London Festival of Model Railways

Another weekend, another train show!

This weekend it was the London Festival of Model Railways at Alexandra Palace.

It's organised by the publishers of "British Railway Modelling" and "Traction" in association with the Model Railway Club, who formerly organised the Easter shows at Westminster Central Hall I used to attend back in the 70s and 80s. Like Doncaster there are rather too many traders, but thanks to the MRC's involvement the layouts were of the highest quality.

Unlike some 4mm-centric shows, there was plenty of N gauge, and a fair amount of non-British prototypes

British N was represented by the superlative "Acton Main Line", which has been on the exhibition circuit for several years now; a very accurate and highly detailed model of the first station on the four-track main line out of Paddington with it's associated stone terminal and sorting sidings; set in 1989 it's definitely a historical model now with a large number of locomotive hauled passenger trains and first generation DMUs. There was also "Sea Wall", a 1960s transition area model of the famous sea wall section of the West of England main line between Dawlish and Teighnmouth, with no less than four tunnels through the distinctive red cliffs. The layout had no station, no pointwork, and only a single building on the cliff top. Just like the prototype. The whole area is instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with the area, even though the Castles and Britannias were rather before my time.

Representing prototypes from across the channel we had Zertrummelt, set in Germany in 1945 under allied occupation. It represents a bombed out town where the RAF had done their worst, but the military engineers have managed to get the trains running again through the shattered station, using whatever German trains had survived supplemented by rolling stock bought in by the allies. It gives the builder the opportunity to run German, British and American rolling stock side-by-side on the same layout. Then there was the French Givry-Vignoux, set on the diesel-operated Paris-Basel line. I'd seen this a couple of years ago at the Maidenhead show in it's earlier form as an end-to-end with fiddle yards at each end; now it's reconfigured as a continuous run with a fiddle yard behind the scenic boards. Finally there was the tiny Swiss layout Understadt, built on a plywood door just 6'6" by 2'6".

The exhibition is also a place for manufacturers to showcase new products. Bachmann had pre-production samples of the "Western" in maroon, and in "Chromatic Blue". I'm not sure how popular a short-lived one-off livery is going to be, but I'm more tempted by that than the horrid maroon 50 they did a couple of years back, which is still cluttering up dealers' shelves. There was also a First Great Western "Flying Fag Packet" MkII. I'd wondered whether it's actually possible to reproduce this complex livery in a small scale, and the model was something of a compromise, but Colin Albright of Bachmann told me this was a first attempt, and they hope to do better.

I also had a long chat with Ben Ando of ATM, who are making a new range of high-quality ready-to-run models of modern freight wagons. First model, already on sale, is a five-unit articulated car carrier; under development are two types of container wagon. I've very interested in their next project, which will be a "Silver Bullet" china clay slurry tanker. I'd like a block rake of these to model the famous Burngullow to Irvine train behind a pair of 37s; I wonder how many I'll be able to afford!

One good thing about the British show circuit is the way you meet up with old friends on a regular basis, such as members of my old club from before I moved to Manchester. Gives me the chance to chat (or simply annoy) people like Alan Monk, Steve Grantham, Stu, and Roechard Wibb. I won't say who it was that speculated as to why Electric Nose has been totally silent over the new Bachmann 20 which is shaped rather like a class 20!