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The Northern Festival of British Railway Modelling, held at Doncaster Racecourse
was our first exhibition for 2004. Located in the Lonsdale Bar as we were last year but
in a slightly different position. Instead of directly opposite the door, this year we were
ninety degrees to the right of the doors. Plenty of space to set up the stand and give
Cab-It room for her books, leaflets and CD's!
Matt unfortunately could not join us at Doncaster, he was busy moving UKTrainSim to the new servers,
but we did keep in touch to let him know how it was going. We were joined over the two days by
Alan2 and on the Sunday by his Mum and Dad, Barry and Ann. Although Barry has experience in driving MSTS,
Ann has never sat in front of it before Sunday. She started off by running an Introductory Train Ride
and using the VIEW keys and cursor keys, showed the visitors what she thought they ought to see.
Later in the afternoon, Ann began to drive the trains and by the close of play she was getting the
hang of things. I guess Alan will have to watch out for his second machine now, his Mum just might
want to use it to run MSTS. Special thanks to Barry and Ann for helping out on Sunday.
Also joining us were ThinLizzy, Aetcmarcus, Peter Harvey, DrkAngel, Delticbob, GoingNorth and Horgy. Some to help
out with the demonstrations, others just to chat. Thanks for all your help and nice to see you after the break.
This was the first show where we have demonstrated the new commercial product, Nene Valley Railway,
due for release on 27th February 2004. We also showed the visitors, Severn Valley Railway, MidEast,
Talyllyn, North West England V2, Cannock Chase, Cambrian, Skipton 1920, SMJ, Paddington - Penzance
and Ruabon - Barmouth. All very well received and we did a good trade in leaflets and CD's.
I had received John Kendricks new Yorkshire Coast route a few days before the exhibition and I did
run it for awhile before the visitors arrived and showed it to Alan2. The UKFS trackwork is
absolutely brilliant and the scenic work on the principle route is progressing well.
This will be an excellent route when completed, keep up the good work John.
No problems with location this year, unlike last year. When Cab-It and I arrived, Alan2
was already there in the car park. Quickly unloaded into the Lonsdale bar and we were up
and running in fairly short order. Only one glitch over the weekend is that on my 1.7G machine
the picture on the projector keeps shrinking to the top left corner which is a tad annoying
because unless somebody points it out, the operator would only notice it if they turned round.
Whether it is the video card or the DVI / VGA splitter cable will need to be identified.
Big crowds to the exhibition as usual and we saw a large proportion of them
crowded around our stand and on the balcony outside the door as well. One interesting
change this year was the opening of the Hyperion bar area for exhibitors to get food
and drinks without the LONG LONG wait associated with the visitors refreshment area.
As always Saturday was the busiest day, but Sunday came very close. The trader we link
with at some of our exhibitions was there and sold a good number of Microsoft TrainSim
and the various addons including a Raildriver console. Who said MSTS was dead.
Noticeably absent from the exhibition was a stand demonstrating or selling TRS2004. None
of the traders were selling it either. We did find another trader selling MSTS, addons
and raildrivers. He even admitted that he'd seen our stand at Aldershot last year and
decided to sell MSTS etc off the back of our demonstrations.
Thanks to the organisers for the invitation and the UKTrainSim members for visiting
and helping out. Next stop Brighton.
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