pieces of card which is actually the back wall. A few items printed from the CG Textures website completed the scene. The shop was more of a pain until I remembered good old John Ahern. His book on Model Buildings first came out in 1950 & my version goes back to 1970, but in terms of the basics, it really is the Bible. Sure enough, there is a chapter on shop windows, so once that was read, it was pretty straight forward. Both windows are simply layers of 'flats', cut from card & coloured with felt pens, crayons etc. The upper storey windows have simple curtains from coloured paper and nets from tissue. The pub name [Forbes] refers to Henry of course, though also down to the fact that this was the only name I could make from the raised letters I had available. Clogher Valley pictures show a general store run by David Graham, so a bit of work on the laptop soon produced my version. The two street lamps are Peco. Plastic mouldings, they are very delicate & for me, every bit as good as the white metal versions from other sources. Easier to make too. As yet they are unpainted, but will probably still end up green - unless JHB suggests otherwise! With the back part of the scene done, hopefully I can now turn my attentions to the station again, in particular the overall roof.

Very saddened to hear the news about Richard. Castle Rackrent was very much the inspiration when I started my own Arigna Town layout, so you can imagine my delight at the Manchester Show in December when a tall gentlemen appeared and said 'I have a 36.75mm loco with me, would you like to run it on your railway?' Despite numerous shows [approaching 30] and an open invitation for anyone doing Irish broad gauge in 7mm scale, this was a first. A beautiful model of the SLNCR's 'Lissadel', in original green livery was placed on the track and quickly commandeered to run the passenger train. At this point, I had no idea I was in the presence of railway royalty, but happily took pictures alongside my own 'Small Tanks' [Hazlewood & Fermanagh]. Only then did I start to ask who I could email photos to, when he offered his hand and just said 'Richard Chown'. The next few minutes were a delight as we watched his loco perform beautifully and I clicked away with the camera as we bemoaned the fact that very few Irish layouts seem to be made to the correct gauge. When Paul Green, who has an S gauge Irish layout [63/64ths of an inch] appeared, at that point we estimated that 60% of broad gauge exhibitors were together with just Ballyconnel Road and Valencia Harbour missing - though I would love to be proved wrong on that, especially now we have lost the founding father. So I glad I was able to meet him, but really sorry the hear that his creative genius is no more. Our hobby is much the poorer for his passing.

Many thanks to all who have contributed. I didn't mention that I am a model club chairman and have been part of organising exhibitions for many years. Nevertheless, it has been interesting to see that the procedures we use are similar to those offered. My main reason for posting was to see if there was a sense of 'too many shows', especially if it was resulting in reduced income [i.e. numbers of visitors], but that does not seem the case. However, I do wonder if the local catchment area can have a significant effect - not least because some communities have more disposable income than others - and if a 'local' show, then folk are not going to travel long distance unless they perceive there is something special [i.e. a particular layout or trader] they want to see. It also begs the question as to how one manages publicity. At my club, we have invested heavily in adverts in the main magazines & their diary pages, but it has made little difference to numbers attending, compared to other years when we have only used the free diary pages. Getting local families and 'non modellers' in requires a different approach, as they are not going to see the advert in BRM or wherever, because the don't buy it in the first place. Local press, fliers/posters in shops, schools etc would seem to be the answer, plus the local media [press, radio etc]. Recent shows have seen a drop off in the number of children and families attending [even though the former are free], so maybe more needs to be done in terms of attracting youngsters. One trend we have noticed over the last few years is that around three times as many people visit on Saturday compared to Sunday. Are others finding this? We have always tried to maintain a high standard of layouts attending, with specialist traders, but the former can be very expensive and don't always recoup the expenses paid - several hundred pounds for each layout needing a van and overnight accommodation. Good, local layouts [that only need a car & no accommodation], which are cheap to invite aren't always available every year & the same goes for a club layout and/or any belonging to individual club members, so sometimes you have to invest in something more expensive and look at [say] a three year budget that smooths out any profit & loss, with hopefully the balance in favour of the former! I also know than suitable venues can be an issue. The best type seems to be where there is something else nearby [e.g. museum, shopping, sports, etc] to make a whole day worthwhile if travelling more than a few miles. More likely though will be the eternal conundrum of easy access, enough parking, sufficient catering/toilet facilities and also not forgetting enough power points for what seem to be ever more hungry layouts. Get that sorted and you still need to find a slot in the calendar which does not clash with other local shows, or indeed other types of event - though sometimes the latter may help to encourage the 'day out' mentioned previously. In my experience, there is no 'perfect venue', there are always issues somewhere or other & likewise, it is not possible to have layouts to please everyone. Occasional comments on this forum like 'too much continental/not enough modern image/no N gauge, etc' are [in my opinion], missing the point of a model show & just because a layout is not in your scale/gauge does not mean you can't be inspired or entertained. So, the moral appears to be ensuring one budgets layout expenses within expected income & regardless of the standard of layouts, traders and societies, as long as their costs don't exceed numbers on the door and income from traders, all should be well. Fingers crossed...

