Model Railway Forum

Yesterday myself and my neighbour attended the Doncaster Show and very impressive it was too, with some excellent layouts on display However, this is where I get controversial, some operators get it it absolutely right whilst a few just seem to miss read the room making an otherwise excellent layout a poor show.

My philosophy is that during a show you need to have something moving on the layout at all times. When I helped out on Amalgamated Wagon works barring my wrestling with three link couplings something was moving on the layout at all times. Now I know there can be many reasons for little happening on a layout from technical issues, inexperienced operators and the sheer complexity of a layout. One layout we visited had technical issues in the morning but did get get things running in the afternoon but painfully slow and I could not see why it was so. I do get the impression some operators are running the show like it was a club room session and the punters are just incidental except for those who are like minded. An example of this attitude was on one layout a light engine movement which for the sake of realism in a clubroom would be driven slowly to mimic the real thing, on a large layout in a show, a very slow traverse of the layout is excruciating.

In a show like Doncaster you have a range of punters from from young children to people who only interested in the minutia of a locomotive, somehow you have to cater for all and if that means certain compromises need to be made to keep things interesting then so be it. I do not expect every layout to have a Thomas the Tank Engine rake to entertain the children but a little more showmanship needs to be shown and a little more concern for what the punters want. At Doncaster there were 30+ layouts, if you spent 5 hours as we did then that averages out 10 mins per layout and that is before you visit any traders.

Rant over. On the whole both my neighbour and myself enjoyed the show despite him getting “ruck sacked” before I had time to warn him. I welcome comment from more experienced operators on the forum to views expressed above and how they think shows could be improved or not?


Richard

I agree something should be moving on a layout, but not what I saw at a show.

The owner of one layout just had a train running continuously around the oval of track. No control over it. Round and round and round.
It was even more boring than me typing about it.
The same thing was happening with 'Thomas, Annie & Clarabel doing the circuit continuously.

TD Glad you enjoyed the show.

Glencairn

I usually give a layout about 30 seconds to get something moving or I'm off. I asked a bloke why nothing was moving and he said they were waiting for the 3:47 from Blockets Marsh or similar and it isn’t due for 3 minutes. Goodbye.

Walkingthedog wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 2:51 pm I usually give a layout about 30 seconds to get something moving or I'm off. I asked a bloke why nothing was moving and he said they were waiting for the 3:47 from Blockets Marsh or similar and it isn’t due for 3 minutes. Goodbye.

Gee!!! Three trains a day kind of layout. Why build it?

Glencairn

glencairn wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 2:46 pm I agree something should be moving on a layout, but not what I saw at a show.

The owner of one layout just had a train running continuously around the oval of track. No control over it. Round and round and round.
It was even more boring than me typing about it.
The same thing was happening with 'Thomas, Annie & Clarabel doing the circuit continuously.

TD Glad you enjoyed the show.

Glencairn

I totally agree. The thing is it is not hard to make the simplest of layouts interesting. One n-guage layout consisted of a double main line that emerged from one tunnel traversed the layout and disappeared down another the operator had a number of main line trains that he fired up/down the line and I am sure that if you stood long enough a repeat pattern would emerge but he also had a suburban line and station with trains appearing and either stopping at the station and reversing back or traversing part of the layout and finally he had a number of vehicles using the Faller car system trundling round. The combined activity there was something going on and it was hard to spot any repetition unless you were stand there for some time, I really liked what I saw.

Richard

Walkingthedog wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 2:51 pm I usually give a layout about 30 seconds to get something moving or I'm off. I asked a bloke why nothing was moving and he said they were waiting for the 3:47 from Blockets Marsh or similar and it isn’t due for 3 minutes. Goodbye.

That happened at a pre-pandemic show I attended where the operators made a great deal of running according to a historical timetable. Being a suburban terminus there was naturally little happening for long periods and to make matters worse they even had a clock running showing how long you had to wait.

Richard

I think it's a problem at all shows - layouts with very little happening, and layouts that have stock moving almost continuously. Operators sometime spend ages with couplings (Spratt and Winkle), and the number of layouts where the board/track joints are fractionally out of alignment almost causing derailments always amazes me.

bulleidboy wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 5:53 pm ............ the number of layouts where the board/track joints are fractionally out of alignment almost causing derailments always amazes me.

I don't need an exhibition layout to replicate that!

My former exhibiion layout suffered a point motor failure during one show. To the astonishment of some other layouts operators instead of abandoning services I worked around it. It was one simple enough as it was one of the station loco release points so to uncoupled the arriving loco and uses another loco to either to depart or shunt the train.
Does seem too many layouts are scripted and its not allowed to vary. That can have its requirement on complex layout. A former clubs layout was poorly designed. It had a terminating double track with loops off that, middway along the rearmost on was a connection to tracks serving a harbour. Hence much shunting was needed just to get a train into the harbour. I came up with a series of cards for each operator step by step for each move and when to pause. We would have upto five locos moving at once but then one day one operator knew better as at a pause he could not see why and carried on. Did one great big mess occur with two locos trapped. Cannot remember how it was resolved, maybe the hand from the sky.