esngblog

As I noted a month or so ago, Ian and Lily, who did such a good job last year on the catering, escaped to a family wedding in Malaysia, then holiday in Hong Kong and China.  I wrote them a quick email saying that our replacement catering team had excelled themselves, but they could come back next year – please!

I got these photos back by return…..

Selfies with pandas – that’s what I call panda-ing to your audience.  And you think this better than slaving away at the ESNG show.  Huh!!!!

At least I got a train picture – a Chinese bullet train.  These are rapidly spreading throughout China as the map below shows.  And they apparently hit 300 km/hr – shortly before hitting something else – that’s even faster than Bruno’s Jinty can do on an ESNG club night.

The last couple of years the show has had a mix of modular layouts, and mostly smallish standalone layouts that the visitor could imagine building themselves.  Apart from Leonard, mentioned earlier, we had a number of other layouts on show……

Southbridge is a very pleasant slice of the old GWR, showing a double track main line junction with a single track branch.  It still didn’t convince me to model Great Western, but just as when I was growing up with OO, isn’t it easy to do with all the excellent models that are available?

Azusa Mills comes in three sizes and at least four configurations.  There was lots of slow switching going on all day of the various industries on the layout.  These industries feature some very nice buildings, built or modified from a range of kit manufacturers.  In fact modelling the USA is almost as easy as modelling the GWR, and it’s far enough away for you not to be plagued by experts saying that the GWR never had a 2-5-3 tank engine.

Brighthampton, as the name suggests, is a Southern Electric layout based somewhere on the south coast of England.  There’s plenty of modelling still to do here, but it already looks the part, with some very interesting pointwork at the station throat.  Some of the multiple units started life as old Graham Farish coaches.  Has the London Transport garage moved a little far south?  It looks like Southdown have taken over, anyway!

Martin’s St Elizabeth Street has had a bit of a rebuild since it was last at the show.  I think the loco shed is all new.  The layout features lights, sound, and indeed, action…..

Lastly, Sean had his new layout under construction and on display…..

So that’s it for 2016.  I suppose I’d better start planning for 2017!  The show will be on Saturday 8th April, the weekend before Easter.  We hope to be back at St Joseph’s school, and can reliably promise some car parking next time.  It’s our 19th show, but we will be celebrating 20 years of ESNG.  We’ll no doubt have all the usual suspects there, but I hope we can do something a little special for our 20th anniversary (special cakes, perhaps?)

Today we’ll have a look at the rest of the modular layouts.

Not quite modular, but more (large) table top was Paul Rowlatt’s Kato Racetrack.  Up to eight bullet trains could be in motion at any one time.  This is a wonderful advert for model railways being fun.  No scenery, no rivet counting (I’m sure the Kato trains had them but they move too fast) but lots of pure entertainment for even the most fastidious modeller.  And it all worked perfectly!

We repeated last year’s exhibition in having three N-mod circuits up and running.  They do seem to be appreciated by the public, and frankly, they are easy for the exhibition manager.  “Here’s a space – please fill it with something.”

So here are some pictures of the Berkshire NGS Group layout….

And here are the West Sussex NGS Group’s offerings…..

I liked the working funicular railway…..

There’s a possibly well founded rumour that the new larger West Sussex show in 2017 will get all three modular groups together to form a large layout – a sort of mini-Stuttgart.

Last post next time will have a few pictures of the other layouts on show.

One pleasure of our annual show is meeting up with old friends.  Some visitors come back year by year, others we know from other clubs.  It’s even better when work colleagues or neighbours accept my invites to the show and pay to get in.  And some of our traders are there year by year and too have become old friends.

Cha(I)rman Allan started off on the door.  I took the cash desk job for a number of years.  It’s one of the best, as (a) you can sit down all day and (ii) you meet and talk to every visitor.

Graham and Ted took over.  Ted is teaching Graham the essential cash desk skills – how to insult visitors without them noticing – and the N Gauge Society membership card trick.  This is the one where a visitor flourishes his NGS membership card (or any other card for that matter, or just claims to be very old) and demands a discount.  The trick is to put the price UP a pound when asked for discount….

NScaleCH will sell you anything N gauge and Swiss, except Toblerone…

Kerry and Invicta must have been doing well, with a smile like that.

Winco were selling an excellent range of European models…..

Guarded by Benson, who looked bored with the whole show….

BH Enterprises were there, once again, to sell you all the bits and pieces you never knew you needed.  I resisted a GWR double railcar kit.  Ray: “I’ve been here so many times that I  could do this show with my eyes closed.”

