Author

Nic Clarke

Date

31st December 2025

Reading Time

3 minutes

November 22^nd and 23^rd was the weekend that Lacey Dale emerged back onto the exhibition scene with a short trip North to Birmingham and the National Exhibition Centre.  This was a special trip to exhibit with only team leader Rob having brought any layout to an exhibition before.  That’s right the other three of us were breaking our duck and trying to not get in the way too much.

 

Lessons were learnt quickly, have hi-viz in your bag, because you won’t be allowed to get to your layout to get one during the setup day.  Also the security guys on the door might struggle with jokes about particular sizes of the model trains.

Friday went well enough, the layout was up and ready to run in about 4 hours, though we would really hope to speed this up in future when jobs can be done in parallel without Rob needing to point quite closely to where any particular cable should go.  The day ended with the tracks setup and levelled but no stock set up, this was left for Saturday morning before the public entry at 9:30.

Having a dedicated team of 4 makes for a great working party.  There was a sense of confidence in each other’s abilities that made it easy to get with the job in hand.

The previous three weeks had seen a frantic rush through many different scenic upgrades and given some of the comments made at the show it was time well spent.  With the hill sides re-greened, the viaduct weathered and the goods yard populated with many a tacky-waxed item the layout had a real sense of vitality.

After a couple of pints on Friday night Saturday morning wasn’t too challenging and we made our way to the venue to finish the preparations needed to wow the public.  The upper level was stocked with the 16 different trains that are run by JMRI in full automation, the station and goods yard were finished off with more decoration and the low level goods trains and passenger sets were loaded up.

9:30 came and so did the hoards, many visitors of all ages started to fill the hall.  The automation scripting was set to green and the trains started rolling.  And they kept rolling for the next 7 hours with almost no interruption, a triumph for Rob’s custom code.  With the automation running so well it was easy to sit back and enjoy a biscuit in between duties as driver or signalman on the low level layout.

Two long days in the hall chatting with hundreds of visitors about the wonder of modelling 1960s Derbyshire was tiring and very rewarding for the new team.