What a wonderful day for a exhibition! A scorcher of a day saw the crowds come out in force for the MRSI show in Dun Laoghaire. The town centre is a great venue for such a thing, with easy access via car, DART and bus. The amount of people there was very encouraging which is great to see, especially with a lot of youngsters there too. There's some life in this hobby yet!

I was keen to finally have a look at the forthcoming Murphys 071s, and man I was not disappointed! Pretty much all of the planned locos were there, so I was able to fight the crowds and swim through their drool to have a look.

Since the pictures came out I was excited but a bit apprehensive at the same time. The overall shape of the loco is bang on, it certainly looks like an 071. I was bothered by that bodyside radiator grill though, it looked a bit coarse and protruding. I looked at some of my American GM locos with a similair pattern grill and they looked much better when moulded in plastic.

However, when I looked at them today they didn't bother me nearly as much as I thought they would. They most certainly are not a deal-breaker.

I have a feeling that 082 would be on my shopping list, the real one is a real screamer and I love the look of the nameplate on the model, it's a superb bit of printing. It was pointed out to me though that 082's cabside numbers should be white with a black shade, not the other way around. I have since looked this up and it appears that the info is correct. The IE logo also looks a little big on the side, but I'm no expert. I hope it's not too late to correct them!

It is a good solid base but needs a lot of work to bring it up to the standards of the latest releases.

Was also great to meet some guys from the board, catching up with fellow mods Anthony and Dave, meeting new faces like Glenderg (and seeing him at work!) and ttc0169 and others. Also ended up manning a MRSI table for a while, Dave saying I'd be fine and not too busy. Ended up selling some of the 50th wagons, helping countless vote for their favourite layout and reuniting a lost child with his parents!

Hope the show is on again next year. Well done MRSI and the council, roll on October.