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Practically at parity now. It's one of the perhaps accidental factors that CH benefits from to dissuade migration!

You can tell they thought A LOT about the visual aesthetic of the outside of the building, and then kind of forget the design means you've a pretty limited square footage, especially in the entrance/concourse area. Interestingly, I remember watching a documentary on the construction of it, one of the designs was to effectively be a glass encased Arrol Gantry spanning the original slipways, which I think would have been much better! Alas, it brings in the tourists regardless. I think they've recently restored Caroline, so hopefully should be good!

Without any coal to hand, what did the driver of the Unit fling at the goat?    Your tales of exhibition woe despite the highest quality modelling continue to discourage me from aiming to exhibit anything of mine. I’ll just keep filling the display cabinet at home…

Unfortunately, haven't been able to find a way of posting photos of the Hornby 1:1 weekend, but here's another salutary tale of exhibiting a scratch built layout.  Swillybegs as a layout, still works as well as ever, but issues with some of the stock continue - not helped last weekend when a stock box nearly fell out of the car. Caught it just in time, but only to find that several couplings had sprung and loco crew clearly jumped to safety!  Some things worked well all weekend: Railcar 10 and the West Donegal Trams were pretty much faultless, probably doing twice as much mileage as the rest of the trains. Following the usual post show cleaning & fettling, the latter can now do as originally intended, by accessing the layout via the front track.  This means Railcar 8 can enter via the mainline.  The two Swilly trains suffered mixed fortunes. My Barclay 4-6-0T is already looking a bit battered and at times was limping along in very ungainly fashion. Turned out the were no less than three separate faults! First, noticed a crankpin has come loose off one of the rear drivers, also one of the front drivers had come loose on its axle & gone out of gauge.  A built in problem caused by using Gibson 4mm drivers because the right diameter 7mm ones were not available. However the real culprit was part of the brake gear. This had also worked loose and was flapping around behind the frames, catching on the driving wheel spokes. Despite all this the engine did its best to perform, but was looking an increasingly sorry sight, so had to be retired on the Sunday morning with one of the Clogher 0-4-2Ts substituting. Back home, the mechanical issues were easily sorted, but the paint work will need a bit of work before the the next show in October.  The 4-6-2T and fish train had different problems as this was in the box that nearly hit the floor. The loco was alright, but both bogie vehicles suffered coupling damage. Managed to get these repaired at the show, but the train kept derailing as it entered the layout from the fiddle yard. Back home, traced this to the cassettes not aligning. Hard to work out why, but various amounts of filing and adjusting have been needed to set everything right. The photos show a rarely seen corner of the layout though, so may be of interest.  The Unit & its short goods train [along with Phoenix] were in the same stock box, so also suffered some broken couplings. There are enough spare wagons to cover occasional problems like this, so we got by, but some erratic running towards the end of Sunday afternoon turned out to be rather more crud on the pick ups than I'd expect from an air-conditioned exhibition hall. Maybe I needed to clean the track more often?  The last picture is my take on Maggie Coulter's goat - a tale from the Clogher Valley railway, which always causes amusement. The model was hand made by me a few years ago, when I could't find a ready made one.  Anyway, such are the slings and arrows of exhibiting and it only goes to show you  always need plenty of stock - just in case!  

Not sure where the last month has gone!! Not mush time at the bench due to work, exhibitions, demos and life in general. Have finally got round to spraying the iron work on the bolsters.