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We arrived during the afternoon of Thursday to set up and were greeted by the stewards of the exhibition who led the car into the
SECC directly to our stand to unload. After unloading they led us out again to the car park. Excellent. With Doug's
assistance we were soon up running and testing out the setup. We were directly behind the Model Rail Scotland stand and
used the divider walls to hang the screens on. Again the DCC Workshop was setup as part of the stand.
The show opened on Friday morning at 11.00am, disappointingly without the traditional pipes and drums. We ran TrainSim solid for NINE
hours until the doors closed at 8.00pm. Wow, what a day. Considerable interest in the DCC. I even purchased a Bachmann 108 DMU
and a DCC sound decoder for it.
After numerous questions from visitors 'Does it run on N gauge', we purchased and set up a loop of N gauge track and borrowed
a DCC Dapol Virgin Voyager from Andrew Forty of DCC Supplies. Thanks for the loan Andrew, much appreciated. For future exhibitions we
will have our own N gauge kit.
Another popular question from visitors 'Is there a Dummies Book', yes there is and we borrowed a copy of the book and a DVD from the
ZTC stand thanks to Dave. Thanks for the loan Dave, much appreciated.
Saturday, 10.00am til 6.00pm and Sunday 10.00 til 5.00pm were just as hectic. If you couldn't get to this Exhibition then you missed a brilliant one.
Saturday and Sunday saw the DCC Workshop testing DCC locos for visitors and even reprogramming some of them for one visitor.
We were ably assisted during the weekend by Doug Kightley, RobertM, Ian MacMillan, king125, damian2,
JonathanAG and Alan Howat.
Numerous UKTS members also visited the stand over the weekend to stop and chat and pick up a freebie CD.
During the course of the show we ran out of Vern's 5 route compilation and Scottish Central, not surprising
as these are the LOCAL routes. Surprisingly we also ran out of Vern's Blackpool Tramway. The one route on
show that we could have given away hundreds of CD's of was Highland Mainline. A very well received route.
The layouts at this exhibition were top notch and time was spent watching them. John and Jane Jacobs with their latest
OO9 layout - Nettlecombe. A new N gauge layout - Spitzweisertal from David O'Rourke who brought us Hochstein in HO gauge.
Plenty of G gauge for the larger / garden railway enthusiasts and Hornby with their live steam. The Bachmann stand
had plenty to show as well including the new 9F (due out in April), some new liveries available later this year
on some of the locos, new Manchester Pullmans and a host of locos and stock from Lilliput and Mehano for the
European modeller.
All in all a brilliant exhibition with something for everyone, regardless of scale or gauge or size.
Our thanks to Ian Porteous (Exhibition Manager) for the invitation, to the Association of Model Railway Societies
Scotland (AMRSS) for the superb organisation and management of the exhibition.
Our thanks to all those that gave of their time to help us demonstrating, to those who dropped by for a chat
and to the members of the public who visited the exhibition over the weekend.
The links below all lead to videos taken at the exhibition from 15Mb to 32Mb, right click and save as, then play from your machine.
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