Lightermans Yard was invited to show at the Southampton Model Railway Exhibition at Eastleigh. This two day event was well patronised with good layouts and some trade stands. The exhibition was set in several large spaces in the 6th form college, including the theatre and sports hall.
Gauges from 0 to N were represented with a good showing of fine scale layouts; P4, EM, 009, 3mm and 2mm FS.
The 2mm Association Roadshow and Jerry Clifford's demonstration of modeling in 2mm FS, were busy for most of the two days.
Pete, Keith and Alan Smith ferried the layout down to Eastleigh on Friday and setup Lightermans Yard and checked that everything was running and functioning properly. Of course, the next morning one or two niggling faults appeared, one of which sent Keith underneath the track to re-attach a drifting wire! Apart from that, a point blade on the back road lost contact with loco wheels causing a stall in one direction. Later we encountered uncoupling problems on the reception road, not always the magnet's fault.
Otherwise the operating crews experienced an enjoyable and fulfilling two days, particularly overhearing the complimentary comments from 'out the front'. On Saturday the operators, working mainly in pairs, were Pete, Keith. Alan and Richard. We found we had too few locos to be able to assemble trains in the fiddle yard - added more locos on Sunday. Howard joined us on Sunday. Important 'driver experience' for Richard and Howard.
Always pleasing to see a large crowd around the front of the layout!
Pete and Keith on the operating side, and Keith's very occasional intervention to help the annoying uncoupling snag.
We ran a mixture of steam and diesel traction placing this almost in the final days of steam.
Moments from the rest of the show;
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