Workington 2010

Sentinel spots van on wagon turntable

Last weekend was the Workington show, where we exhibited Humber Dock. I was greatly assisted by Brian (Lakeland) Lewis, who set up an ingenious sound system, and David Beale and Steve Griffiths who helped me operate it. Steve also put me up on the Friday and Saturday nights. Beforehand, Steve Paulin had helped in many ways to improve the layout and had lent his excellent Bachman Craven DMU and lots of little people, who crewed all the locos and added life to the quayside.

Although we did not win a prize (the only prize I’ve ever won is for “most unusual layout” – which had been won previously by a Lego train set) we got a lot of interest in Humber Dock and it has been invited to the Rawtenstall show on 29/30 Oct next year (and Scalefour North in 2012). People particularly liked the steam sounds. These were created by Brian using a Loksound v 3.5 chip, interposed between a ZTC controller and the track. This meant that all the locos were fed on 12V DC, and they all sounded the same but the effect was nevertheless very effective, with the brake screech sounds in particular being realistically coordinated with the engines’ movement. The children liked the way the engines whistled when off-stage and then appeared unpredictably from one of the three hidden tracks.  Betsy had created a loop of downloaded seagull sounds on my MacBook, which created a realistic ambience – and did not, as I had feared, drive us mad by their repetition!

The only down sides were the disgusting haggis at the local fish and chip shop (my fault for even thinking of buying an English haggis!) and the curious man who said my railway was rubbish because it was too high for children to look at. My arguments: that it was primarily aimed at an adult audence; that people liked looking at an eye level exhibit (think of pictures at art galleries); and that lots of children were enjoying it by standing on the box I had thoughtfully provided; fell on deaf ears. I would never be invited, he said, to any of the many exhibitions he organised. I would love to know who he was and what, if anything, he has achieved!

He seemed to be alone in his views, indeed one man who overheard his rant described him as “rude and ignorant”. Nevertheless I was pretty upset by the incident.

My view is that there is room for a range of different types of layout and display formats. I think Clutton, for instance, which has a deep panoramic landscape, looks superb at table top level but I happen to like building dioramas – three dimensional moving pictures – and they would lose their impact if viewed from above. I do, however feel for the wheelchair bound visitors and for a long time have intended to build a periscope to lend to them. It should be a simple exercise in black foam board with a couple of mirrors. A “must do” before Rawtenstall!