While away, I took the opportunity to plan holiday itinerary to take in visiting the Warley Model Railway Exhibition at the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre. This is the largest in the UK, scheduled in November. We stayed in Birmingham city, and caught the train to the exhibition centre, about twelve minutes away by rail: cost about five dollars each way.
On arriving, one leaves the platform and enters the exhibition building. Also on that weekend, was a huge motorbike exhibition, Comic-com UK, and a Christmas fair.
On entering the exhibition you encountered a mass of trade stands. which also extended down the sides, with the layouts massed together from about half way, and dividing some of the trade areas on one side. This also included an area of how-to and instructional/demonstration displays.
The trade stands had everything one would want, especially away from the manufacturer stands, and general model shop stands. like squires Tools, which had every sort of model paint, plastic card, tool, scenic item one would want, and there were several of these. (There were guys going around with lists of things they wanted, crossing them off when they found each item).
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| It's past 10 o'clock, six windows open for tickets. |
Displays, ranged from T gauge right through to 12" to the foot. Yes there were two small steam locomotives on display, plus some carriages. The main mix was N, HO, OO and O gauges, with some live steam model in there as well.
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| Keightley and Worth Valley's ex NCB Haydock built 0-6-0 Bellerphon. |
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| Tallyllyn Narrow gauge; Fletcher Jenning built 'Tallylln' 1864. |
Australian N gauge, Victoria layout Dawes Creek. (Very green scenery, set in spring). Had a good chat to the owners, there main difficulty in modelling Australian in the UK, is obtaining models. Postage out of Australia is not good (like most places), and Her Majesty's customs also like their share.
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| Victorian Horse drawn bus. |
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| What are these guys looking at? They stood there for more than ten minutes. This layout was packed, could not get any closer. When I did manage to push around the corner, what were they looking at: nothing. There was not a model train in sight! | |
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| Modern traction depot. |
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| Demonstration stand area. |
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| O scale layout, early stage of construction. There were several O scale layout of this size. |
