Roadshow Reports

Well, this roadshow was at Burnham-on-sea model railway show, which means it was hosted by committee member Adrian’s local club.

It was a relatively quiet show, however, the conversations had between the roadshow members and the public more than made up for this. With many showing a keen interest in OO Live Steam and how to acquire and operate it. In fact, the OOLS business cards flew, and we were nearly running out towards the end. The shop had some good sales too, with many bottles of water being sold, and some interest in some spares that gentleman required for his OOLS Mallard.

Chris had a fun weekend on the workbench with some repairs over one of Adrian’s Mallards. This caused quite a few issues but with a little settling on the roadshow track with a light load, we tried her with a full rake of wagons, and she worked perfectly.

A great part of the show was the running of Andrew’s Duchess of Athol. This is a Hornby dublo body on a A4 Chassis. This is a great example of how a OOLS conversion can be done easily by all people. One of the discussions we had was over the condition. We were in all agreement that it should be left as is, as it makes a nice throwback to the Hornby dublo days and such a nice character keeping the old paintwork. Andrew is currently working on the LMS slide bars for this what will just finish it off perfectly. All what’s needed is a set of coaches… I think some 1980s Hornbly LMS coaches would sit perfectly with it on the roadshow.

It was nice to have Nick back with us in the roadshow loop , as he brought his great snipe with him to run. This made a nice change for him to back running the locos instead of being at the shop all day. Nicks Great Snipe is one of the club limited editions of the LNER Green A4s. It was very good to have this running as it is not frequently, we get a green LNER A4 running on the club roadshow.

After some fiddling in the hotel Saturday night and Sunday Morning at the show I was able to put the final silver handrails on my Empire of India. This image shows her almost complete with the additions of black nameplates, all the silver handrails added, and the missing R attached after it got lost at Dave Wood’s. Many thanks to Andrew for his help in getting the final handrails for me. This means for the first time it correctly shows her in as built condition. I still want to redo the nameplate using erics method, but that is for later.

Dave P’s cutaway loco was present as always and even found its way to other layouts. As I was looking at the layout opposite us, the operates were asking about OOLS and how it operates. I quickly dashed over and used the cutaway engine to explain the workings of the OOLS. It also made a nice change for Mike, as he didn’t have the typical imprint of an engine chassis on his hand.

One of the discussion I had with Eric at Gomersal was over the Clubs Blink Bonny. I ran this at Chatham late on Sunday, and mentioned what a good runner it was. Eric told me he had just serviced it. As can be seen bellow it ran amazingly with great control. And gave perfect slow speed. This made a great example to some onlookers who were asking how easy it is to control.

More trains running:

After we finished on Saturday, we decided to head to Burnham beach to kill some time until dinner. While walking with Val and Dave I had the bright idea to leave our mark on Burnham, or at least until the time came up.

Dinner was very good, and luckily for me there was a lot of G&Ts at the table, including Nick, who after a try of my favourite gin, Tanqueray ten, at the summer meet, thought he’d have one. So bellow is an image of Nick losing his vir-gin-ity. I hope you enjoyed it Nick.

It was also nice to see Liz, Adrians wife, It was lovely to enjoy her company and discuss a whole matter of things. Also, a big thank you to Adrian for his kind gesture of buying all of us a round as a thank you doing his local show. It was very much appreciated.

Overall the show was a success with a lot of good company, a nice crowd, and some nice running.