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Another slight venue change this year for the Leamington & Warwick Model Railway Society Exhibition. Last year saw the major
move from Myton School to Hall 3 on the Stoneleigh Park site. Lessons learned from that show (overcrowding) resulted in the
move this year to Hall 1 (the largest hall) on the Stoneleigh Park site. Cab-It and I arrived around 2.20 on the Friday
afternoon, still slushy snow on the ground on the car park, but reversing up to the loading doors alleviated any wet feet
and the dragging of slush into the hall. Setup completed and away to the hotel by 4pm.
Saturday morning saw us joined by easilyconfused (John) and Bronwyn, RobertM and Atomicdanny. During the course of the weeekend
we welcomed bigant(Don), steamnut44(Geoff), jp4712 (Paul) and King125(Terry) as demonstrators.
The weather did have an impact on the show as some stands had decided earlier that they could not attend, these were replaced at
the 11th hour by other traders / layouts and sadly 1 trader broke down on the way up friday evening.
It was nice to see that the DCC System from ZTC has now relaunched under the company name ZTC Controls (2009) Ltd with Neil
Kilitson at the helm. Their stand had been placed adjacent to ours (fortuitously?).
RobertM had brought along Reg Furniss's latest (almost finished) Kingsbridge Branch (The Primrose Line) to demostrate. Matt had
a raft of new stock to demonstrate for RailWorks and the DCC stand was running at full strength thanks to Johns N gauge layout
and an oval of OO gauge track round the outside.
We took the opportunity to run in two of the new Bachmann Class 411 4CEP units, Dannys in Blue/Grey and mine in Green. We also
demonstrated chipping these two sets. Not an easy task as Bachmann have foregone the simple 4 screws to hold the body on and
reverted to 5 plastic clips down each side. UGH!!!!
We also managed to "FRY" one of Johns Lenz Silver Mini decoders in his Farish 37. OOPS!
Changing the venue to the larger hall made a huge difference, plenty of aisle space meant that the visitors never felt overwhelmed
or pushed and shoved and not get clouted by a Rucksack filled with all manner of goodies (Oldrocker where were you?) and there was
plenty of opportunity to stop and talk to traders / layout operators without the need to move quickly on as you were blocking an aisle.
The only downer at the show was the theft of a R-T-R Hornby DCC Sound loco from one of the trade stands.
Our thanks to Chris Mead and the Leamington and Warwick MRS for the invitation, the refreshments and the location.
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.
Special thanks also to the crew who help break down the stand and help load the car at the end.
If the numbers game plays out right from this weekend then Hall 1, Stoneleigh Park will be the venue for this exhibition
in the following years. Our Best Wishes to the Club in this venture.
The photographs on this page and the larger ones they link to are much smaller than the full size originals which are 3072 x 2304
and around 1.2Mb each. If you would like a full size copy then please email our support desk support@uktrainsim.com.
The link below leads to a video taken at the exhibition. It shows a general sweep view of the exhibition with trade stands,
layouts and wide aisles, right click and save as, then play from your machine.
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