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All photos in this Blogspot and those accessed in Google Images via the links in each report are my Copyright and may be saved for personal use only. They may not be republished elsewhere without the written permission of the Copyright holder.

Hello and welcome to my twice reinstated and updated photo reports of visits to narrow gauge model railway layouts and events! Following the sudden and untimely cessation of Fotopic in March 2011 and with it the loss of my photo galleries, I started this blog in order to try to keep my "Roving Reports" available to those who enjoy viewing them. I have linked this blogsite to the old galleries which I originally rebuilt and posted in albums in Picasaweb. Once all the old reports had been rebuilt, I have continued to add completely new ones to cover my visits to events from April 2011 onwards.

In August 2016 Google blocked access to Picasaweb in order to force everyone to use their "much better" Google Images, so I had to do the whole exercise again. Thanks! .

Meanwhile......Because of the way this Blogspot works, the most recent postings appear first and the oldest ones last. Each report contains a link to the Google photo album plus captions for that report. The link will take you to the front page of the Google Album for this report. Left click on the first photo and it will open into a manually operated slideshow. A panel should open alongside the image on the right showing the number of the photo and the caption text. If it does not appear, click on the small white disk top right of the photo panel and it will open. Move forward or backwards by clicking the right or left arrows on your keyboard. When you have finished viewing, click the back arrow showing top left of the photo panel and this will take you back to the album opening page.

Close it in the normal way by clicking on the "X" top right or click the return arrow top left of the Windows screen to return to the blog, depending on which browser you use. Once back in the blog, any report can be accessed sequentially from the blog by scrolling downwards and if required, click on the "older posts" link at the bottom of the list, or simply go to the Blog Archive on the right of the window and select any report by simply clicking on the title.

Sunday, 1 May 2011

11/12 September 2010, Nationale Smalspoormuseum Modelbouwdagen, Valkenburgse Meer near Leiden, Netherlands

After a gap of 5 years since I last attended Valkenburg, a very late opportunity to fill a vacant seat in Lee Bryant's car arose and at 0300 on Friday 10 September I duly left home on a memorable expedition to the Netherlands that finished 72 hours and 10 minutes later when I returned to my bed at 0310 the following Monday!

It was great to meet up again with many of my good friends in the Dutch 009 Group on their own “home turf”, as well as several other fellow narrow gauge modellers from both Holland and Germany, plus of course the British contingent of Lee Bryant with Coil End Lane; Tom Dauben and Chris Matthews with Tom’s Dunbracken; Don and Val Sibley with their 1:100 scale (almost TTn3!) Belgian Country Tramway; and Andrew Burnham and Heather Scott from Peco who joined us on the Saturday.

I very much enjoyed all aspects of the weekend, which anyone who has ever attended will confirm, is so much more than simply taking part in a model railway exhibition. I was particularly impressed by and grateful for the superb welcome and hospitality provided throughout the weekend by the hosts from the Valkenburg Museum. Fantastic! An added bonus was Ted and Henriette Polet’s very kind invitation to Lee, Tom, Chris and myself to visit their home for an evening meal, and of course to climb that famous near-vertical staircase to see the Craigcorrie & Dunalistair in all its glory (Minus Dunalistair Harbour, but we caught up with that at the museum as Ted had extracted it for the exhibition). It was my own 4th ascent of the stairs to visit  the C&DR , but a first for the others and a highlight of what was a superb, friendly and inspiring weekend for us all.

My set of photos starts with some impressions of the visit to the C&DR – which in my opinion is easily the premier model of a complete operating railway system, narrow gauge or otherwise that exists; then we travel across the city of Leiden from Ted’s home to the Valkenburg Museum and I have tried to compress a reasonably comprehensive overall summary of all the attractions to be seen, both model and full sized. A brief glimpse of the superb BBQ and special train that the organisers laid on for participants on the Saturday night, and finishing with some photos of the attending layouts – with no apologies made for featuring Dunalistair as the main attraction (complete with some of my own visiting Mull & Iona Railway stock!). I do hope you enjoy this report, which for me was the highlight of 2010.
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