Sincere apologies for the long gap since last posting. Foxbury has been to a number of exhibitions and I will do brief run down of these in a moment. I've taken early retirement and have been rather busy on other things, where did I get the time to do it all when I was working I ask myself.
Foxbury's first exhibition outing was at my local show in Cheltenham. The next appearance was at "Larkrail" in Bath in the Summer of 2022. Although I was pleased with the general running of the layout at these shows, I was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the couplings. These were B&B's, a type I had been using since 2004. The problem was they either failed to couple smoothly enough or became uncoupled when I didn't want them to! They do require very accurate alignment and are very sensitive to the slightest imperfection in one's track laying. One of my fellow 3mm Society members was also exhibiting at Larkrail (Mike Corp with his wonderful "Heybridge Wharf"). When discussing the issue of couplings he recommended those made by DG but modifying them as per an article by Tony Briddon in the 3mm Society magazine. Although compatible with the B&B one, the DG differs in that the coupling loop is from wire rather than an etch. The DG ones wire resulting in a lot less resistance than an etch with a resultant cusp on the edge. As soon as I was home I set about ordering some DG's from Wizard Models. With the aid of the jig supplied I was soon batch-building them. Initial trials on a rake of wagons was successful and very soon all the regular exhibition stock was converted.
The next exhibition was the Warley Show at the NEC in late 2022. The layout, and above all, the couplings worked a treat and 2 days worth of operating went by in a flash. I can honestly say there was no unintentional uncoupling and the only time a wagon failed to couple was due to a misaligned coupling which was soon rectified.
2022 also brought my second layout article in the Railway Modeller, the April edition to be exact and with some wonderful photos taken by Ian Manderson on behalf of the RM team.
Exhibition Diary
21st & 22nd October 2023. Uckfield Model Railway Exhibition at Uckfield Civic Centre.