A few photos from The International N Gauge show at the Warwickshire Exhibition Centre. The exhibition centre, a few miles outside Leamington Spa, is a former farm, which is the source of the nickname.

The show has been a fixture in the exhibition calendar for quite a few years now, as the one major British show completely dedicated to N. It’s the big meetup for N gauge modellers from all over the country, and there were plenty of familiar faces present.

The first couple of photos feature the Cornish layout “Moulinnis”, a present-day layout set in the heart of clay country.

There’s some clever thinking-out-of-the-box design elements here, with the branch line forming a continuous run while one end of the main terminates in a fiddle yard. It also captures the atmosphere of clay country even though the china clay mill (which would have dominated the layout) is offstage. And it’s very compact, with a footprint of 8′ by 3′

Not all the layouts were British outline, with German, French and American layouts on display. South Walton was a little more unusual, set in New South Wales.

As well as layouts, there are plenty of traders to damage everyone’s credit cards, and manufacturers large and small display their wares and announce new products. Here’s the first engineering sample of Graham Farish’s new class 40, equipped with DCC sound. Can you beleive that’s N?

They were also demonstrating the sound-equipped class 108 DMU, which is already in the shops. What’s remarkable is they’ve managed to program the chip so a lot of the sound functions work under DC as well as DCC!  Apply a low voltage and you’ll get the sounds of the engines starting up and idling, but the train won’t move. Increase the power and the current will flow into the motor and the train will set off as the sound chip goes through the gear changes.

Over on the Dapol stand some finished production samples of the long-awaited class 33 “Crompton”. A countainer (not a Hanjin one!) is on the high seas, eight days out of Southampton, so they should be in the shops within weeks.