Newbury MRC Expo 2017 Pt. 2

Newbury MRC decided to move their annual exhibition from February to October but rather than wait 20 months to the next one they staged it in October this year just 8 months after their February event.

Fuelled from my thoroughly enjoyable visit to the Farnham show in Aldershot earlier this month I decided to go to Newbury but with some trepidation as it is a much smaller show and with two in the same year I wondered whether there would be sufficient exhibits to make it worthwhile.

Well, it had about the same number of traders and exhibits as usual. Two or three layouts I had seen before and some looked a little 'tired' having been on the exhibition circuit for some time (I guess). Nevertheless there was a good variety of gauges and locations.


Unusually, my best in show does not go to a model railway but to a harbour village diorama (4mm scale) exhibited by a demonstrator of scenic modelling methods, namely Roy Hickman of 'Scenic Modelling'. His standard of modelling is very high using card from cereal packets and other scrap materials to make this diorama taking about 300 hrs and costing less than £7 in materials (not including people and vehicles). The photo shows about 25% of the whole.

A model railway layout of note was 'Southwick' (00 gauge). Plenty to see on this 18' vista (2nd photo),  including locomotives with sound.

Most of the locomotives were very heavily weathered, which for me was a touch too much though.