Yesterday was the Norfolk and Suffolk Narrow Gauge Modellers annual show. It was a super show, lots of high quality layouts and interesting 10th Anniversary Competition entries.

I took Boxomise and exhibited it under it’s new name ‘Redwell’.

The layout ran well, especially considering it’s only the 3rd time I’ve run it and I’ve never run it for 6 hours non-stop before. There was an intermittent fault on the power to one of the points that started about lunchtime and got worse throughout the afternoon. I will have to fix this. I might be diving under the layout later today *

I was struck by how enjoyable it is to operate. Having the platform before the passing loop leads to some interesting run around moves. These get more complex if you want to ‘drop off’ or ‘pick up’ goods stock for a mixed passenager and goods service. This was a surprise and it made me realise this is a layout I will really enjoy operating.

It’s been over five years since I exhibited and I had forgotten that the most enjoyable part is meeting people. It was a pleasure to talk model railways with so many people.

There were ‘real world’ friends, ‘online friends’ that I met in person for the first time, and many new people that I’ve never met before.

Thank you for stopping for a chat, it was great to talk to you all.

Many thanks to Richard Doe and the N&SNG members for organising such a good show.

* A few hours later: At the exhibition Brian Meldon suggested that the point motor wasn’t correctly centred and the switching mechanism wasn’t ‘throwing’ sufficiently in one direction to switch the polarity of the frog correctly. I have moved the motor about 1.5mm towards the rear of the layout and everything is working well now. Thank you Brian!