First thing on Friday morning Tim picked up a big white van and then picked up Bill, David L and yours truly before heading on over to Badlesmere. There we loaded the layout up into the van before going on to Gravesend to pick up Roger. With our setting up team now complete we set off for Alexandra Palace arriving sometime after two o’clock. Once the checking in formalities completed and the layout unloaded, we commenced setting up. This went well until we discovered a crossover on the upper level had no power. This was found quickly to be due to a wire that had managed to be detached from a chocolate strip. Fixing this was achieved simply by screwing the wire back in but it did result in us being slightly delayed getting away to our accommodation. This as it turned out was an enormous stroke of luck as whilst we were doing this Tom from The Model Railway Club calmly informed us that due to a mix up within their booking team there was no accommodation booked for us that night, despite us having had written confirmation of it from them. This had only been discovered when other teams had turned up at the accommodation to find they weren’t booked in. So fortunately, we avoided that fate and after about an hour of passive aggressive pressure we were found alternative accommodation and headed off to that. Suitably refreshed we arrived back at Ally Pally on Saturday morning and met up with first time operator John Johnson and Martin and Angela. With the layout now fully set up and running we braced ourselves for the 9.30am kick off. Initially it seemed rather slow but only because the visitors had to get through the main hall first before getting to us and very quickly it got very busy indeed. With Tim’s GER locos in bright blue on the high level and his PLA locos in dark grime on the dockside we received many favourable comments from visitors and the cognoscenti alike. As we get more used to running the layout we are making more use of the lowerlevel kick back siding and cassettes which enables us to change out locos and stock and refresh the scene on the dockside. During the day we were joined by other EKOGG members attending the show so that at one point we had twelve of us around the layout. At the end of the day Bill left us to get the train home and accommodation issues having been resolved we headed off for a quiet night.
Sunday pretty much followed the same pattern as Saturday although with slightly fewer visitors. The layout worked well all weekend without any issues and attracted some invitations to other shows and potentially some new EKOGG members. At the end of the show breakdown and loading of the van was relatively painless, unlike Warley some years ago, and we finally got back to Badlesmere at about 8.00pm. Chris
