David Holman

Excellent stuff - many thanks Robert and John. Must have crossed paths with both of you at some point, but when you are exhibiting or organising, you have a sea of faces many of whom know you, but not necessarily the other way round! Only did Warley once, but having helped run the Chatham Show [100+ stands] am in awe of what you guys achieve. Remember there were a few grumblings when I was there, but the fact is you can't please all of the people all of the time and the perfect exhibition hall has yet to be invented, not least because different people want different things. When Chatham stopped using the Dockyard loads of people wanted us to go back, but the Fitted Rigging House was no longer available and though visitors seemed to like its replacement, the Number 5 Covered Slip, exhibitors did not. For one thing it was essentially a Dutch barn - open at the ends and even in June the wind whistled through. If it rained, the roof often leaked, while at very high tides, water could come up through the floor. Pigeons roosted there too, with the inevitable calling cards. The floor was uneven, unsealed concrete, so you feet were black by the end of the weekend and levelling baseboards was more often achieved via house bricks rather than beer mats... The public loved its atmosphere, but many layout owners declined to risk their pride and joy. Add in the fact that it cost around £6000 in todays money to hire it and we also had to hire in portaloos and it is easty to see why we went elsewhere. As a small aside, I once asked Nick Freezer [son of the great Cyril] how much it cost The Model Railway Club to hire Alexandra Palace. His reply was that not only did he not know, he was afraid to ask! Allypally is underwritten by Warners Magazines [BRM amongst them], which is probably the only way it can happen. Speaking of Allypally, the setting is quite magnificent, while access is significantly helped by the fact that you can drive your vehicle right up to your allocated space. Great at the start, but less good at the end when you can often be waiting around for ages while other folk knock down their displays. For the exhibitor, good access is paramount, which is why sports halls can work so well and anything with stairs is a complete pain. The original Expo Narrow Gauge show was held in Greenwich library where access for some was via an external fire escape. Yes really. The Folkestone show is still held in the Leascliff Halls, where if you are unfortunate to be in the Channel Restaurant, you are faced with 87 steps from the road above. There is a narrow access track, but it is one vehicle at a time, so doing the stairs is often the only option, especially as the lift is very small too. You did get to see Dave the dolphin though and the hospitality is great. Have done a few churches and church halls too. Beckenham is one that springs to mind. Their main show is in October, when the church itself can be decidedly cold, while the attached halls are very warm. You can soon tell who is where by the layers of clothing! However, two places are memorable for all the wrong reasons. One was Bexley, where we were in an unheated sports hall, next to the outside door, which was open the whole weekend, in December. It had been snowing and we'd unloaded the layout from the car and sackbarrowed the boards through 50 yards of slush. Chatham's Covered Slipway gets the award for coldest though. The club was supporting the Museum's Steam and Transport weekend. It was an early Easter and the mercury never rose much above freezing the whole weekend, added to which there was a stiff breeze blowing through. Operating Chatham Dock, the club's 0 gauge shunting layout, was a trial of endurance even Amundsen might have baulked at. In the end we simply ran trains non-stop - shunting with three link couplings while wearing gloves and five layers of clothing simply wasn't an option. My favourite venues don't always have the best access though. Sports halls are ideal in many ways for their flat, level floors, but all too often you spend the entire weekend without knowing what is going on outside because of the lack of windows. Uckfield is a great show to be part of, not least because the standard of exhibits is so high. It's a relatively small show and space is tight and access likewise, but the quality is as good as the hospitality, so it makes for an excellent weekend. York, set in the racecourse grandstand is awkward to access because of all the steps and space at Manchester can be tight - though not as tight as the old St Alban's show, but again quality and hospitality make up for it. Years ago, the Colchester show probably took the crown. The college venue was far from ideal, but the Saturday hospitality more than made up for it. A double decker bus was laid on to take us to a pub restaurant, where a fine and boozy time was had by all. On Sunday morning, a bottle of mineral water and a pack of painkillers was thoughtfully placed on each layout! Top of the pops for me though are Derby, which was held in the old Midland Railway roundhouse and Cultra. The former is no longer available, so no more shows will be held there, a great shame as the place simply oozed atmosphere. For me though, Cultra stands head and shoulders above any venue I've exhibited at. The railway hall is just magnificent and when I took Arigna Town there four years ago, to be put on the central turntable, with the County Down Atlantic tank behind me was just the bees knees. This year, Fintonagh was going to be placed between Phoenix and the CVR Railcar [Co Donegal 10], another honour. Hopefully next year. The halls can be a bit chilly and it can be a bit of a yomp from the loading bay entrance to your layout, but in such a setting, who cares?

