Report on the 2017 AGM & Show held at Trinity Hall, Leicester on March 18th 2017
Words by Bob Leggett, photos by Bob Leggett, Pat Hammond & Tony Penn
All photos may be enlarged by clicking or tapping on them. Best viewed full screen!
A new venue for the AGM but not for the Society and Paul Draycott’s team were on hand to ensure the AGM ran smoothly at the familiar Leicester venue. Paul did however have a slight hiccup when his floor plan disappeared early Friday, a little bit of detective work resulted in one of his team’s grandsons (age 4) owning up to having hidden it!
Chairman Bryan Pentland was show organiser and a wonderful variety of Layouts and displays kept everyone happy as well as excellent trade stands and food.
I will describe the show as one enters the foyer.
Tony Stanford and Paul Chapman manned the entrance table and opposite Rod Hannah ran the club stand.
Traders in the foyer were Cliff and Margaret Maddock who sold several O Gauge wooden Buildings and HO Continental stock, Tony ’Steptoe’ Penn who still had plenty of Hornby Acho for sale, Bob Jachacz who had a good day selling Finescale 0 Gauge spares as well as Hornby O Gauge, Bob Field was selling his usual good selection of Hornby Dublo, and the Bring and Buy stall manned by Peter Wright, Dave Parry and David Postlethaite had plenty of sales including some early Ratio wooden kits. Malcolm Pugh advises the day ended up with a £48 donation to the TCS. Thank you to all who helped on the stall.
As we enter the main hall Peter Gurd was set up opposite the entrance with a great variety of books and other literature, he told me continental model books sold well even those in Dutch and Czech language!
On the left hand wall Simon Goodyear just about made it for lunch and had a variety of larger scale models for sale, Alongside Dave Angell was selling mostly Tri-ang and other 00 Gauge and reported reasonable sales including a Trix Peppercorn. He also had a Hornby Australian XPT for £150. Last on the left was Michael Foster promoting his recent British Trains Books 1 and 2 books (we are looking forward to the imminent arrival of Book 3 which covers the large range of Brimtoy Trains) and ETS Models. The rest of the trade was in the middle, Yours truly was selling a variety of trains although a large collection of Eagle Comic ‘Cut Outs’ fascinated many and over 20 were sold.
Our new editor Nicholas Oddy was selling Hornby O gauge and Gauge 1, Chris Ford had a large collection of spares and reported good trade although he was delighted to find a pair of Benbros Jeeps for a fiver. Dixon Upcott had Trix and other makes; Peter Berry mainly sold spares and informed me he sold the last of his Scalemaster collection to a happy customer. Len Mills was selling ACE Trains and advised that there were only 60 9F’s left from the batch of 600. Also on display was the prototype Warship Diesel.
On the far wall the Vyse family, Bill, Rachel and David were running Hornby Dublo 3-Rail with plenty of scenic detail, the layout was based on Overton Hampshire where Rachel once lived and there were buildings and adverts related to Overton. Running well all day it was good to see how Dublo can be expanded and improved with scenic detail.
Next was Dave White with help from Les Martin and Neil Smith. Dave ran Tri-ang OO Gauge Canadian Pacific and National stock and Minic Motorways and filled their board with plenty of Tri-ang scenery. It was a joy to watch cars and trains share the road rail track. While I was watching the cars hit the road/rail track millimetres in front of the train. Excellent goods yards and plenty of Arkitex with lights made for a very colourful layout.
Next to Dave, Bob Fleming had a neat 009 fully scenic layout with predominantly Eggerbahn stock although there were some white metal models. It was a double layout with station scene on one side with a very busy Bob’s café and a quarry scene on the other side. Bob also had an interesting display of plastic kits including Airfix, Playcraft Signal kits which were designed by an ex Kitmaster employee and an early K’s Cartic kit. Melton Models and Scalecraft (Roadrailer) also featured in the display.
On the stage David Knighton, John Boyd and Chris Simmons and family were running a double track O Gauge layout with a Central ‘ACE ‘ Canopy station and building named Ravensrood Central with a busy Dock scene in the middle. Bassett-Lowke, ACE, Darstead, Leeds and others were running around. I was particularly impressed with a 4-6-0 Sir Sam Fay in LNER green, possibly a ‘special’ as it had bits of Leeds/Steadman and Bassett-Lowke parts, pulling a rake of LNER Teak style coaches. Dock noises and seagulls could be heard during the day which I believe came from this layout!
