It’s late November, and time for the 19th ENSC meet in Stuttgart.  I wasn’t sure whether I’d go for the whole thing, but I needed a break after a busy year.  So at 2:30am (!!!!) Allan’s van drew up outside the house, heading for the 5:15am Eurotunnel train.

It was actually an easy journey out to Stuttgart through France and into Germany.  I took a turn at the wheel and with coffee, baguette and loo stops the time passed quickly enough.  We arrived at the Messe late afternoon – still in daylight – despite the queues of traffic into the town.  Everything was unpacked in our area, and we retreated back to the hotel for a very welcome beer and pizza (definitely in that order.)

We thought that we should be able to set up quicker than last year (when we set up the morning the show opened.) so we had a late breakfast and went over to the hall after 10am.  However, everything was set up except two gaps – an Nm module and the one next to us coming from Paris.  So it was back to the usual Wednesday pose…..

The Nm group arrived about 1:30pm and we soon had modules approaching…..  However, the Paris module kept us waiting even longer.  Eventually we were able to get the modules out of the boxes and put together.

Everything went together well, but as usual just a little fettling was needed between modules.  We left the electrics and curtain and a final tidy up for the morning.  We retreated to the same beer house as we went to last year for a hearty German meal (and a couple of dark wheat beers.)

The following morning, we wired things up – and all ran well enough – and added the curtain around the layout using Allan’s new idea – big crocodile clips.  So much quicker than trying to fix it with drawing pins that refused to go into decent plywood baseboards.

So here are a few shows of our empire including Richard’s modules.  Allan’s Toblerone bridge was well liked.  I was pleased that my new track on Aldersford behaved itself.  And we discovered that unicorns travel by train (even pink ones.)

And of course, the Olde English Tea Shoppe made a welcome return….

Next time, I’ll visit some of the many modules on show.