Building a convincing model railway can require as much artistry as practical and technical skills. Knowing what to leave out can be as important as what to put in and for me, this certainly has 'the look', so always enjoy seeing updates.

Fine work indeed - everything is so sharp and clean! Keep those pictures coming.

Very clean, precise work. Nickel silver always seems to look better than brass to me. Perhaps because it is more like the steel of the prototype? Well worth the time and effort. I sense something special is brewing here.

Couldn't find any white 60 thou, Popeye!

A little more work on the strapping. More 60 x 80 thou strip, but a little more tricky, especially the end profile below the roof. One photo shows the pieces used. They have fitted quite well, but suspect a coat of primer will reveal some filling is needed. The diagonal strapping on the sides also needed a little thought, but in the end simply marked and cut them in situ. The black pieces you can see inside the van bodies are profiled so that they can provide roof supports either side of the canvas/corrugated central roof section.

Over the last few years, I've average around ten shows annually - until now. Managed a couple of shows at the start of the year, but of course nothing since March with Alexandra Palace, Nailsea, Salisbury, Bexhill, Milton Keynes, Faversham, Uckfield, Tolworth and Cultra all falling by the wayside. All but Uckfield were for Fintonagh, with Belmullet supposed to be making its debut at the last mentioned. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with shows, as I very much enjoy the camaraderie, but am less enthusiastic about loading everything back in the car at the end, especially if the weather is bad. Last year, I clocked up my 100th show with one of my own layouts, though helping others and being part of the team that organised the Chatham Show probably adds half as many again. Therefore thought it might be interesting to start a thread of exhibition memories, which others could add to over time in the hope that we'll eventually be able to get out and about again. The Chatham Show For me, the best place to start. It was my first ever exhibition, in 1987 - a year that saw the Chatham & District Model Railway Club begin its relationship with the Historic Dockyard Museum. The naval dockyard had not long closed, with much of it being sold off for commercial and residential use, but the historic core was reserved to eventually become a world class museum. The club had previously used the Town Hall in Chatham for its exhibitions and am not sure how the Dockyard first became the venue, as this was the year I joined, but somehow, what is known as the Fitted Rigging House was procured. The building itself is VAST - a thousand feet long and over five stories. The bit we hired was just one section, with a newly carpeted ground floor for the show and a totally bare section of the first floor for exhibitors catering. We must have been mad in those days, for pretty much everything was done 'in house'. For catering, all we had was a cold tap, but members loaned/donated cookers and the kitchen sinks too, while wives and girlfriends took on all the cooking. The exhibition halls were a forest of pillars holding up a Georgian warehouse, so fitting everything in was a bit of a Chinese puzzle. To help exhibitors during the show itself, we installed the 'tea run', where mobile trollies did the rounds throughout both days to keep exhibitors well lubricated. Meanwhile, for the first few years, club members were pressed into doing 'bed & breakfast' for many. Thus it was that my wife & I hosted Barry Norman and his wife Jill in the first year, Les Darbyshire [esteemed historian of all things Colonel Stephens] the next and finally Gordon & Maggie Gravett - the latter firm friends ever since. The exhibiton manager is those days was the redoubtable Graham Baseden, whose mission was to get all of the best that was available. To that end, he reckons he racked up around 2-3000 miles a year, visiting shows all round the country and beyond - so much so that many exhibition managers used to come to Chatham rather than pound round motorway network themselves. Graham certainly got us some start attractions. Barry Norman brought Petherick, the EM gauge layout with lifted scenery several levels at the time. Gordon & Maggie brought Ditchling Green. Over the 12 years were used the Fitted Rigging House, around 300 layouts visited. One of my favourites was Wenford Bridge - an early 2mmFS layout with a working gantry crane. Graham also made a point of gathering together the very best of trade support at the time. Hence we had a range of what were mainly 'cottage industry' stands, but which covered etched kits, specialist suppliers of bits and pieces along with the best of local model shops. I'll need to delve into my journals [have kept a modelling diary for years], to pick out other names, but what certainly stands out from those days were the characters we met. When the Pontefract club brought their circular 0 gauge layout, based on Robin Hood's Bay, it wouldn't fit inside the many pillars around their allotted space. Their remedy was to saw a bit off to make it fit, while the crate of light ale we provided as compensation went done well. We had a club dinner on the Saturday and they turned up with dickie bow ties, flat caps and such Yorkshire accoutrements as a stuffed pigeon on one shoulder, an invisible whippet on a lead and it was rumoured, a ferret down someone's trousers! A great bunch - though it took a while to get used to the rich accents of the rhubarb and liquorice triangle they hailed from. Barry Norman's Petherick was memorable for various reasons and not just the scenic excellence which was years ahead of its time. The baseboards were five feet deep and only three feet wide - hence the railway ran through the scenery. Goodness they were heavy though! Helping to dismantle at the end of the show showed how robust the boards were - frames made of a sandwich of 9mm ply and one inch softwood did not make for easy manoeuvring. How did I end up exhibiting amongst such excellence? As with most shows, club members who had layouts available always got an invite, provided you met Graham's criteria of reliable running, good presentation and [preferably] a back scene. I'd created a small EM gauge layout called Oare, that was based on the Davington Light Railway - a short lived line to some gunpowder works near Faversham. Eventually, I worked it up to a reasonable layout, but that first show was not without incident. My K's Terrier was far from being a good runner, though at least it didn't catch fire like the Adam's Radial from the same stable! My Wrenn R1 0-6-0T did most of the work that year, though as I gained experience a few reliable commercial locos were converted to EM like the Dapol Austerity, while I also built the Taurgem kit of a pair of Ford railcars and scratch built the Muir Hill tractor from the Weston, Clevedon and Portishead Light Railway. The following year, I got invited back, because someone had dropped out and things must have gone better because I got invited to Expo EM. That show was actually held in Bletchley Park, which was certainly an interesting venue, this being well before it became a museum. Next time, I'll go share some experiences of other venues I've visited over the years - the good, the bad and the interesting, but if others have tales of exhibitions they've attended, either as paying guests, or operating a layout, then it would be nice to share and maybe help fill the gap until we can meet up at shows again.

