London Festival of Railway Modelling 2025
So this time it was the London Festival of railway modelling, at Alexandra Palace, which means it is my local show. Despite the weather being fairly good, it was a freezing show with myself, Andrew and George in coats for most of show, especially on the Sunday. It was so bad it took its toll on our engines who were bit rough Sunday morning.
As is always the case with the BRM shows the crowds were large, meaning it was a very busy show for us. I know from the people I spoke to there were many people very keen on on OOLS. Over the weekend we had many people talk to us about what they wanted and building include people using the system in O gauge, LMS princess coronations and some very different foreign machines. It was very nice have such discussions over the live steam and give helpful ideas and tips from our builds. It also meant Chris also has a busy weekend with people getting locos repaired too.
Given the Bicentenary of the railways this year with Rail 200, I tasked myself with creating A1 2555 Centenary. This was named by the LNER in 1925 to celebrate the centenary of the Stockton and Darlington. This made a nice change and way of marking rail 200 in OOLS. I nailed the timing and she ran like a treat, with most of the running done below a scale speed of 10mph. The same can be said for my Empire of India as shown below.
I am very thankful to Dave P, who taught me timing and with little tweak in my methods. Needless to see he was impressed with my results.
Given the location, it was not only local to me but also Matt, this meant he brought his Hornby coronation coaches just like me, and so we made the best of it running the two together. These continue to get many comments from onlookers who love the sight of them.
Georges Silver Fox continued to amaze on lookers and keep a smile on his face.
Massive crashes returned to the roadshow with the BR Maroon sleepers taking a very large battering, ending up on the floor multiple times in spectacular fashion.
The highlight of the weekend me was meeting Riyan and Seema. Riyan loves trains and mechanics, and for a long time has been fascinated by cylinders. It goes without saying that he loved live steam, especially when seeing “Arthur” mallard and seeing how it all worked. It was really nice to see the enthusiasm for the mechanics of live steam at such a young age and made a refreshing difference from other onlookers.
Overall it was a good show despite the big freeze and crashes. I wont be at Severn Valley unfortunately, so the next report from me will be Bluebell.