Once the exhibition doors opened at 9.45 for the prepaid visitors it was mayhem for 8 hours. The UKTrainSim stand attracted a gathering of between 5 and 6 deep all round the stand all day. So busy were we that we didn't get any photographs on the Saturday and what we did get were done on the Sunday morning before opening time. Sunday was only marginally less hectic than Saturday and included a visit to the stand from Pete Waterman. We were fortunate to have a large number of UKTS members on the stand and they were kept busy chatting to visitors or demonstrating. In no particular order: Saddletank, Alan2, Peter Harvey, John Yelland, SouthCoastTrains, ThinLizzy, Aetcmarcus, PeterMakosch, Decapod, Simuk, Ianmacmillan, jdjohnny, eddief (with his Dad, glad you are recovered from the incident at York in March), TimIngman, Mike Hambley ,Jason Berryman, KevMartin, hymek, pitleyfalley and Lucazone. Thanks to all of you for your invaluable assistance. Incidentally TimCourt also joined us briefly via Cyberspace and Matts mobile phone, nice one Tim. Thanks to Peter Harvey for bringing Matt back to the hotel after packup on Sunday and public apologies to Saddletank for losing touch whilst we exited the NEC. Hope you weren't delayed unnecessarily.

As is expected at venues this large the major players were there in force: Fleischmann, Lenz, Virgin, Bachmann, Hornby (with the new steam powered A4 that they struggled to get going, but eventually achieved steam running), Dapol (build your own wagon), Heljan, Peco and the three major magazine publications: Model Rail, Railway Modeller / Continental Modeller and British Railway Modelling. There were a good variety of layouts in all the popular guages and a superb selection of trade stands offering everything from ready to run to the tiniest parts for RTR bashers, kit builders and scratch builders. Plenty of books, videos, DVD's and even some software. If you missed this one then you missed the biggest and best exhibition in the UK.

After seeing the new Ian Jenkins(Crompton) SE Route at Ashington we were hoping to give this route an airing at Warley, unfortunately the CD's that Ian sent to both myself and Saddletank never arrived in time. However, they have now arrived and look good for an airing at the Wigan Show. Routes on display at the NEC included: MidEast (still the most popular and sought after route), Barmouth and the New Barmouth Bala Hub, Severn Valley Railway, London Brighton Express, Highworth, Cannock Chase (obviously popular at this location), North West England, Skipton 1920 in its updated version (thanks Pat), Welshpool and Llanfair and the most popular at this exhibition was Talyllyn. During the course of the weekend every member of the Talyllyn stand visited and was amazed at how good the route was represented in MSTS.

Part way through saturday we turned one of the flat panel screens towards the public and let them have a go. It proved very popular with the younger generation with a number of them trying their hand at driving steam rather than the 'lets see how fast we can crash the buffers' brigade. As ever the not so young were content to stand and watch and some watched and watched for hours. Such is the attraction of Microsoft Train Simulator that visitors will stand happily for hours and just watch.

We also met up with the Auran TRS2004 team who had a trade stand selling the product at £5 over the street price. HMMMMMM!!! The only 2 members of the team we had met before were bloodnok, who we met at Brighton this year and Louise (hopefully the right name) who visited our stand at the Doncaster show and ploughed an HST through the buffers. Chileanllama was conspicuous by his absence.

One trade stand that has to get a mention is Railway Nameplates UK. They had dozens of loco nameplates and numbers for sale starting at a whopping £3000 up to lots of noughts after it. They even had my nameplate there, see if you can spot it in the photograph. They even had numberplates oxy cut from the cabs of locos if you wanted one.

We were also approached by two Exhibition managers with regard to 2004, Colchester and Manchester, we'll keep you posted.

This was for us a brilliant exhibition because it had something for everyone and so many visitors over the two days. The move to Hall 1 has provided extra space to the exhibition team to use and they have used it wisely by making aisles bigger around the exhibits so that there is adequate room for people to stand and look yet still provide movement space between the throngs of gathered spectators. There was even room for a full size loco and wagon to be there.
Thanks again to all those UKTS member who came along and helped or just chatted, nice to see you all.

Our thanks to the Warley Exhibition Team and to the members of the Warley MRC for the invite to the exhibition and the plaque that says 'WE WERE THERE'. We hope to see you all again next year at the NEC, Birmingham.