kes

I exhibit layouts in N gauge and O gauge. I have had kids picking the bushes off the front of Mickleover, watched by the mother. At one exhibition, a mother carrying a young child SAT it on the end of the fiddle yard. You can imagine my expletives !!! I also don't like having to use perspex screens but they do reduce the damage on the N gauge layouts. My pet gripe at the moment is photographers who think they have the right to insert cameras and selfie sticks all over the layout tracking trains. I had to stop one at Doncaster just before he demolished a balanced dolly signal on Badgers Bottom with his sleeve. Another one tried to put a Go pro cube camera on top of a moving train. I don't think there are any personal limits recognised by the current generation. I am thinking of adding a wire around the edge of my layouts fed from a 10,000 volt very low amperage supply with adequate warning labels -all PAT tested of course. Kevin.

Looking good Paul.

We had a very enjoyable day exhibiting the layout at the Rotary Club Newton Aycliffe exhibition. It was very well organised, very friendly, and excellent food. The layout won the Hardaker Trophy for the best layout as voted for by the visiting public. It is astounding this little layout still causes such a reaction many years after I built it. Kevin.

A brilliant little show, well organised and we were well looked after. Cheers, Kev and Maggie.

As per my previous edited post Mickleover will NOT be at The York Show Easter 2024. This is due to an admin error which was not of my making, and I have only just found out. To anyone who was hoping to see Mickleover at this show I can only apologise. It will be out and about again in the future. Kevin.

A couple of shots of a quiet period on Badgers Bottom between trains.

The show went well and was very busy. There were a great selection of good layouts in all the popular gauges, and some good demonstrations of building going on. We were awarded the Richard J Dring trophy for the best layout as voted for by the members of the EBOR group. Thanks guys! We had a few guest operators over the weekend including Al, who is a REAL signalman, and thoroughly enjoyed all the working semaphores and ground signals. We are very tired, but very happy after an enjoyable show. Kevin.

The Bottom is now set up in the Hall at Heworth and everything works at the moment. Keeping fingers crossed for an enjoyable exhibition tomorrow and Sunday.

Hi John, yes it can be frightening when something goes wrong on setting up. I always carry duplicates of transformers, controllers, mains cables, servos, servo drivers, and a spare loco or two. The show must go on. The next set up will be easier now we know what we are doing. Kevin.

Next outing is at the EBOR show at Heworth ,York on Sat/Sun 17/18th Feb. Here we go again!

Just returned from the BRM Doncaster show where Badgers Bottom had its exhibition debut. Had a problem on Friday set up when I discovered one point servo not working. I traced this to the internal wiring being pulled out of the servo, so an interesting hour was spent under the board with a head torch replacing the servo. Later that night after dinner, I set to in the hotel room and opened up the servo to resolder the 3 wires and test it so I had a spare with me. For the rest of the weekend the layout worked perfectly, unlike the operators who kept having brain fade and jamming up the running lines!!! now we know how to drive it. The analogue sound unit created a lot of interest. I need to make a low-pass filter to get more woof into the chuff.

Voted for you and TMC.

Just had 3 hours of light weathering prior to the BRM Doncaster show next weekend. The stock is no longer shiny and looks like it might have worked on a railway rather than come out of a box.

No, nothing to worry about, I just remembered the photo of the 03 and a train of brake vans taking the demolition contractors along the line to value/bid for the assets. This is as close as I can get with my stock.

We had a great time at the Pontefract show - many thanks are due to Richard and his team for the organisation. Sandy Bay worked perfectly all weekend and was well received by the public. It was a busy show which was good to see. The last train of the day was the demolition contractors special! -quite appropriate.