Long time no see, but certainly worth the wait! Fabulous paint job.

That's the one. Notice the spectacle plate lower down the post. It showed a clear white light to proceed I believe.

Sister's wagon and coach axles plenty long enough, Ken. I just move the wheels out to the correct 33.98 back to back and there is still enough to go in the bearings. As for pace of work, that pretty much sums up scratch building in this scale, indeed any scale - though the larger to model, the more the detail than can be incorporated and hence the time it takes. On a short sabbatical at the moment, while domestic chores/decorating take over - it helps to keep the domestic authority happy!

Add a fair bit of skill too, those tile lines are excellent. Not much room for error in 4mm scale before such things start looking wrong. Proper job!

The Sligo had a three armed signal to control the same number of adjacent level crossings. Copied it to use on my Arigna/Belmullet project. Will try to post a picture later.

Further to the Ulster & Connaught idea, a few notes are in the Clogher Valley book, because the U&C would have traversed some of its track, along with the Cavan & Leitrim and Bessbrooke and Newry. The railway would have gone westward to both Galway [dual gauge possibilities here] and Clifden [somewhat less busy]. It would have crossed the 'western corridor' line at Tuam, where there was a sugar beet factory of course. Cork meanwhile offers possibilities, as there were two narrow gauge lines there and a total of three standard gauge termini as well - Bandon, Macroom and GSWR. Some kind of link line offers all sorts of possibilities, including a prototypical background to a line going along the riverside.

