Last Saturday was the Norwich MRC show.

I took the train through the flat lands to Ely, then on through the pines and gorse to Thetford and Norwich. It was a beautiful sunny day and, while many travellers stared at their screens, I looked out the window. There were golden fields of oil seed rape, several deer, hares, herons, swans and even geese with goslings.

On arrival I did my essential Norwich experience: the City Bookshop, the Royal Arcade (sadly it has many empty shops), the market and a large sausage bap while I listened to the buskers.

Then I headed off to the exhibition. Here’s what caught my eye.

Whiteleaf Tramway, Buckinghamshire Garden Railway Society. G scale (1:22.5) runnning on 45mm gauge track to represent metre gauge lines and part of a very large indoor layout measuring 71 x 18 feet (21.5 x 5.5 m). Lovely stock, some of it ‘out of the box’ plus some creative ‘cut and shunt’ modelling to create unique one-off models.

Copsey, a nicely modelled modern station set in 2000 – 2005, running mainly DMU’s. This was exhibited by the Norfolk Model Railway Syndicate, an informal group of modellers who share their modelling experience and meet up to help each other at exhibitions.

Hartenburg by Kevin Hart, a lovely N gauge layout set in a Bavarian town in the 1930’s with a branch line, a tramway and a Faller road system. Very atmospheric and well modelled. The cobbles and paving were very impressive, you’d never know they were printed on thin paper.

Skogen, a simple layout set up to demonstrate the wireless control systems from Blue Railways. I was rather taken by the mountain scenery and atmosphere of this layout.

I had a good day out. I enjoyed the train journey, Norwich and the exhibition.