Last Sunday I made my first ever pilgrimage to the Warley show. The opportunity arose as a thank you from Bob after helping him during the past year at exhibitions with his Winterschalf layout.
Since coming back to the hobby I'd been thinking about making the journey to the NEC to see this show but had been warned that it had become too well attended. Warned that, trying to view layouts is something similar to a rugby scrum with crowds of two to three deep; traders being very busy with often a long wait to be served and/or difficulty in seeing what they have on offer. So with this in mind I went with a slightly negative outlook. I had a surprise in store....
Firstly... wow... I didn't fully realise how large this show was. Secondly, it was a well organised show with the different scales grouped together and most specialist traders in their own area. Thirdly, even though we didn't get into the show until just after 11:00am there was plenty of room. Granted there were one or two layouts during the day that had crowds of two deep but patience always produced a space somewhere. At no time did I feel I couldn't appreciate what was on show, though this might have been down to the layouts that I was most interested in seeing. As far as traders were concerned non, that I needed, were any busier than at any specialist show I've recently visited.
Though my modelling interest is P4 (I made a beeline for the 4mm finescale area with Bodmin General, Evenstow, Holderness Light Railway, Cornwallis, Allt-y-Graban Road, et al) I do like to view different scales to appreciate other modellers' work. It was one of these other exhibits that impressed me the most.
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| La Baraque |
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| La Baraque |
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| La Baraque |
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| La Baraque |
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| La Baraque |
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| La Baraque |
La Baraque is the work of Hans Louvet and depicts a metre gauge railway in the Auvergne province of France in 1908, all modelled in S scale. Hopefully the above photographs show the skilful modelling on this layout.
The only down side for me is that Warley is definitely too large an exhibition to appreciate all that's on show in one day. There was plenty that I did not get to see, I would have liked to have taken longer viewing layouts; browsing trade stands and finding time to sit down with a few of the demonstrators, but overall it was a splendid day. Would I go again...? Definitely...
Thanks Bob.
3 comments:
Hopefully I'll see you there again next year...
It was a good weekend for the Scalefour Society - nine new members, and a lot of interest in the "toys" on the stand, such as sprung chassis, turnouts, and so on. I even gave a short tutorial in Templot!
Flymo
Missed each other again Yan. I was there Sunday!
It was great seeing the progress your making on the coffeepot Paul, much better in the flesh. Something I have yet to tackle but seeing other work is an inspiration. I liked the weathering your achieving.
Richard, we will have to meet up at one of the shows sometime.
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