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The full size exhibits had plenty of interest, and there were some well preserved items.  However, it was sad to see others in a poor state of repair, rusting away.  There were interesting bits of metal all over the site – it was sometimes possible to identify them!

Real trains were represented by these little contractor’s diesels….

A little steam locomotive was waiting in the wings, but there seemed to be a bit of a problem rerailing one of the coaches – another little cameo for your layout?

There was a fine collection of traction engines, road rollers and ploughing engines in various states of repair….

A WW2 Bren Gun Carrier, officially known as the ‘Universal Carrier’, and the most produced armoured fighting vehicle in history.

A well preserved AEC tractor unit.

And a less-well preserved AEC Matador, set up as a tow truck.  I built, and converted, several Airfix kits of these vehicles as a teenager.

A fine line up of cars…

A ‘Green Goddess’ Auxiliary Fire Service fire engine….

And two buses to finish.  I used to see red RF’s like this on the route 227 on the way to secondary school – and this preserved one is also for that route.

The Tinkers Park Model Railways Plus show did what it said on the can – a reasonably sized model railway show, plus full sized trains, traction engines and road vehicles.  Derek and I visited on the Saturday, so missed the bus rally on the Sunday, and it was a pleasant morning’s visit.

This post will look at the models – and the next one the full sized exhibits.  Whilst I was there I wasn’t totally convinced by the model railways, but having looked at my photos again, realised that I was being a little tough on the show – there were some very good layouts on display.

Lakeside is an attractive Southern Pacific/tourist line set in the Sierra Nevada of southern California.

The station building has a full interior, that can be removed floor by floor.  The fact that each section is removable makes it worth the effort – otherwise little could be seen.

‘O’ gauge was represented by Lower Shalford, a fictitious Southern Railway terminus near Guildford.  The semi detached backscene is certainly typical of the area!

And that perennial favourite, Happisburgh Goods, set in East Anglia and pronounced ‘Haze-burg’.  The full terminus layout was always worth a look, and it is good that this part of it lives on around the exhibition circuit.

Maxwell is ‘N’ gauge, full of little ‘cameo’ scenes, and was rapidly booked for the ESNG 2018 show!

Most of the remaining layouts were narrow gauge, in various scales, and they were a fine selection of models.  We start with Cuttinglye Wharf, O-16.5 narrow gauge, set in the 1930’s to the south of London.  In this larger scale, the well lit interiors of the buildings showed up well.

Also O-16.5 is the ‘Southeastern Tar Distillers’, a narrow gauge railway shoe-horned into some interesting industrial scenery.  The curves at the end of the layout are tight to say the least, and short wheelbase stock is the order of the day.

I had seen the Slindon Vale Railway (again O-16.5) before, and it’s a lovely model, full of scratch built buildings of local, West Sussex, prototypes.

Moving down in size to OO-9, the Glyn Valley Tramway is a compressed model of Glynceiriog station, that was the terminal for passenger trains.  I recall building a cardboard model in O-16.5 in my early teens that fitted onto a Hornby-Dublo wagon chassis.  Long departed, but I recall it was a reasonable model, with cotton beading based on a method described in the seminal Don Boreham book on narrow gauge modelling.

Finally, Sand Point is a little OO-9 cameo layout, modelling a quay for granite traffic somewhere in the south-west of England.  A simple, but attractive model.