18th February saw the 25th NG South West at Shepton Mallet,
a bittersweet event because it was also the final one. The Small &
Delightful Group, who have organised all 25 of the annual shows decided that it
was time to call a halt, but to mark the occasion, they set out to lay on the
biggest all NG model railway show that there has ever been. When plans were
revealed that they were hoping to get 75 layouts, many said it couldn't be
done. Well it certainly did get done and what a selection of most of the best
layouts around was gathered together and somehow accommodated in every
available room in the school! A fantastic day that will not be forgotten by all
1000+ who attended and around 300 who participated in one way or other. It will probably never be matched in our lifetimes.
Many have posted online tributes to Howard Martin and his
colleagues of the Small & Delightful Group since the event and I am happy
to add my own appreciation for the work they have done, through many trials and
tribulations over the years, including some very serious health issues amongst
members, but the show has always gone on and has always been regarded by many
(myself included) as the best of all the specialist annual NG shows, for a
number of reasons. I will certainly miss the annual February visit to Shepton
Mallet. Thanks guys.
Now, to business – well, finding somewhere to start is a
reasonable idea! The programme, as it always has been for NG South West, was
actually quite different from what was there on the day, but with roving
reporting perseverance I arrived (VERY) early and within an hour of two had
unravelled everything sufficiently to feel that my report is about as accurate
as it can be! There weren’t quite 75 actual layouts, although if you count
small dioramas and suchlike plus the ones on society and trade stands (which
many shows do) then the figure of 75 was easily exceeded. For the statisticians
there were 69 “proper” layouts on show, 14 trade stands and 10 Societies/Associations,
I read one report on one of the model railway internet forums
that “in order to fit in all these layouts, there was naturally a distinct
reduction in the normal numbers of traders”. I also read in NG World magazine
that “you can’t fit this many layouts into a hall unless most of them are micro
models, so apart from half a dozen, this would be an accurate description”.
Really? I think both the above reports must have been written by people who
attended a different venue on the day!. Trawl your way through my own photos
here and I think you will agree that the truth of the matter was very different
indeed! ALL the usual traders and societies that have attended in recent years
were there except for one noted and MOST of the layouts were at least “normal
size” for NG Layouts, with a very good number being VERY large – eg Pempoul,
Watt Estate, Charmouth/Bridport Town and the Tarrant Valley all of which are
around 30ft or more in length.
So, let’s have a look at what some of you missed and what over
1000 visitors and probably about 300 participants one way or another enjoyed. I
was told that in order to photograph all the layouts I could only allow myself
about 5 minutes maximum at each layout, not counting refreshment and natural
breaks, or delays caused by crowds and etc, so it would be “impossible to do”.
I always try to rise to a challenge and am confident that I met it
successfully, although I have to concede that rushing around crowded rooms for
6 hours did mean that it was very much a matter of quantity rather than quality
with regards to the photos and I have had to reduce the number of photos of
each layout to 3 or 4 each and split it all up into no less than 4 sections to
try to live with the constraints of Google Images. There’s still nearly 300
snaps in this album! Anyway, enough of the waffle, let’s get to the photos, I
hope you enjoy your visit to the final NG South West and that the effort to try
to create something of a “guided tour” of this memorable day, has been worth
it.
Enjoy! As always, there are bound to be loads of errors in
the captions, I would very much appreciate being corrected where these errors
are noted so that, hopefully, we end up with an accurate record of this
historic show.
PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
PART 4