Following on the from the hearse/fish van and glasshouse brake, have now started on some vans to complete the train for the J19. Apart from a few GNRI vans, most of my wagons are SLNCR, so seems appropriate to add some from the MGW & GS&W railways. Alphagraphix do a card kit for a 'semi' from each company, so have used these as drawings to scratch build two of each. For those who might be interested, will do a stage by stage account of how I build them - though whether any of this is good practice, or an example of the strange ways my mind can work, I'll leave others to decide! I use 40thou [1mm] plastic sheet for van bodies and 80thou for the floors. Sides and ends are drawn out, complete with any planking lines, which are then scribed prior to cutting out all the pieces. Assembling the box is straightforward, so you soon have a basic shell. I added the under frames next - 80thou strip for the sole bars and buffer beams, then cast white metal W irons fixed on with cyano, with the wheels going in at the same time. The important thing here is to make sure the axles are parallel. Whitemetal castings likewise used for the buffers. I used ones supplied by Alphagraphix in their wagon chassis packs and interesting to note that of the five packs I bought, there are three different types of buffers. When I first started modelling the Irish scene, this would have worried me a little, but photos seem to show that variety was indeed the spice of life on many old wagons, with some having different types on each end! The rest of the model is about adding detail and the two MGW vans I'm doing at the moment were very 'strappy'. However, there is something curiously therapeutic about building up such detail with micro strip. I used 60 x 125 and 60 x 60 for the corners, then 60 x 80 everywhere else. The doors are 60 thou sheet - black because that was all I had available, though have since found a sheet of white - of course... So, photos show progress thus far, about 10-12 hours work, which also includes some 20 thou overlays on the solerbars, which have been riveted where appropriate. Lots more riveting to do as the vans are festooned with additional plates and strapping, so probably only about halfway in terms of time taken thus far.

Some of the current ready to plant buildings are very nice indeed, but a project like this shows how one can be made bespoke and much more interesting.

Looks much better to me. Low relief buildings can be made to work, but need carefully blending into the back scene, with (especially) something to hide the lack of depth at the ends. Trees, or a deeper building can do this. The silo, having more depth anyway, clearly doesn't have this problem.

The Limerick market branch could be one inspiration, though for mixed gauge might have beens, the city of Derry has more than a few options. Another thought is the enormous white elephant that was the Ulster and Connaught Railway. Had that been built, there would have been several mixed gauge opportunities right across Ireland.

Dare I say that all this fun you are having with 4mm scale would translate very well into 7mm narrow gauge! On a slightly serious note 0n16.5 has much to offer anyone who enjoys model bashing, especially if freelancing. Second hand stalls provide a wealth of materials, while right curves and tension lock couples look fine. Plus you can build a 7mm narrow gauge layout in pretty much the same space as an 00 one. Worth remembering for the future, though looks like plenty of fun is being had with the current project to want to change any time soon.

Add some legs to make a free standing one and you have a nice view blocker to hide the hole in the sky leading to the fiddle yard.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the main difference between Irish open wagons and those in Britain, the fact that in Ireland, they mostly had 4 or 6 planks, whereas 3, 5 or 7 was common in Britain? Now worried I've become a plank counter. Hopefully can get get some cream for it.

Great stuff all round. Thanks JB.

Interestingly that odd numbers of coaches seem to look better. Certainly three always seems better than two or four to me. Will have to have a think about how many vans I could make. The initial idea was for a single turf van, together with three other four wheel wagons or vans, plus a Sligo brake, as essentially that is all the room I have in the fiddle yard. However, three might be better. More thought required!

Away last week, so only just got to look up Shepherd's book on the WLW. Appendix D on coaches lists at least five 6 wheelers converted to turf wagons, all five compartment thirds that were broken up in 1955. Clearly not enough to cover the needs of the Emergency, but looks like I can justify at least one on Belmullet in its 1950s phase. The information on this thread also highlights just how creative the railways had to be in those difficult times. Thanks again!

Impressive, though Iain Rice would certainly argue in favour of a single slip having designed numerous layouts using one with just a three way point for company. A dual gauge single slip is probably stretching things though...

Quite a man cave! And you can never have enough books.