Our fourth year at the East Grinstead Model Railway Club’s exhibition coincided with the club’s seventy-fifth anniversary. Arriving around 8.0 on the Saturday morning we were pleased to find ourselves setting up next to ‘Simply Southern’, our regular trading neighbours at this event with whom we always manage to spend the weekend sharing humorous banter and life philosophies. Meeting up with regular friends be they exhibitors, fellow traders or customers is always a joy at the events we attend throughout the year, even if we do only see some of them once a year!

Having enjoyed the traditional railway show breakfast of bacon rolls and tea, at 10.0 it was time to open the doors to the public and for the real activity on the displayed layouts to begin. Not surprisingly the exhibition featured many layouts with a Southern bias, but there were also those representing continental and American locations.

For me, the railway element of a layout is only part of the attraction. Many contain beautifully crafted townscapes and street scenes. Jean Luc-Pineau’s ‘Bohemia to Albion Road’ depicted a fictitious line somewhere in West London in the late sixties, with a wonderful period feel to the surrounding roads and buildings.

‘Cannon’s Reach’, displayed by the host club showed us a small dockside on the Kent side of the Thames shortly after the First World War, with three levels depicting a busy street complete with an operating tramcar, the main line to London and the dockside at river level respectively.

Others afford us a glimpse into old rural England as we like to imagine it such as Chris Bassett’s ‘Hobbs Hill’, a Southern Region layout somewhere in Devon around 1960.

The EGMRC Exhibitions are now a regular feature of the Junction Ten events calendar and we would like to thank them as always for their hospitality.

For information of the East Grinstead Model Railway Club visit http://www.egmrc.org.uk.