Good to have the N Gauge Society back, as the Berkshire group brought the mini-stand with them.  There’s no-one manning it.  Perhaps they refused to pay the discount?

Jon the Blue-Plastic-Box-Man in a quiet reflective moment.  I must have bought less models this year, as I didn’t come away with more storage boxes.

Our final trader was Ian Grace, who was selling his excellent German military models and trains.

Next post, more layouts.

Today, a few pictures from the ESNG N-mod layout.  Most years, we’ve put together a continuous run layout.  However, in 2016, I was having some difficulty thinking how to fit in Azusa Mills, that is an L-shaped layout (pictures in a later post.)  It suddenly occurred to me that if we put together an L-shaped N-mod, Azusa Street could complete the square in the middle of the main hall.  So that’s what we did.

The canal on our speedometer board looks very relaxing and very appealing during a hectic show day.

It’s become an ESNG tradition for Eric the Roundhouse to appear in a different guise at each show we go to.  On Saturday it was Eric the Permanent Way Depot.  In previous years we’ve had Japanese Eric, Lehigh Valley Eric, Class 73 Eric, Taurus Eric.  We could probably do a Stroudley Terrier Eric, if we borrowed them from all the club members.  You get the idea….

Triangle junction can form a connection out to a double track branch or N-club modules.  The playing field by the church is reversible.  It’s usually a scout camp, but has been known to contain a crashed UFO.

The fiddle yard is always worth a look as it contains a good selection of trains ready to run.  The operators this year did well by swapping trains on and off the layout all day, giving even more variety than out 13 track fiddle yard can do on its own.

Another reversible special from Derek – market garden or suburban estate?

We were pleased to exhibit Lowater Basin, Martin Mickewright’s canal module, represented a preserved canal basin, as Martin is unfortunately in hospital.  A London Transport Pannier passes on the mainline, pulling a Pullman excursion – really, Michael, who are you trying to kid?  But of course, Rule 1 applies – it’s my railway!

Union Street always has something to look at, be it the street market, the bouncers doormen outside the disco, or the Underground service.

The operators…..  Michael and Ian look a bit worried about something.  One reason I enjoyed my day as it was a real family occasion.  Son Michael was operating the N-mod, whilst wife Maxine and Chelle my younger daughter worked very hard on catering.  It’s unusual for my family to be rash enough to share my hobby.

Next post, we’ll have a few more shots of people.

Well, another year done and dusted!  This year’s show seems to have gone off well enough.  We’ve had more visitors than last year, put a few pennies in the club coffers, and received plenty of positive feedback about the show (and indeed the catering.)  A lot of hard work was involved, but it was worth it for a day playing trains and entertaining the Great British Public.

However, Friday morning, it looked as if we might not even have a show.  The contractor on site extending the school, who had progressively reduced the size of the car park through the year, had an open trench for the new gas main across the school drive, and a large pile of rubble and soil blocking access to the front door.

Fortunately, they did as they had promised, and by the afternoon, the trench was filled and partially plated, and the piles of materials had disappeared.  When I arrived mid-afternoon it looked like this at the front entrance…..

With only a few piles of soil left around.

Set up was going well early Friday evening, and we were able to pause for fish and chips from the local chippy.  (Never before have I seen ‘large haddock’ served as a large piece of fish and an small piece to go with it – a veritable shoal of haddock – no wonder we’ve overfished the North Sea.  I was glad to have had a pie.)  By 8:30pm, trains were running on our modular layout, and we packed up earlier than usual.

Saturday morning started quite wet (with mud running down the school drive from the site), but amazingly, the Met Office got it right and the rain stopped at 9:00am and the sun even came out.  Mr Apps was doing an excellent job parking more cars than seemed possible into a very small area.

And inside, the first punters visitors were being fleeced queueing at the pay desk.

The main hall was soon buzzing with a good surge of early visitors.  We always seem to get a lot of people in for the first hour or two, then less through the rest of the day.

The ESNG award for bravery this year was awarded to Sean, who arrived on Saturday morning looking slightly worse than death warmed up after a nights toilet hugging with Mr Montezuma.  Thanks, Sean, as it would have been easy to give up at that point.  Luckily, Mark and Kieron came along to help run Leonard.  This did result in a few non-Network Southeast anomalies, like the OLD Southern Railway goods train…..

And a German railbus by the signal box.

Graham Farish’s rather excellent week killing train made an appearance.  I have had to keep repeating, “I don’t need one of these, I don’t need one of these.”

Next post we’ll have a look at the ESNG modular layout.