There is a one day show in the U.K on Saturday concentrating solely on U.S model railroads. TVNAM has been running for a while and features some of the top layouts built and exhibited by U.K modellers. Held in Armitage with Handsacre village hall in Armitage, Staffordshire on Saturday June the 20th there will be 12 layouts in all ranging from my own Z scale 'Cuyahoga' up to show organiser Nick Palette's 'Midland Ohio' layout in O scale Full details can be found at http://www.tvnam.co.uk/index.htm cheers Kev
So the morning of the show dawned with typical British weather, warm sunshine and heavy showers. We had done some prep work the evening before by moving loads of chairs and marking out the floor plan at the village hall at Armitage with Handsacre which has been used before. I magaed to get a quick tour of the show before we opened up to the public Florida Springs was a HO layout showed by Chris Gilbert Gilbert Paper was shown by Chris Prior and had a nice representation of a waterside switching operation Franklin was an 0n2 switiching layout displayed by Bob Harper
Gary Williams showed his N scale Williams Ridge layout West Allen Street was a minmum space H0 switching layout based on the Santa Fe showed by Dan Beresford Woodsville NH was a H0 layout showed by Wakefield club members Paul Gittins, Bob Smith and Geoff Tiffany. Boston and Maine being the theme of this extensive oval layout Bear Creek was show organiser Nick Palette's 0 scale layout. This is still work in progress and Nick got a good humoured ribbing for the distinct bare wood appearance of the baseboards!
Bear Creek was an innovative layout in On30 displayed for the first time by Adrian Hall. it featured a high trestle and some animated fatures like the water spout on the tank lowering into the tender the H0 layout Hacienda Avenue was shown by Dan Spalding 29th Street Wharf was also H0 and again featured a waterfront theme and was displayed by David George.
This just leaves two layouts Freemo was the first outing, I believe, of the new layout under development by the Trent Valley North American Modellers My own layout 'Cuyahoga' is fairly well known as one of the best demonstration of the advances made in Z scale stock in recent years. new for this show was the recently motorised Hallmark UP turbine which sadly I ran out of time on to fit the couplers to. As usual the MTL and AZL locos ran like little Swiss watches all day There was good support from the NMRA who had a display stand and a modelling demonstration There were also some trade stands specialising in U.S railroads and books who all seemed to be smiling so they must have been doing O.K and the show seemed to be very busy from the 10.00 opening on so all in all it was a big success. Hopefully Nick will repeat the success in 2016 cheers Kev
Kev, please tell Messrs. Gittens, Smith, and Tiffany that they have captured the spirit of the B&M very nicely. However, I have mixed emotions of their Alco S-2. A relatively new S-2 did a fine job of powering our tri-weekly local freight 65 years ago. Though sadly it had replaced a lovely "teakettle" that I had been allowed to operate a short distance just a year before.
