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Pictures at an Exhibition

St Albans - 14 and 15th January 2006

For most people this is the first show of the year and the first after the excesses of Warley a month earlier.

As always the show was strong on the specialist traders such as Comet, 247 Development and Eileen’s Emporium. Layouts were a little down however though Vauxhall Road, a new large present day Southern 00 line, put in a good performance. DOGA’s very own Phil Parker brought Hellingley Hospital to please the paying public. The S4 Rockingham had some very appealing buildings and a splendid market scene while East Lynn showed what might be achieved in S gauge.

The DOGA stand enjoyed healthy support from members on the Saturday, while on the Sunday Peter Rumbelow happily fiddled with hundreds of chairs for his SMP points that are part of his Empingham adventure.

One big advantage of St Albans is that one can combine the show with ordinary shopping since the main High Street, and on the Saturday a good street market, are just outside the venue. A lovely large freshly baked stone ground loaf, the quality of which would never be available in a supermarket, was purchased

Alexandra Palace 1 to 2 April 2006

An LNER 0-8-0 hauling a colossal 78 coal wagons without fuss around the new 00 “Gresley Beat” was one of this show’s highlights. An odd name for a layout perhaps but it had the paying public interested from the start. With Copenhagen Fields nearby maybe this was the first occasion at any exhibition where two layouts had depicted more or less the same historical and geographical fea-tures. Unlike its 2mm cousin the builders of the Gresley Beat had played with their space and had adjusted the positions of areas like Top Shed but still man-aged to convey the atmosphere of those first few miles out of the Cross during the 1920s and 30s. Other large 00 layouts included Hewisbridge with DOGA’s very own Ian Porteous — nice to meet you Ian — and Trehayn, a nice chunk of Devon in the 1950s.

Of the non 00 layouts the little S4 Cheddar offered the best eating with its cheese tasting — as well as displaying the boldest design feature for a small layout namely two large trees positioned at the front of the scenery and track so that the viewer had to look around them in order to observe what is beyond. Watching the Gauge I live steam clattering around sounding like the real thing was also a good way to spend time on a Saturday afternoon. In addition to layouts there was plenty of new ready to run and second hand to contemplate as well as a reasonable selection of specialist traders. Those traders who do not make it to this show generally appear at St Albans in January sol view Alexandra Palace as sort of second part of a “Spring Double” with St Albans being the first. Taken together these two shows should cover the needs of most North London and Hertfordshire modellers. Watford Finescale in November is an added bo-nus — the locals are spoilt indeed!

York 15/17th April 2006

Held in the racecourse 20 minutes walk or a quick bus ride from the station, York show always provides an excellent event and this year was no exception. The organisers had rung the changes a little as due to the retirement of a few so the mix changed slightly. For those who have never been (why not?) trade is biased toward the enthusiast rather than the person wanting a huge selection of RTR. It’s there but there isn’t much duplication so you can’t wander around buying all the loss leaders.

Layouts cover all scales and gauges. On the ground floor these included Dewsbury Midland — a minimum space effort from Manchester. There were plenty of others but too many to list here. My favourite was fellow DOGA member Kevin Gallagher’s model, “Llanmarth” which was conveniently next to the stand on the top floor. Featuring much fine modelling and more detail than you can shake a stick at, it managed to look significantly better in the flesh than the photographs from its “Layout of the Month” appearance in RM.

Saturday was very busy. I stayed behind the stand most of the day sticking a Ratio coach kit together when I wasn’t enjoying chatting to visitors. After two days I had managed a single coach which means I must have put plenty of time gabbing!

Sunday was as normal, quieter. There still seemed to be plenty of people knocking around though, enough to make progress around the 5 levels (3 floors, 2 mezzanines) slow.

We sold a lot of track rubbers and other goodies. Magazines were especially popular — I sold out by the end of Saturday! A couple of new members signed up along with a renewal. Plenty of handouts vanished into the crowd so perhaps a few of you reading this joined as a result of the show.

Thanks to Dave Heller and Stephen Siddle for providing assistance on Saturday and Sunday respectively and Gerard Pearson for running the stand on Monday. Next year, perhaps the northern members would like to save DOGA the expenses and themselves the admission cost by running the stand? It’s great fun just sitting and chatting. No great skill is required, indeed one thing people like is that we don’t condemn anyone for not scratchbuilding using metal they have dug from the garden and smelted themselves...
from a stall. So it is worth going to St Albans if only for the food! On the Sunday a local bus rally was held so it was nice to see a couple of RTs and RFs in London Country colours parked near the venue. Some buses provided a shuttle between the station and the show venue.

Business on the DOGA stand was brisk throughout the two days and thank you to all who manned it. Welcome to all those who joined the Association over the period.