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The journey up on the Thursday morning was wet and windy with light to moderate rain and a Force 6 wind to move us along. Located almost inside the door
of Hall 3 of the SECC meant a wet and breezy setup on the Thursday afternoon. Unfortunately the rain and wind stayed with us almost all weekend with
the result that numbers in attendance were down.
As always this was a superb exhibition, well organised, well laid out and a good mix of quality layouts, traders and demonstrations. The only downer of
the whole weekend was when we were advised on Friday morning that George Watson of C&G Models, Darlington had passed away on the Tuesday afternoon. Our
condolensces to Irene and the family.
Once again we had numerous copies of the EA Rail Simulator Demo and the Upgrade 1 patch on CD to give away over the weekend, plus a preview
of the American route 'Cajon Pass' about to be released by Just Trains which includes the superb British Class 08. Matt had also downloaded
and installed more additional locos and stock from the download library including Sly401s 8F. Additionally on Saturday when RSAdam joined us
we all had the opportunity to see the RailDriver working with EA Rail Simulator. The interface software is NOT complete yet and will only be
available when testing and calibration is finished.
During the course of the 3 days we had many visitors to see the stand and discuss simulation in general. Many were interested to know if their
particular machine would run the EA Rail Simulator, others wanting to discuss installing downloads, others for a free MSTS CD.
It did get rather manic at times, occasionally 4 or 5 deep across the stand.
On Friday we were presented with a Bachmann Dynamis DCC controller by Graham Hubbard (MD of Bachmann) for demonstration purposes and we put
it to good use for the rest of the weekend. We had many visitors to the DCC stand enquiring about different systems, where to start, what to
look out for or avoid and the pros and cons of different systems.
Our thanks as always to the UKTS members who turn up to help run the demonstration stand and chat with the crew, their were quite a few:
dkightley, RobertM, ianmacmillan, RSAdam, martinhodgson, atomicdanny, alanhowat, amigaairwolf and probably more that I neglected to remember.
A big thank you to members of the modelling and simming public who visited us over the 3 days.
Our thanks to Ian Porteous (Exhibition Manager) and to the AMRSS for the invitation, the refreshments and making us welcome.
Our final thanks to all the members who helped carry the kit out at the end of the exhibition on Sunday evening, THANKS.
There will be changes afoot for MRS 2009 as the car park will no longer exist and vehicles will not be allowed in Hall 3.
We hope to see you all again at MRS 2009.
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