Sunday 16 February 2014

Windswept and interesting

Well, I survived NGSW and enjoyed the show tremendously. It was great to meet up with so many old friends and so many people I know from the NGRM forum.

The view from behind the layout

The drive down was quite scary as the wind was blowing the, by now traditional, gale and the rain lashed down. The motorway was the worst, I held onto the steering wheel for dear life and eventually arrived at the school about 4.30. I'd allowed myself plenty of mucking about and getting lost time and didn't use any of it!


I set up the layout and the F&WHR stand which I'd also taken along and was ready to leave for the hotel by 8pm which was exactly as I planned. I then buggered about for an hour trying to find the hotel I was booked into in Wells. When I finally did find it I turned the van into the hotel car park only to find that it fundamentally didn't fit between the walls so I ended up scraping a big gash into the rear wing. I will be in trouble about that.


To add insult to injury once I'd negotiated the rest of the chicanes to get into the car park there were no bloody spaces left so I had to do a 72 point turn and get out again, which I did without further incident. I found somewhere to park round the corner but it was in a car park which had a |Saturday market... this meant that I had to be back to the van before 7am... which meant I had to sign out of the bloody hotel before breakfast. Hey ho; breakfast from Tesco in the van then off to the show.

I had a great day playing trains, chatting and came away with a couple of kits to build and a Minitrains Gmeider in red. It performed beautifully out of the box and ran about all day on the layout, it needs 'Stonerising' but I'm looking forward to that. The flywheel needs hiding apart from anything else. One of the kits I got was a new freelance brake van from Chris Ward which I shall have to stock in the shop as it looked fab, watch this space.



My neighbours were the Buttermere Mining layout which was a lovely layout and which had a very pleasant sound track of twittering birds courtesy of some DCC magic. In fact, the best thing I've ever heard emanating from DCC sound.

I slept like a dead man last night after a six hour drive home and after a walk on the beach this afternoon I'm going to have my tea and go back to bed quite soon.




2 comments:

Mick Thornton said...

Well done for getting there in one piece John (except for the van!). It was good to see you and see that the layout is even better in the flesh than it is in the photos! I think I got a few reasonable snaps of Doris, Puffer, Syd and friends etc (as well as whatever it is that is growing in that greenhouse) and will send them to you as soon as I can!

Mick

Lord Stoner said...

Thanks Mick, really enjoyed the show. Turns out Somerset is a long way away from Llanberis.

Cheers

John