It's also the first three day exhibition - unfortunately due to work commitments I was only able to get to the Saturday and Sunday times, but there were plenty of people there to look after the Friday so it wasn't a problem.

The location was extremely good and the staff were very helpful - the electrician went as far as unplugging some lights that were above us so that our screens could be seen more clearly. We were able to get all three screens up which looked very nice indeed.

A couple of notable visitors to the exhibition stand were Fodda (a UKTS Exhibition Virgin!) and Alan Salmon, who's been to a couple in the past.

MartinH was helping out as he so very often does, this time demonstrating the upcoming 3DTrainStuff 'Cambrian' product in its current pre-release state amongst other routes. I have to say that this looks like something a lot of you will be wanting when it's released (I'm told this will happen mid-late April) - with some serious talent on the loco's, activities and route itself from everyone in 3DTS (well known names such as Vern Moorhouse, Martin Heywood, Richard Scott etc) this one really looks good. This one is also a really good partner with the upcoming Ruabon Llangollen Barmouth route too as they represent a common stretch of railway at different periods - so where the Barmouth Triangle is in its full glory in Ruabon-Barmouth, it's very interesting to compare it on the Cambrian route and see just how different it is!

We always try to find one or more trade stands that are selling Microsoft Train Simulator so that we know where to send people when they ask how to get hold of it. Fortunately at a previous exhibition we'd met up with someone that said they were going to be here so they'd brought all their stock of Microsoft Train Simulator with them - 14 copies. By the time mid-afternoon on the Friday came, the guy had sold all 14 copies.

Saturday was when I arrived and it was extremely busy. Henk "Cafe" Plaggemars, the Trainz on the Road coordinator at Auran joined us on the stand too. It was good to see him and we had a number of conversations covering a wide range of topics. We also met up with Ken Austin who is working on the new London to Brighton product to be published later this year through Aerosoft. He brought a pre-release copy with him for us to demonstrate (given the very relevant content!) and we got it up and running fairly shortly afterwards (I had a slight problem with tsection.dat incompatibilities due to it not being a 'proper' installation yet, but that was fixed easily enough!). We spent Saturday and Sunday demonstrating the London to Brighton Route at various times, we had it announced on the tannoy on the Sunday a couple of times as well to draw in some extra crowds. I have to say that it is one of the most fun modern MSTS routes I've used - normally going the length of a route is something I find fun once and gets tedious more than once, but this is just a really good route - and the quick activity that Ken had knocked up for us to demonstrate with was very entertaining with lots of other stock to see.

Several people sat and watched us drive the London to Brighton route on both days and everybody without exception was impressed - many were even quoting station names as we approached 100% correctly, commenting on various turns, things to expect on the tracksides and very few people mentioned something that they didn't see shortly afterwards. This is one product that most MSTS users are going to want to get their hands on judging by this fairly short look at a pre-release version. It's still some way from release as far as I am aware, however Ken is keeping us up to date and is hoping to provide an updated demo for a later exhibition, with all new 3rd Rail Track and even more improved scenery. Dave Babb (buffy500) is also joining Ken to work on a great set of locomotives and rolling stock for the product too so I think we can all expect good things from this one.

On the subject of realism, somebody else from Lincoln visited Brighton Model World and was stunned and astounded (vocally!) when we drove past 'his' signalbox on the entrance for Lincoln station on the Mideast UK route!

Other visitors on Saturday included 'Dangerous' Dave Babb (more on this in a moment), Gary Cox, Dave Roles, Nick (Connect), Steve Wright and a Trainz community member 'Bloodnok'. Many folks helped us out on the stand while they were visiting and of course Martin Soilleux-Cardwell (aka Saddletank) was there for all three days helping us as well.

One event of note was 'Dangerous' Dave Babb setting something up on my PC and instead of renaming a folder got a little confused and started cutting and pasting things around - the drive ran out of room and shortly afterwards, my 'trains.modern' folder (ie. all my modern stock) was gone :) We had a good session of taking the mickey, it was all light hearted because I had a full back-up of it all anyway :)

In the evening it was out for a Chinese Meal with Henk and Saddletank, plus myself, Mum and Dad. It was a really fantastic meal and we all had a great time.

Once again Henk joined us on the Sunday and later on in the day we rebuilt the 'O' guage model railway that was opposite us in to Trainz in two or three hours, plus some scenic modifications such as a river flowing through one section of it.

Sunday was just as busy as Saturday with lots of people very interested in what we were showing.

Aside from turning up on Sunday morning to a completely dead extension cable, which was quickly replaced by the always-helpful electrician, everything went very smoothly indeed.

All in all, a fantastic weekend. Our sincere thanks to everybody that showed up to help out and to the organisers of Brighton Model World for putting on such a great show.