N Gauge Society 35th Anniversary Show

Yesterday I spend all day at the N Gauge Society's 35th anniversary exhibition at Bletchley.

Getting there was a bit of a problem, since Railtrack had kindly closed that section of the West Coast Main Line for engineering work at weekends. Instead I travelled by the Midland Main Line out of St Pancras and then took the Bedford-Bletchley branch. Missing a connection at Bedford by 30 seconds (would any other country in Europe not hold a branch line train for 30 seconds to connect with an express, especially for a dozen passengers?) delayed me by an hour.

The Bedford to Bletchley branch really is a line that time forgot; almost all the route still has mechanical signalling, and at least three hand-worked sets of level crossing gates. Sadly for nostalgia fans it looks like this will soon be swept away; at many places I saw the concrete foundations for new relay rooms, and new signal posts sitting beside the track waiting to be 'planted'. This bucolic branch line is the surviving section of what had once been a longer cross-country line running from Oxford to Cambridge, what might now be a useful link had Beeching not closed it in the 1960s.

Once I finally got there, the show was excellent, now spread over three halls, the large one used five years ago, and two smaller ones. There was a good mix of layouts, British, Continental, American and Japanese, mostly of a very high quality. For example, "Zurtrummelt" was set in war-damaged Germany in 1945, with British military-operated trains threading through the ruins using a mix of British wartime locomotives and whatever German equipment had survived the bombing. In complete contrast, the very large "Kings Park" was based on the Queens Park area of London in the late 70s, featuring WCML expresses, Euston-Watford D.C. Electrics and Bakerloo line tube trains. One of my favourites was "MOBOV/RMM", actually two separate layouts by two Belgian clubs, joined end-to-end. These combined together formed a very large end-to-end line seemingly snaking across half the hall. Both parts had some superb scenic modelling, in particular the canal bridge and tramway scene, and the Ardennes mountains section. For British steam era fans there was Andy Cavert's "Moorcock Junction", set on the Settle and Carlisle main line in 1957-62. Narrow gauge wasn't forgotten; there was "A.F.A.N", French metre-gauge running on Z-gauge track. As well as thirty-five other layouts.

Naturally I spend far too much money - I collected quite a bit of continental stock I had ordered from John Brightwell, including some Arnold Italian Eurofima coaches in the new FS livery, some Roco BLS EWIVs (I have a complete train of these now), and quite a few assorted Swiss freight vehicles. For my British collection, two parcels vehicles (a PCV and a super-BG) from Ian Stoate Models, and worse still, I ordered a 67 from CJM.