It was a fine weekend at the Wood Green Animal Centre, venue for the St Neots show. A different sort of hall to the usual school hall/sports centre usually favoured for model shows. Beaten earth floor for one - though it was carpeted, if a little uneven. A big space - am guessing around 200 feet long and 100 wide, so plenty of room for lots of big layouts. Star of the show was Fencehouses, a 2mm fine scale layout, bigger than many 0 gauge ones. It exploits the scenic potential of the scale, yet still manages to major of detail and quality, with lots of scratch built stock. Deservedly won both trophies and well worth seeking out at future shows.

Arigna Town generally worked well. The few issues I put down largely to the [very] different environment from home. My workshop is dry & centrally heated, so a 6.15am start on Saturday morning meant overnight in the car [when there was a frost]. Pretty damned cold in the hall too at first, then the heating got going & it soon became quite hot & very humid. I blame the fiddle yard turntable fouling the baseboard edge on this, so have been filing the edges down a bit to try and cure this in future. Three of the steam locos operated without a crew for the whole weekend. They had come loose on the journey up there & it was not possible to refix till I got home.

What I did have was an excellent crew on Saturday - Mike84C has driven the real thing [9Fs!] for a living, while long time friend and former Chatham Club member Ryk was in the Royal Engineers [did Falklands & South Georgia among many adventures] but is now a vicar & we know how well they go with railways! Many thanks to both.

Doing it all again this weekend at Alexandra Palace. BRM are doing a photo shoot for a future article, so will be busy this week making sure everything is looking as good as possible.