Another year, another show over.  All went well on the whole.  We were a little down on the usual numbers, perhaps partly due to the train strike on the day.  However, we did get a good number of local families in, and must have had 25 children through from toddlers to ‘just too short to be charged.’  This can only be good for the future of the hobby.

It was great to have Graham Bridge’s Southwark Bridge at the show.  It’s a fictitious BR Southern Region London terminal station from the late 1960’s through to the late 1970’s, drawing its inspiration from the history and layouts of Cannon Street and Holborn Viaduct Stations.  Stock is a mixture of ready to run along with some modified Graham Farish carriages to represent the EPB (Electric) and Thumper (Diesel) stock seen on the the region throughout the period.

Phil Lovesay’s Lyme Regis represents the line that ran from Axminster to Lyme Regis, passing over Cannington Viaduct which settled during construction, hence the jack arch at one end.  Lyme’s single platform (300’ long) could accommodate five carriages. Combpyne Station was the only intermediate stop on the line which provided a passing place, together with a small cattle dock and later a camping coach.

Gordon Wiseman’s Chamossaire is an ‘alternative BLS’ axis Bern – Gstaad – Sion, with a ‘St Bernard’ tunnel also imagined to have been built.  The aim is to set a layout in a geographical setting that offers the opportunity for ‘correct’ use of a wide variety of stock.

Neil Cocksedge’s Stonecombe is another Southern Region branch in a small space. The layout gives an opportunity to run some of the delightful Southern Railway liveried and more recent multiple unit stock produced by various manufacturers.

Paul Jobber’s Kotda is Nm narrow gauge and is based on the Indian metre gauge network in Western Gujarat state in the early 1980s. It is a wayside halt, next to a typical Indian railway river bridge. Steam was still dominant in the area at the time. All the rolling stock is scratch built on Märklin chassis, except the YP class locomotive which is a motorised Del Prado model.  It’s worth noting that the whole layout folds up into a small suitcase, and Paul came to the show by train and went home by bus!  

Paul also had some very nice Indian standard gauge locos on show.

The club modular layout at the show was  a mixture of N-Mod and NCI modules (the mixture of four tracks and two tracks posed a few challenges to the operators.  We had a few electrical issues at the start of the show, but things settled down later.  We shall be taking a similar layout over to Stuttgart in November, so this was a good test run and debugging session – though the operators didn’t see it quite like that! 

Chris filled ERIC with Class 33’s and Class 73’s, plus a few interlopers.  His new VEP unit parked up in Saggers Sidings.

Lower numbers meant a quiet day for our traders, but good to have them at the show…

Brian managed to drop in for a couple of hours, and take the usual excellent video..

And at the end of the day, we packed up, put the church back together (it all worked this morning) and 19 of us went for the traditional curry.  It’s the one day of the year when I drink two bottles of Cobra – the first one barely touches the sides….