We arrived bright and early on Friday morning, with Saddletank, from Newhaven (nearest hotel at a sensible price) and were met by Laurie (Lad491) ready to help unload and setup. As always the stewards and staff of the Exhibition Centre keen to sort out any problems, found us two extra tables, chairs and the electrician disconnected the overhead spotlights. With three PC's, projectors and screens we were soon up and driving.

Laurie had brought along a CD of London Brighton activities and these were soon installed and on show. Saddletank had his Raildriver and demonstrated it driving along the American routes, Canton and San Diego and Arizona. ThinLizzy brought his own PC and we set it up on the side table with Cab-It's leaflets and books. Aetcmarcus also brought along the release version of the Nene Valley Railway.

Our trader friends, Steam Powered Video (SPV) were also at the show, with plenty of copies of MS TrainSim, commercial addons and a couple of Raildriver consoles. By the end of the three day event, they had sold out of MS TrainSim, Severn Valley, LBE and both Raildrivers.

Noticeably absent were the Trainz crew. Despite statements in the forums that we would see them there, they either didn't turn up or stayed away from our stand. Pity really, would have been nice to see them and stop and chat with them, especially since Greg Lane's announcement of 9th February about separating the different aspects of TRS2004 into more clearly defined spheres.

Almost all the routes, both commercial and communityware, got an airing over the three day event with most visitors in awe of what MS TrainSim could deliver. We even gave Vysocina - CZ a run for a while just to add a flavour of European routes. For those that have not seen this route, it is worth downloading and running. The route itself is very well done, good scenery, unique objects, bridges etc and some first class locos and stock. Be advised though this is a BIG download, 200Mbytes for the route and another 200MBytes for the stock and activities.

On the subject of model railways, it was very interesting to see our first MODULAR layout. A layout that is sectionalised with each section built by a different person. The commonality being the triple track mainline that runs along the front of each section. See the first three photographs on the bottom row. These show three of the sections of the modular layout, two along the front and one on the corner.

The other nicety of an Exhibition this size is that you get a vast variety of different aspects of railway modelling. Not only the standard 'Z', 'N', 'HO', 'OO', 'O' guage models and layouts but also the much larger scales, 'G', '3 inch', '5 inch' and '7.25 inch'. These models are absolutely stunning at these scales.

On the Friday evening we had been invited to Nick Colliers for an evening meal. So four of us drove to Worthing for a meal at the Toby Carvery. An excellent meal it was too. Then back to Nicks for coffee and a chat.

Joining us over the weekend were, Saddletank and Laurie for all three full days; ThinLizzy, Fodda, Aetcmarcus, Nick Collier, Dave Babb, Neutronic with Cameron and Sinelius. As always if I missed you out of the list then apologies. A special thank you to Laurie for acting as Taxi Driver to get us back to the car park at Black Rock each evening.

All in all a superb weekend. Our sincere thanks to all that showed up to help or chat and to the organisers of Brighton Model World for another brilliant show. We hope to see you all again next year. Note from the organisers, the 2005 Brighton Model World has been slipped 1 week to 18th - 20th February 2005.