Shortly before opening time we were joined by ThinLizzy and Aetcmarcus who stayed and helped demonstrate throughout the Saturday opening hours. Interesting to note that a number of the junior visitors bring chairs and stools with them to stand on to see layouts and to sit and watch UKTrainSim.(see the ptographs).

We also met up with Nick Tilston (Warley Exhibition Demo Stand organiser). After discussion we look likely to be demonstrating at Warley in 2004 and then skip a year. Most exhibitions like to change the demonstration stands around so doing 2 and then skipping 1 sounds like an excellent plan. Tim Stevens (Exhibition Manager, Brighton Model World) also visited us on the Saturday and we look likely for a stand at Brighton Model World in 2005.

For the hardened railway modeller this was an excellent exhibition with some quality layouts in most of the gauges. It was interesting (for us at least) to see a number of layouts that we have exhibited with before and to meet up with their crews again. These included, Ashington (4mm Southern Electric); Bough Beech (7mm Modern Image), this one you may recall was hijacked by Nick Collier at the Horsham Exhibition last year; SE28 (4mm Modern image), Kings Park (2mm BR Blue Era) and Stanegate (4mm Modern Image). There were a number of American layouts, a Welsh Narrow Guage layout and a good number of Traders for the visitors to spend their money with.

On Sunday morning we were a little later arriving than normal to find Deltic9000 (Martin), Decapod (Paul) and Lad491 (Laurie) all waiting for us to turn up. After picking up a copy of MidEast at the Brighton Exhibition, Laurie had been creating activities for this route and they were loaded and soon running. Decapod had brought along a number of his SECR locos and these were quickly installed and under the spotlight. Paul and Martin both tried their hand at Neutronics Route, Inglenook, Tysdon and Fallingdon. This route is built around the Inglenook Shunting Puzzle and The Timesaver Yard which provides for some excellent shunting opportunities and some serious thought before starting an activity to determine how you are going to achieve the end result.

Routes demonstrated included MidEast, Cannock Chase, Alston - South Tyne, Blackpool Tramway, London Brighton, Severn Valley, Talyllyn, Inglenook, Skipton 1920, Barmouth and North West England. Morpethcurves J72, coaches and wagons also had a good run out. ThinLizzy took the Flying Banana for a trip round North West England and was surprised by how long it took him. This particular activity is a good one for exhibition demonstration as it covers a good mileage of the route and thus gives the visitors adequate opportunity to see a major chunk of the route.

One unfortunate layout operator found himself on his own on Sunday morning, so Leviathan1949 gave him a hand to operate his layout for a couple of hours until the rest of his crew turned up.

An excellent weekend in Leatherhead and we look forward to returning in 2005. Our sincere thanks to Deltic9000, ThinLizzy, Aetcmarcus, Decapod and Lad491 for coming along and help demonstrate over the two day show. Thanks also to all that showed up to chat, to the visitors who came to see us and to the organisers of the Exhibition for another brilliant show.