MATT LOVELL reports back from the Glasgow show in February 2020.
On the 19th of February Craig, Jack, and myself drove up to Glasgow for the annual Model Rail Scotland show held at the SEC. The journey took roughly nine and a half hours from Ford, but an early start enabled us to miss a lot of the normal motorway traffic.
On Thursday we began to set up our stand ready for Friday, which was when the show due to open. With the stand up and the frames filled we were ready for the hordes of modellers to come through the doors.
As the show opened on Friday, visitors to the show were drawn to our Ruby Decoder demonstration, especially the OO Scale section featuring a Class 08 fitted with both a Ruby Decoder and a PowerPal running over a piece of electrical tape, showing how this useful product keeps your locomotives running over dirty or dead sections of track.
Other items we had on the stand which caught the eye of visitors were the Gaugemaster Collection private owner wagons which have been released over the past 12 months. These included the OO Scale, N Scale and O Scale variations.
Over the course of the three-day show we were all happily answering questions about all aspects of railway modelling, including analogue control, DCC wiring, and scenery ideas; thanks to everyone who came to visit us.
During the show I was able to have a quick look around the other traders stands to see what new items they had available to purchase and see what new prototypes were on show. The first stand I went to (like most visitors) was the Hornby stand to have a look at the new Stephenson's Rocket model. I can honestly say I can see what all the hype has been about. They also had on show the new Beatles Eurostar and other items from their Centenary Collection.
I also took a look at the Heljan stand, where new tooling prototypes of the GWR Railcar, Class 121, and Class 03 locomotives were on show.
I went to visit Train-Tech where they had on display the new operating level crossing barriers which were linked into their sensor signals - so as the train approached the lights came on and the barriers lowered. A great addition to any model railway.
At a show of this size it was difficult to choose which layouts to include in this article as there were so many interesting ones to look at.
The first layout that caught my eye was the O Scale layout called Stogg, which featured a few Heljan locomotives shunting wagons around a detailed industrial yard. What really drew me to this layout was the attention to detail, from weathered locomotives and wagons, the hand painted figures and even the empty oil drums positioned on the scene. A great layout which shows you do not need a lot of space for an O Scale layout.
The next layout I really liked was a narrow-gauge layout set in Wales, which depicts the movement of slate from the mines to a small halt where it would be taken away to a local village. This layout was built in a U shape so you could see all three different aspects of the railway including the Mine, the Station and the interchange to the mainline. A particular favourite of mine as I am a narrow-gauge modeller.
This layout caught my eye as it was not a flat scene and features locomotives coming onto the scene and disappearing in either the top, middle or lower loops which gave a modeller a lot to look at. This scene is set in the 1970s and easily showed off what London looked like back in the days of modernisation. A great layout with lots of detailed sections which meant the more I looked, the more I saw.
As five o’clock on Sunday rolled around it was time to pack down the stand and head back down south, saying goodbye to another year at the Scotland show.
The Model Rail Scotland show will return to the SEC on the 26th, 27th, and 28th of February 2021 and so will we.