No one needs me to remind or tell them of the impact of Covid on the exhibition scene over the past two years, suffice to say it’s had a significant detrimental impact on the ability to run and attend shows of all sizes.

This weekend I’ve been helping out as a ‘runner/roadie’ on Heaton Lodge on a three day show. I arrived Wednesday to assist in the build of the layout by a team of five, working roughly 08:00 to about 18:00 each day. This is only the second exhibition the layout has done, but with much shorter build/break down windows than we had at Wakefield. It was also an ‘away’ fixture by about 4.5hrs/230 miles from base so key in getting everything there.

Not only does it take time to build the layout, there’s all the stock to put on too, and using three links, manually couple up as well. The show certainly had a good number of visitors through and it was good to see both friends from the trade and the hobby generally.

I often refer readers to the blog roll attached to this page, where there are other writers whose work is of interest, this weekend at the show I had the pleasure of meeting Ian Holmes from the USA. Ian’s blog is one I read regularly it was one I picked up on in the early days of this blogging malarkey and it was a genuine pleasure to meet him and his wife, whom had literally just flown in that morning.

The show had a small number of layouts in addition to Heaton Lodge, and all were of excellent quality Bournemouth West, Wimborne, Oldshaw (above) and Oldham King Street, (below) providing real inspiration, as all of them ticked boxes for me, Oldshaw and Oldham in particular.

Well that’s enough from me this morning, I’ve got to go and help with the continued break down of Heaton Lodge to get it on two articulated (Semi’s for our colonial friends) and a 7.5 tonner by this afternoon.

More pictures and thoughts to follow, this show provided a real buzz and genuine inspiration for me.