This coming weekend, 10th / 11th October 2015, Fisherton Sarum will be at the Great Electric Train Show organised by the Hornby Magazine at the Heritage Motor Centre, Gaydon 

Fisherton Sarum’s last outing at the excellent Worthing MRC annual exhibition two weeks ago proved that the relocation of the main control panel from the rear of the layout to the front left hand corner worked really well and it will be retained in this position for future shows. It certainly, as hoped, made interaction with the audience easier and more pleasant, whilst keeping things in the shed area moving.

Unfortunately towards the very end of the weekend at Worthing the turntable operating mechanism failed, which upon further inspection was due to a fairly catastrophic failure of the plastic boss that connects to the operating shaft on the underside of the Peco deck itself. This has now been drilled out and replaced with a new turned steel boss and refitted. Limited time available has meant that it will have to be tested and the MERG indexing system reprogrammed for the first time tomorrow evening once set up at the GETS show, so fingers crossed it all works properly again!

Hopefully on Sunday a guest engine will be making an appearance on Fisherton Sarum, in the form of the Bachmann N Class No.1848 that I repainted and numbered into post war SR black livery for friend and fellow post war period modeller Robin Sweet (Gwrrob on RMweb) for use on his excellent, albeit GWR,  layout‘Brent’ based on South Brent in Devon. 1848 will in a way be coming home as she was in fact a Salisbury allocated locomotive during this period.

This is the third year that Hornby Magazine have organised this show which already has a reputation for being a quality show with a great line up of layouts and traders, with the added bonus of visitors also being able to also wonder around the Heritage Motor Centre (Banbury Road, Gaydon, Warwickshire, CV35 0BJ). The show is open to the public between 9.30am  and 5pm on the Saturday and 9.30am and 4pm on the Sunday.

Once again I will be kindly and ably supported by fellow members of the High Wycombe and District MRS to operate the layout over the weekend and on the Sunday there will be four generations of my family involved (if you count the model of my Grandfather as a Ganger on the layout) as my Dad and teenage Nephew will also be helping!
I hope some you are able to attend and I look forward to seeing you there.