Festival of railway modelling Doncaster 8/9th Feb 2025
As always, the first show of the year was the big one – The festival of British railway modelling in Doncaster. A great show for us all since it nicely located in the country it allows a lot of the roadshow team and club members to come. Also, being in Yorkshire meant Maria could do her usual bakes for us to enjoy.
Both the shop and the loco sales did particularly well making. Little wonder giving the amount of members who came to see us after so long without a roadshow. People will have been very much in need of parts and a strong desire for more engines.
One highlight of the weekend was the words Chris has been waiting to hear for many years – “can I please borrow you hammer” from Eric. Poor chris was nearly in tears with laughter.
It was many birthdays among the roadshow members over the weekend. Dave P, Jon and George, all got their birthday cake thanks to Maria, and with the helpers at the show in the form of Val P and Shelley everyone had some of it.
An important project that had been completed was a rolling road for the cut away A4 known as “Arthur” Mallard. This meant the timing method can be easily demonstrated to people. I recommend you have a look on the post here, it is quite amazing what Dave P has done:
George even got a birthday treat when he got try for the first time his new club special in the BR blue. The Silver Fox proved to be a very nice loco indeed, and George made a great a choice with 60017 Silver fox as the silver fox on the side blending with the white lining on the boiler. This is quite a special model for the BR blue editions since it is the only one so far that has not been 60007 Sir Nigel Gresley.
This has been the first show we have had since Hornby have released their coronation coaches. Both Jon and I brought our sets to run on the roadshow over the weekend. These really did a lot of discussion in the crowd of how nice they looked and went with OOLS.
One good thing that Jon did as well is bring the Rapido LNER dynamometer car. With 3 of the coronation coach pairs this made the mallard speed record set.
As always we went back to the premier for dinner, and always for me a G&T.
All round it was a very good show given how long it has been, the good crowds and sales.