Author

Tom Cunnington

Date

25th November 2017

Reading Time

2 minutes

We’ve had a busy few weeks, leading up to two exhibitions over consecutive weekends in November- Tolworth then Wakefield.

It would be fair to say we weren’t quite ready for Tolworth Showtrain – so apologies to the Hampton Court MRS and those who came on the Saturday morning. However with perseverance we fixed the key issues throughout Saturday and by the Sunday operating rather better. It was rather like taking a layout to its first show, and I forgotten how much energy and effort it requires. We also confirmed that the layout only just fits in my car assuming we have no overnight bags, and that was with loading in the last few bits through the windows.

However there was no time to recover, as we had some issues to fix back at base in the short period before heading to Wakefield for their three-day show. With a van booked this time, an early start up the M40 got us to the venue in time for a fish and chip lunch before setting up and being ready to operate when the show opened at 5pm. We all felt more comfortable over the weekend, and even after a fairly late arrival back in London on the Sunday good humour remained.

There is a long list of work to do now – firstly fixing some existing issues then continuing the development of both layout and rolling stock. But we had lots of conversations at both shows about the baseboard construction; and it was a chance to run some of the new stock for the layout – the non-passenger sets (including tankers, cement train, vans and parcels) and the Quad-art.

Big thanks as ever to the team – Hugh, Ben, John and Steve for the double header plus Leslie and Carole for Tolworth.

Tom