Off the main hall is also the dining area where two Traders, Mark Carne and Bill Bourne had set up, hoping to attract customers as they enjoyed the excellent two course meal and Tea and other refreshments. A big thank you to the following for a superb two course meal (for a fiver) and refreshments throughout the day, Janet Tilley, Audrey Foulds, Brenda D’Arcy, Mary Starie, Pav Pall, Diane Johnson, Paul Draycott and Marilyn Draycott, thank you also to Paul for the lasagne to those setting up and helping on the Friday night.
As we move back to the main hall and to the entrance to the smaller hall we pass the club stand, This year the theme was everything GWR. There was quite a variety, I spotted a Triang’ Export’ Lord of the Isles’ Set and also some nicely repainted Tri-ang Big Big Coaches, also a Leeds tank engine and coach. Opposite the stand David Ramsey was selling a variety of O gauge.
As we enter the smaller hall, on the right in his usual position is Pat Hammond with a mouth watering display of GWR locos. There were 30 different classes of proprietary 00 gauge GWR locomotives produced in the last 40 years by Hornby. Bachmann, Replica, Airfix and Dapol. Also a number of GWR pre-production models from the factory store at Margate, most of which never made it into production and so were ‘might-have-beens’. There were several sets on display including The Titfield Thunderbolt by Hornby and a WW1 Ambulance Train by Bachmann.
Next to Pat was a small but very interesting display of 00 Gauge Ash Lorries built from these wooden kits. Paul Chapman had acquired the whole collection of 14 models from an auction some fifteen years ago. These are very similar to Wilson lorries and were popular models immediately after WW11 when metal was still scarce. Beautifully made these would have adorned an early Post-war 00 Gauge layout for a small outlay although some considerable skill to achieve respectable models.
On the left Colin Totem was selling Darstead and Raylo models. Opposite David and Peter Peasant were running O Gauge with a variety of stock on Lionel Fast Track. As usual I loved the scenic detail including the Church and Minic Garage. A busy goods yard scene included a farmer getting his cows onto the Bassett-Lowke Cattle Dock.
The final two layouts in this room show what separates TCS from other societies and model railway clubs.
David Rhodes a first time exhibitor at the TCS is a big James Bond 007 fan and has created the most amazing 00 Layout with a James Bond theme. He has managed to capture something from every Bond film onto his layout. This included a working Minic Motorway with a Rolls Royce running into an Airfix Bristol Superfreighter, Scenes from Casino Royal, Goldfinger and even a Minic Tank coming out of a Railway Tunnel! This layout for imagination and action was my favourite at the show.
Next to David our Chairman Bryan Pentland had another layout with a special feature. Running American Flyer 0 Gauge stock Bryan had the whole back length decorated with a Flyer Trainorama card 3D effect scenic backdrop featuring Factories, Ravines, Mountains, Hills and Rivers. Apparently it was only issued for one year (1953-54) in the US. Despite looking vibrant and appearing in good condition, Bryan informed me the card being well over 60 years old has become quite fragile and we are very lucky he has given it an outing. I certainly thought it had the wow factor and I’ve not seen a back scene as good as that before. The stock running (all American Flyer) was from Paul Williams (pre 1930) and Bryan (post 1930). There was some rare items including a cast iron clockwork loco and train from 1922/4, a very rare uncatalogued 1101 box cab from 1922, and 3 steeplecabs and matching set stock from the mid 1920's.Almost certainly the oldest in the show, two of the trains are 95 years old and ran exceptionally well.
The AGM went ahead at 2pm and finished just after 3pm. Full details of the AGM are elsewhere in the collector. Notable points are no Subs increase, July show is well on its way at the new location in Milton Keynes and two other shows Beckenham and Alresford will both have strong TCS involvement.
The TCS have also been invited to jointly run the Hook Trains only show on December 9th. This will help organiser Steve Clements increase layouts and numbers plus have a Christmas event for the TCS in the South; all agreed it was a good idea.
The show finished at 4pm and despite a slightly lower attendance than hoped it was a very well organized show and was enjoyed by all. Well done to Bryan and Paul Draycott and his team for such an enjoyable day.
Some more photos:
And even more photos, with a Hornby theme, these are all from Tony Penn:
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