UKTrainSim was located, as last time, in the well of the hall, with Leviathan1949, Cab-It, Deltic9000, Jimbinn, Lad491 and MartinH in attendance. Neutronic had been given his own area off to the side of the exhibition for the TMTS demonstration with Tim Court along with teas, coffees, biscuits and cake.

It was great to see a number of the UKTS members visiting us, Martin S-C, Dave Duncan, John Yelland, Pat Dalton, Alan Salmon, and others whose names I forgot to write down.

Because this was a European Model Railway Exhibition our demonstrations concentrated on the European Routes that are now available, some through UKTrainSim, others culled from various European Websites. These included

• From Switzerland: Albula and KMJ
  
• From Germany: Alpensee, Harzquerbahn, Stadtbahn U79, Unterland and Wupper Express
  
• From France: Ligne 1, LGV Atlantique, LGV Med, RER 'B' and RER 'C'
  
• From the Czech Republic: Vysocina
  
• From the Netherlands: Enkhuizen via Zanndam to Amsterdam

All routes were given demonstration time and were well received. MartinH had written some activities for Albula and these will be uploaded at some time to the site for download.

From the room on the side…

UKTrainSim was very happy to welcome Tim Court from P.I. Engineering for a rare visit. Tim is well known for his work on Mideast UK and Severn Valley Railway add-ons as well as his work with Raildriver. Upon hearing that Microsoft Train Simulator 2 had been cancelled, P.I. Engineering announced plans to release their own second generation Train Simulator – Train Master Train Simulator (TMTS) and Tim had brought with him a very early preview for people to see.

A number of UKTrainSim people came along and sat for hours to speak with Tim including Pat Dalton, John Yelland, Alan Salmon, David Duncan and Martin Soilleux-Cardwell to name but a few.

The TMTS preview went down extremely well, Tim explained what we were seeing and highlighted numerous points as the demo progressed. Lots of questions were answered and I don’t recall seeing a single disappointed face anywhere – while P.I. Engineering will not have everything in version one they are definitely designing with an open mind to the future.

UKTrainSim have permission to show this rolling demo at any future exhibitions and Tim will be sending me updates as and when there is something suitably new and advanced to show people – so while we will probably not have the demo running all the time at the moment, we are happy to put it on if someone wishes to see it.

I didn’t get to see much of the main exhibition but our little room way out in the far reaches of the exhibition was kept extremely busy all day by both curious visitors and UKTrainSim members alike and the day went extremely quickly indeed.

We’d like to give a huge thanks to Tim and his partner for giving up a day of their vacation to come and join us at the Exhibition – very much appreciated. We’d also like to thank P.I. Engineering for allowing us to show TMTS and finally, of course, everybody who made the effort to come by – some of whom had some long journeys with plenty of detours and roadworks!

The other difference with this exhibition is that ALL the proceeds are given to the Multiple Sclerosis Charity so layouts tend to minimise their expenses; Triumph Motorcycles offered the free use of their company van to the Chevineau Le Grande layout and UKTrainSim offered to promote and run the usual Raffle.

At 4pm, the Raffle Tickets were drawn by Tim Court for the winners of the 37 prizes that we had amassed and 30 minutes later we had only 6 unclaimed prizes and 6 Triumph Baseball Caps which we gave to the first 6 children who could get to the raffle stand first. After the exhibition we traced the winners of the 6 unclaimed prizes and they have now all been despatched.
Here is the list of winning tickets (numerical order), the prizes and the names of the donators.

We are indebted to the following companies that provided the raffle prizes
and would like to thank them for their generosity:

• Aerosoft / Europeanbahn
  
• Contact Sales
  
• Steam Powered Video (SPV)
  
• Triumph Motorcycles
  
• BlueArrow TS
  
• The Engine Shed. Leytonstone
  
• Cab-it for UKTrainSim
  
• Warts 'n' All Cards
  
• The Exhibition Manager's daughter for the Super Exhibition Cake
  

Our thanks as always go to the kind people who come along and help us demonstrate the routes and models and promote UKTrainSim - Deltic9000, Lad491, MartinH, alansalmon, saddletank and Jimbinn and to those who drop in for a chat and a drive.

Thanks also to the European Model Railway Society for the invitation, for the refreshments and especially for the additional room for the TMTS demonstration and we look forward to seeing you again at your next exhibition on Saturday 17th June 2006.