Model Railways

The beloed fiddle yard

Today was model railway show day. We'd been looking forward to this for a while, and we were lucky that it went ahead - there were rumours the then-developing coronavirus situation might see it cancelled.

Anyway, we got up far too early and met Katie and Rebecca at Ribblehead station. The train from Leeds arrived bang on time (!) and trundled up to Carlisle with hardly anyone board. An hour's whizz up to Glasgow took us to the SECC, where the exhibition was being held, as was the Scottish Wedding Show. Very easy to see who was going to which show - somewhat different attire.

The show itself was pretty much what we expected - lots of retail stalls and even more layouts, some of which were hugely impressive. Some people take this stuff extremely seriously, mostly men of a certain age. Tom, as ever, spent more time looking at the fiddle yards than at the layouts themselves, some which had amazing attention to detail.
Still, Tom and Rebecca were suitably entranced, and they got on very well, better than when we went to the Direct Rail Services open day last summer. Tom went there with a fistful of dollars thanks to his recent birthday, but in the end, he only spent £60 on three more Pullman coaches, complete with carriage lights. He was planning to buy scenery stuff for the new upper deck of his model railway, but as soon as he saw the coaches, it was a done deal. To be fair, it was a bit of a bargain.

Lunch was very average - a cheese and onion pasty and a bottle of Irn Bru, sat on the corridor outside the hall, just by the loos. Hey ho, exhibition food. Katie and Rebecca had brought sandwiches of course, and I was slightly envious of them. They looked much nicer than our greasy fare.

I think we timed it spot on. By the time we'd seen everything in the show, from huge steam powered locos to tiny T-gauge (1:440 scale) layouts, our feet were staring to ache and it was almost time to head back to Central Station for our train to Carlisle.

The journey home was just as easy as the journey back, and we got back to Ribblehead all smiles, especially as I had time for a couple of quick halves in the craft beer pub on the platform at Carlisle. The girls were excellent company, and Katie gave me a hilarious account of the more interesting parts of her past. Gave me a good laugh. I reckon we may think about doing it again in the future.