Manchester MRC have changed the date this year, due to Warley changing their date to MMRC’s old slot at the beginning of December. (Unfortunately this now clashes with Dragonmeet – you can’t win!)
The Manchester show was still at the same venue, the New Century Hall near Victoria station. There were a large number of high-quality layouts, even if a lot of them were steam age ones. Two of the best, as far as I was concerned, were “Europe 3″, a large HO-scale Italian layout set in the present-day with an assortment of FS Bo-Bo-Bo electrics of various classes, and “Mostyn”, just about the only large P4 diesel-era layout in existence, with their large collection of class 24 and 25 ‘rats’, and a special guest appearance by an ex-works regauged Heljan blue 47. While this layout still has some way to go, especially stock-wise, what they have so far is very impressive indeed, and challenges the kettle-centric world of finescale modelling.
The Manchester club’s own ‘Dewsbury Midland’ was in evidence, of course; the last couple of times I’ve seen this layout they were running it with 70s blue diesels, this time they’d turned the clock back to the mid-60s, mostly grimy steam.
Other layouts that caught my eye were “Fort Nevis”, 2mm fine-scale based on Fort William in Scotland with an extra couple of sidings, operated with a fleet of class 37s, and “Grange over Sands”, an accurate N-gauge model of ‘The Dawlish of the North’, and the large N-gauge main line “Starbeckbridge”.
Of course, the traders ambushed my wallet as usual; but I had been looking for the Minitrix Swiss intermodal set for quite some time.
