Roadshow Reports

Hi,

First of all apologies for the lack of an Ally Pally January report, as I was not in attendance and rest of your committee are unable to write it did not get done! But I can tell you from verbal reports that it went very well, particularly the move to a central position in the main hall. We were extremely busy for all three days.

Now Doncaster, as you no doubt know this is a two day show, organised by Warners in their normal, very efficient manner. Set up was on Friday, all complete by about 18:30. George arrived later than normal, he’s a working man now! As you may know we tend to stay at Premier Inns these days, The Doncaster East Premier Inn is only five minutes from the exhibition.

We ate in the Beefeater next to the hotel, good value with the meal deal. We tried their new dessert, coconut rice pudding, absolutely delicious!

For sometime now I have been going to a local supermarket and buying blueberry muffins for elevenses, off I went to the local Asda, disaster, no blueberry muffins, so we tried strawberry and white chocolate, good, but not blueberry!

We were located upstairs, as is normal with the February show, we were extremely busy from the off.

This was also the event where we presented the Speed Challenge plaque to the winner Alistair Proudfoot. Adrian was able to get regional ITV to attend and we had an excellent piece on the local TV news that evening. We are now looking to incorporate a speed challenge event at appropriate shows this year in a modified form.

We also had on display the OOLS Limited Edition; sales now stand at 20, if you want one now is the time to act! Don’t forget this limited to 35 locos.

What’s particularly pleasing is the number of members that come along to run their locos, Rob and Martin were with us for two days, Rob also had his grandson with him who you can see in one of the pictures. John Vizor brought along a couple of his locos for us to have a look at and Martin Waller brought his Silver Link, with a lovely rake of Gresley teaks. Mark Chapman came along on Sunday with his first live steam loco Silver Link, where Nick and Charles gave him some driving instruction. Nick on how to do it and Charles on how not to! We were also delighted to see young Jack, you may remember his grandmother Maria bought him a surprise present last year, a Mallard set, Maria also brought us copious quantities of home made sausage rolls and cakes, delicious, if only there was a Maria at every show.

John brought along his beautiful streamlined Duchess and his newly completed Britannia, Coeur de Lion No 70007, both wonderful, if anyone has taken photos of these two locos please post them.

One surprise absentee was our club treasurer Eric Fenwick; management had decided that they were to go on holiday!

All in all two excellent days at Doncaster.

Maurice