Thanks for those who have replied, though I thought/hoped there might be a lot more correspondence on the subject - or am I in the minority in terms of being concerned that the number of shows is reaching saturation point and because of that, public interest is starting to wane?

I do not know if a previous thread like this exists, but I am interested in finding out what those who organise exhibitions feel about the current situation. First, a bit of background: · Currently, there are a lot of them. Magazine diary pages show that September to November have well over 200 shows in three months. Indeed, only December is relatively quiet, with around 20, while even the summer months [fairly empty even 10 years ago], now average around 30 each. · A good exhibition is neither easy, nor cheap to organise. Chances are, a school exhibition hall will cost between one and two grand for the weekend, while a Sports Centre will be double or treble that. Any invited layout that needs a van is going to add a couple of hundred to basic fuel costs, while if overnight accommodation is required, then a further £40-£60 per head, per night needs to be added on. So, while a local layout, which travels in a car, will only incur expenses of £30 or less, a big layout travelling any distance will cost many hundreds of pounds to invite. Add on things like insurance, chair and table hire, catering, tickets & programmes etc, etc and the cost can really escallate. · Recouping these costs can only come from a limited number of sources. Sponsorship is one [if you can get it] & this is behind many of the larger shows for obvious reasons. Goodness knows how much it costs to hire Alexandra Palace for the weekend! The other two are entrance fees and income from traders. In the case of the latter, a medium sized show might have 200-300 feet of trade stands, which should bring in around £10 per foot or more for a two day show. So, £2-3000. Income from entrance fees is simply cost x those attending, so a show that gets, say 700 over a weekend at £6 a head will generate £4200. Add in trader fees and you have around £7000 to play with. Or you make a loss… So, my basic questions are: · How are clubs/organisations/individuals managing the process? · Who is making a profit/loss [and in the case of the former, how?] · How are organisers finding things in terms of sourcing quality layouts, given there is so much competition? · How are Traders faring? Which type of shows are best for sales and what can organisers do to make attending a show worthwhile for you? · What do visitors want to see at a show – though bear in mind here that one cannot please all of the people all of the time. I am talking generally, rather than specifically here. · In short, what should exhibition organisers doing to secure the future of good quality exhibitions I presume I will not be alone in being very interested to see what people think.

The Covered Slip was a fine place to visit, but not at all popular with exhibitors. The floor was so uneven that house bricks were needed to level layouts, plus the roof leaked and [at high tide] water could seep up through the floors in places. Plus, being semi open, it could be both cold and breezy if the weather was bad. Add the fact that the floor was unsealed concrete [you feet were black by the end of the day] and it is easy to see why it was getting more and more difficult to attract exhibitors. The older venue [in the Fitted Rigging House] was made unavailable back at the end of the '90s -hence the moves since. AND it was both expensive and a long walk from the museum entrance. There is no perfect venue, I'm afraid...