Warley 2003

The Warley MRC exhibition, held at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, is the largest model railway show in Britain. It gathers together many of the best layouts in the country, and is also the occasion for manufacturers to showcase their latest new releases.

A couple of the most impressive layouts were 4mm scale BR steam era lines, both set in the Pennine Hills in the 1950s. First there was Blea Moor, a slice of bleak Yorkshire moorland with a stretch of the Settle and Carlisle railway running through it, served by a vast bank of staging roads hidden beneath the moor. The only thing that could have made it even more realistic might have been some cold horizontal rain. Then there was the Kendal MRC's Askrigg Bank featuring a double track on a 1:40 grade. This is an unusual layout in that all four sides are scenic, with the visible track climbing though 360 degrees round the layout, then descending again inside the hillside on slightly gentler grade; the tracks actually make three laps of the board, two of them hidden inside the hill. Another very impressive layout was the 40 foot long HO scale Lorrette, a slice of electrified Belgian main line with some impressive scenic modelling.

American readers of this weblog my be struck by the difference in emphasis in the model railway hobby. I get the impression that the American hobby is all about big permenantly installed basement empires. In contrast, the really big and impressive British layouts are sectional exhibition layouts. This may be because British house builders typically don't build houses with basements; in fact some layouts can never be fully set up in their owner's homes, and only run at shows.

Yet again, Warley made a huge dent in my wallet. First there was the Kato/Hobbytrain Swiss Re6/6 Bo-Bo-Bo, released just a week before the show, a magnificent model that's gliding round the layout on a train of container flats as I type this. Then I bought a whole load of British outline stock, several Farish VAA vans, and a Artrans grain hopper that I'm planning to convert into a 'Polybulk' china clay wagon. Worst of all, I succumbed to a complete HST set in First Great Western's "Barbie" livery! And last, but definitely not least I also ordered a CJM 67. ("Why spend all that money on something that just sits there and goes 'ying, ying, ying'", said Roechard Wibd)

Shows like this are great gatherings of people. Nowadays I tend to keep in touch with fellow modellers over the net, and meet up with them at shows. Over the weekend I met up Alan Monk, Steve Grantham, Mike Hughes, Stu from Swindon, Paul Martin, Bryn Davies, Roechard Wibd, Natalie Jones, Kelly, Maurice Pearce, Chris Marchant and Fat Belly Jones, plus many more.