Did you notice this poster on the Alloa station newsstand: “SCOOP: ALLOA LAYOUT READY AT LAST”. Priceless.

Hi,

I aattended Model Rail Scotland on Friday past. While there I had an interesting conversation with one of the members of Aberdeen MRC. This is the club that won last year's Great Model Railway Challenge telivision series with its railway in the sky. His comments on the show and and its aftereffects were of interest given that it came in for a lot of criticism as being a kind of Masterchef for model railways . He remarked that doing the show he realised it was not about him or the club but the audience and its aftereffects have been very positive with club membership up and sales in model shops increasing. This perhaps is one of the reasons Hornby have a strong programme of new products this year and other firms are also thriving.

Also at Glasgow was the layout " Calcutta Sidings". This features in the current Railway Modeller but what the Modeller does not show is that three quarters of the layout was the "hidden Sidings". I have put that in parenthesis since they were far from hidden. Indeed they were probably the most interesting part of the layout being composed of a double marshalling yard with multiple roads. all it needed was some scenery. Very much a case of the tail wagging the dog. While having hidden sidings feeding the scenic part of the layout is perhaps inevitable for exhibition layouts I wonder if it does perhaps give a false impression of the way a layout should be built for personel use. I raised this on Model Railway Express a few years ago but it was greeted with incomprehension. Sadly for many clubs exhibitions have become an end in themselves rather than a means to an end, raising money, new members and enjoying model trains.

No Marklin to see but there was a large G-scale layout.

Bob M.