A day at the seaside in January! (Weston Super Mare MRE)

Sunday 15th January 2012.

Had to force my self out of my pit at 05:00 on a freezing cold Sunday morning to get myself, son in law and layout to Weston super mare, get set up and running before the show opened to the public at 10:00.
Being  early on a Sunday morning the M5 was very quiet and the trip from my home in Stourbridge took just over and hour and a half. No need for the sat-nav either as the venue was only half a mile from the motorway.

Working between us the layout was up and running by 08:15 so thoughts turned to "nosebag" and a bacon butty was on the cards. However we were soon to be dissapointed as none of the cookers were working in the kitchen! Loads of bacon in trays and nothing to cook it on!  
The problem was soon resolved when the council engineer was called out to fix the problem, thank goodness for that otherwise it meant a trip to a McDonalds for one of those "Carpet Burgers" . I'm certain they have a bloke in the back somewhere cutting out circles of carpet underlay with a pastry cutter and popping them in a deep fat fryer! That's what they taste like to me anyway!
Bacon baps with brown sauce went down a treat and we were then satisfied and ready to run.

Anyway I digress.

Pen Y Bont performed well all day without any problems, I wish I could I could say the same about the operators!  I don't know what it is but when there is no one watching I can couple and decouple 3 link couplings without much trouble, but, no sooner you get an audience then every thing goes belly up! Some thing to do with Murphy's law I believe, but I never found out who Murphy was!

Regular readers of this  piffle  blog may have read some time ago that my Collett mogul has "had it"  After a successful win on Ebay I ended up with a complete loco, From this I swapped the chassis into my original loco. I'm pleased to say that the transplant was successful and the engine ran as sweet as a nut all day.

Comments and remarks made by several punters looking on seemed quite favourable and I have a couple of provisional enquiries to attend exhibitions in 2013.
Most viewers seemed to comment on the burnt out brake van that forms a static cameo on the layout, I think more pictures were taken of this than anything else.




I shall be posting some pictures of some of the other stuff that took my eye later.

The exhibition was very well attended and for a one day event was excellent with 26 layouts and 14 traders, more than some of the well known 2 day shows.
Attendance was up on last year with over 1000 tickets issued by lunchtime, I'm not sure what the final figure was but i think I heard someone say 1500.
All monies raised going to a good cause.


Finally I couldn't resist a picture of my own layout before the show closed so here it is...




We had got everything packed up and were on the way home by 16:50 or thereabouts. Not a bad time to dismantle, pack, load and go considering we still had stock on the layout at closing time 16:30.

So there you have it, another plaque now adorns the front of Pen Y Bont.

Back to work on the new layout now this one is over, no more shows now until September.

Another load of waffle from me soon!

Cheers!
Frank