Last Saturday, I once again paid a visit to the Canterbury show courtesy of the Dawes bus service.  The weather had perked up a bit, and 5C seemed almost tropical compared with the past few days.  As ever, the Kent countryside looked good on the trip down (and I spotted a couple of buzzards over the motorway.)  Once we got into the show, the first topic of conversation was the fact that the heating was operational, unlike last year.  However, like last year, the caterers had run out of bacon – when will they learn?  It’s my most regular complaint about model railway shows.

However, the show itself was excellent, with some very good layouts to be seen.  A few favourites to start us off today, though of course this is personal preference – there were plenty of other good ones (to follow next time.)

As I walked into the hall, the first layout I saw was Old Parrock (OO).  Just 5’4″ long, it’s a simple layout of a LBSCR branch in deepest Sussex.  One Terrier on a passenger train, and one goods train is all that is needed.  But the scenery and buildings are beautiful.  I’ve seen the layout before, but it was good to be able to have quite a long chat with the builder.  I know that I like small layouts, but this is so simple yet so good.

Just around the corner was another of my favourites, Outwell Village (OO).  Sorry, I’m again biased by my love of the GER and their tram engines.  This is a scale representation of Outwell Basin, the largest station and yard on the Wisbech and Upwell tramway.  Another fine layout, that I can look at again and again, and plenty of movement with the tram engines shunting lots of brown wagons.  And I especially liked the fiddle yard.  A reverse turntable giving kickback access to the storage roads.  Very clever.

To finish off today, Oly Turner and Chris Matthews had two small layouts on display.  Again I’d seen both before, but both were, once again, well worth another look.  Bottom Works sidings (OO) has just 4’6″ of scenic section, and is unusual in that it models South Yorkshire in the depths of winter.  Grey skies only, a scattering of snow in the shady areas, and no bright green scatter material here!  Modelling exchange sidings for a steelworks in BR blue days allows a wide variety of diesels and battered rolling stock.

Cessy en Bois (HO) offers a brighter scene, set somewhere in south west France, but most effective when the night time lighting is turned up (or down as the case may be.)  Again, just a chance to shunt 1970’s vintage French locos and stock around, but another very satisfying little layout.

I think that will do for today, and I’ll come back next time with some more layouts, some of which might have made todays favourites.