Sunday 8th November and I found myself “on the road” at 0630 in a damp cold and gloomy November morning with Brian Guilmant and his 009 Society salesmobile heading north towards the village of Weedon Bec just off the A5 Watling Street Roman road for the 3rd biennial Northampton & District Narrow Gauge Modellers “members and friends open day”, another of those small narrow gauge area group organised events that features a variety of narrow gauge layouts where model railway enthusiasts who know what is good get together and enjoy a day of informal and friendly like-minded fellowship.
In this case around 100 people converged from all 4 points of the compass and I spotted fellow modelling acquaintances from central Wales, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Suffolk, Essex, the West Midlands, Hampshire, Dorset in the case of Brian and myself and of course adjoining midland counties! We arrived in good time to set up what was remaining of the sales after the locusts had descended at Expong the weekend before, and managed to devour the most enormous doorstep sausage and bacon sandwich that had been provided by the 5 star catering team of Julie Cope and colleagues. There were 10 ng layouts, 2 Society/Association sales stands, a 16mm scale display and a very good railway artist was also present (apologies for not noting his name – it wasn’t in the programme!). Some modellers wax lyrical about the “major” MRX’s, Warley, York etc, some consider that the only shows worth making the effort to travel to are the major ng shows such as Expong, Shepton Mallet and Sparsholt – which are actually all MUCH better than wasting huge entrance fees on the big mainstream shows, but for many of us, myself included, what the hobby is REALLY all about is the smaller friendly and informal area group members/open days that this one was such as good example of.
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