esngblog

Wednesday morning, we didn’t hurry into the exhibition centre.  We knew that our modules had to join on the end of German, Finnish and Spanish club sections.  We also left Maxine to have a slow day, pottering and visiting the local Aldi and Lidl stores, to see what real German ones looked like.

We should, of course, have known better.  The German club arrived about mid-day and were quickly putting up their modules.  The Finns arrived in due course, but the word was that the Spanish had had a five our delay in Munich, and wouldn’t arrive till after 5pm.  Their modules were there, in large packing cases, as they had been delivered on the Monday.  The hall closed for the night at 8pm.

We muttered a bit and thought about it, but decided that since we were on the end of the line, we could easily set up our 32′ or so of modules on the Thursday morning before the show opened.  After all, that’s what we do in half-an-hour on club nights, isn’t it.  Besides, we had a table booked at a beer house/restaurant for 6:30pm.

So we left for dinner, in the centre of Echterdingen.  I’d never been there before, and there were some pretty old (or reconstructed) buildings and a fine church.

The restaurant had a good atmosphere, and the beer and the food were also excellent.  We obviously made the right choice abandoning the Messe for dinner.

Thursday morning we were in the hall as it opened at 8am, and all modules were set up and working by 9:30am.  The show opened at 10.  We had one small electrical hiccup, when we forgot to add the insulated fishplates between sections.  This was not surprising – my N-Club modules had worked last year, and two of them had been to TINGS.  Most of the the N-mod modules are in regular use at club nights. 

We then operated trains all day, though I slipped back to the hotel to collect Maxine, who had spent the morning exploring again.  The modules ran very well for the four days.  We had the occasional derailment, but relatively few considering the wide variety of trains that ran over our tracks.

Playing trains is quite hard work, but the NCI show isn’t all hard labour. On the Thursday evening there is a ‘booth party’ – a sort of lock in – where all the exhibitors set up a table with some local delicacies. So you can enjoy an excellent chilli from the German US railroad modellers, Swiss raclette and Toblerone, lots of interesting cheese, pastries and wine from all over Europe. The hard core can head to the Danish and Finnish tables for raw curried herring, vodka and schnapps!

For the second year Allan and Richard set up the Old English Tea shop, with proper cups of tea, Tunnock tea cakes, Cornish pasties, Walkers crisps and the like. All well received, though a certain amount of education was required for our European friends into the mysteries of pasties.  Unfortunately Brexit prevents us from bringing our traditional barrel of Sussex ale, but Sean managed to smuggle in two small party kegs, that soon disappeared. 

To finish today, here are the intrepid ESNG team, Richard, Derek, Jon, Sean and Allan!

Next post, I’ll post about the modules.

The next stage of our holiday was to take a DB ICE from Berlin down to Stuttgart.  We took a taxi to Berlin Ostbahnhof, rather than the main Hauptbahnhof – nearer to the hotel and a fraction of the platforms all at one level.  It was also the starting point for the train, so less of a scramble for seats.  I had booked seats, but was a little confused by the fact that there was no coach 13 in the train.  Waiting for our train there was plenty to see passing through the rather cold station.

It was snowing as we left Berlin, and rained for much of the journey. It was very comfortable travelling DB 1st class, in the quiet coach. Not much more expensive than 2nd class, so worth it for a long journey.  Plenty to see, but the weather messed up most of my photos.  It was comfortable, as you can see.  The train also reversed direction twice, at Frankfurt and Mannheim, that gave us a glimpse inside the driving cab.

Some terrible photos of the trains on the trip…..

It was meant to be a 6 1/2 hour journey, but consistently lost time later in the trip, and we were an hour late into Stuttgart.  No worry, as it was comfortable enough.  On arrival at Stuttgart, there was a less relaxing walk to find the S-bahn entrance (that had all changed since I last used it, due to the massive new but incomplete station being built underground) and a stroppy taxi driver from the airport to the hotel.  We arrived to find Derek and Allan enjoying a beer in the hotel lobby, having arrived from the UK earlier and unloaded all our railway at the Messe.

Next day would be the set-up day for the show.

Maxine and I got away for nearly two weeks, combining a trip to Berlin to see Ruth & Cory with the usual visit to Stuttgart.  Having special assistance at Gatwick took us on a buggy to some rather obscure parts of the airport, and we were loaded into the side of the plane!

Arriving in Berlin, the family weekend included a boat trip and lunch with Cory’s home made (and hot) noodles.

Tourism also included the oldest restaurant in Berlin, dating from 1611 (though obviously not original, thanks to the RAF)….

And a rather excellent Samurai  museum – a large private collection beautifully presented.

There were, of course, lots of trams to see….

Then off to the station for the long trip south to Stuttgart.  To be continued….

Another visit to a cold Berlin is arranged, moving on to Stuttgart.  As a bit of a filler, here are a few transport related pictures from previous visits.