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A welcome return to the Ipswich Railway Modellers Association Exhibition after nearly 3 years absence. The venue has moved again, this time
to a village hall in the Kesgrave area of Ipswich. Tower Hall is a relatively new building in an estate that is still being built. Despite
the small size of the hall, Ken Welton, the Exhibition Manager, squeezed as much as possible into the limited space available including
putting the Thomas layout outside the entrance under the awning.
The exhibition was open to the public from 10am to 5pm and we had a steady stream of people throughout the day. Despite
the appalling weather that never seemed to abate during the whole day. It just rained, rained and rained.
With the limited space available, the DCC Workshop was limited to just the N gauge board. Nevertheless we were kept very busy answering a multitude
of questions on various aspects of DCC and it's use. Interestingly one visitor spoke of the Model Electronic Railway Group (MERG) programmer as a
simple means of programming decoders. As a member of MERG I would heartily agree with the visitor, but the MERG programmer is a "kit" and requires
a number of skills in its construction.
We were ably assisted over the weekend by LAD491, dkightley and Micronic. Numerous UKTS members dropped by for a chat about MSTS and EA Rail Sim
and to see both products first hand for themselves.
Despite the limited space available there was a good range of layouts in various scales and gauges, plus static models to satisfy most
modellers requirements of an exhibition. Local Traders plus the infamous "Petes Second Hand Stall" provided an adequate supply of goodies
to take home.
Our thanks to Ken Welton and the Ipswich Railway Modellers Association for the invitation, location and refreshments.
Our thanks to all those that gave of their time to help us demonstrating, to those who dropped by for a chat
and to the members of the public who visited the exhibition over the weekend.
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