Awngate at the Croydon Show

So, how did it go? Well, the new fiddle yard did play up on the Saturday. After some confusing symptoms, I think the main issue was just the nut coming loose from the pivot bolt, which is also an electrical connection. It certainly worked fine on the Sunday, and was much easier to use under exhibition running than the cassettes it replaced.

The layout ran well though with little attention. The new locos got plenty of running, and other than some couplings playing up (despite extensive testing some will always misbehave) there were no stock issues.

The show was nice and friendly, with a good selection of layouts. I do like Portchullin by Mark Tatlow, the scenery is superb and it has real atmosphere, despite being a P4 standard gauge diesel DDC with sound layout!

Narrow gauge was well represented, with 5 layouts in total. Puero Pasco in On30 by Giles Barnabe is a little different, being based on an imaginary Caribbean island, making for rather busy operation.

John Thorne's 009 layout Bottle Kiln Lane is always popular at shows, and is packed with little details.

There are more pictures here.

Now with the layout back home and set up in the dining room I've reverted to the compact version of the cassette fiddle yard. I don't operate intensively at home, and my wife had made comments about the larger fiddle yard...