Rail200 - The Grand Finale

The Rail200 competition culminated at the National Festival of Railway Modelling at the NEC last weekend. I went along on Sunday to find Whittingly Hospital connected to other modular entries. 

I took a few wagons and a loco to make it look less abandoned. I'd forgotten to take a spare set of batteries for the lights though, which expired after an hour or so on Sunday morning. My calculations of how long they would last were rather optimistic, unless they'd been left on since Friday night!

I have to say the Peco team had done a great job to connect together around 30 modules, which they'd not seen before, complete with 90 and 180 degree corners, for trains to run through. A clever DCC system was able to run several trains at once, detecting their location through current draw, and slowing or stopping trains to keep them spaced apart. Apparently it all worked first time!

Of course, not all the trains were appropriate to all the modules! 

When I started this challenge, it was not just about making a model/diorama/layout, but about taking part in something to celebrate 200 years of railways. That's why I chose to enter the modular category, and so I was delighted that my model was selected to be one of the 40+ (out of around completed 250 entries and 650 boards sold) to be shown at the exhibition. Those who have seen the December Railway Modeller may have noticed that Whittingly even made the shortlisted top 5 within the modular over-16s category!

Congratulations to the winner in the same category, Joseph Laurence, for his Project New Street - a near-scale depiction of a corner of this well known major station. 

And the runner up Mike Tomlinson, for Mind The Gap! A model of an underground station including a section of Mail Rail. Both are highly original, well-modelled and eye-catching!

Congratulations too to the other category winners and runners up. Awards were given out by Pete Waterman on Sunday afternoon. Overall, it seemed well organised and brought enjoyment to lots of people, hopefully getting some modelling for the first time. It was especially good to see the good range of entries from the youngsters in the under-16 categories. 

I intended to take photos of all the entries there, but looking through I realised I have missed some. So, here's an incomplete record of the modular entries in no particular order...

Not all the finalists were in the modular categories, although there were fewer standalone entries on show. One of the attractions of the standalone category was that any scale and gauge could be used, whereas of course the modular entries had to be OO scale. So, here we have narrow gauge, N, TT, and even T scale. Another almost but not quite complete record of those on show...