It has been just over a month since Canute Road Quay made its first proper public exhibition appearance at the excellent Exe Model Railway Society’s exhibition so I thought a little update might be in order. It certainly made a change taking a layout to an exhibition where I could firstly see out of the rear window of the car and secondly, unload, be set up and operational within 20 mins of arriving at the venue. Fisherton Sarum takes up the whole of the rear of the estate car (seats down and floor to ceiling) and on average takes about an hour to set up!
One of the advantages of taking a layout to a show a distance away is the opportunity to see layouts that I do not usually get to see and also it’s a chance catch up with friends (some of whom even had a play) and acquaintances from the area that I don’t often get to meet up with and this show did not disappoint on either count.
From an operational perspective I was ably, and with thanks, assisted for the weekend by friend and fellow modeller Simon Paley and we found that operating the layout on an hour on / hour off basis worked exceptionally well and kept the operational interest up on what at the end of the day is just a little shunting layout.
Also the operating position purposely located at the front left hand end enabled pleasant and easy interaction with the viewing public. I was very pleased with the positive reaction and comments from the visitors to the show, especially my little bit of cheating with perspective for the terraced houses on the backscene that can be read about here. I also picked a few more potential exhibition invites that I shall follow-up accordingly.
There are a few things still to complete on Canute Road Quay such as: adding proper interiors and lighting for the front two main buildings (which are not yet permanently fixed down so I can complete this activity), actually wiring up the street lamps so they work, finishing the gantry crane with its hook and pulley and some more weathering of the buildings especially on the roof lines as a result of the number of seagulls present!
Also since the exhibition I have taken the opportunity to take a few more snaps of Canute Road Quay, during a couple of running (play), which is one of the advantages of being a small layout that I am able have set up all the time at home. Some of these quick snaps can be seen accompanying this post.
In my Lighting is Quay post I discussed the use of the LED strip lightning that I have deployed on Canute Road Quay although at home and for most of the time at the Exe MRS show the lighting was extremely effective there was at certain times of the day a shadow cast on the backscene of the front pelmet due to sunlight shining in through venues high level windows (I do not think it was really noticed by visitors to the show but I found it a little annoying at times from an overall presentation perspective). I have therefore fitted a second LED strip without any opaque strip of plastic in front to enable either of both LED strips to be switched on to give three different lighting levels to counter an effects of a venues ambient lighting.
In other news, I have been approached by two of the main model railway magazines to feature Canute Road Quay, in order to allow time between publication and ensure that different articles can be written I have accepted one of the approaches, give priority to the magazine whose lovely exclusive tank locomotives gave rise the initial idea of building the layout in the first place, so it shouldn’t take much to work out which magazine it will feature in first… The photoshoot has been arranged for September with the article hopefully appearing before the end of the year, so watch this space.