Cotswold Festival of Steam

One of our members was invited to take their layout, Caterton, to the Cotswold Festival of Steam at the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway, to be displayed in the Tim Mitchell building at Winchcombe. It was decided that it would be a great opportunity to display the activities that the club gets up to and to hand out flyers for our upcoming Oxrail exhibition. Anyway, it’s always great to give a layout a run, and we do enjoy exhibiting our layouts, so it was decided it would be a great event to support.

On Saturday morning, the van arrived and Carterton was loaded to make its way to Winchcombe. The layout boards plus stock all fitted neatly into the back of the van. The route was carefully selected to avoid some of Gloucestershire’s challenging roads, and the team of three set off towards our neighbouring county.

We arrived and sorted out our spot in the Tim Mitchell building. The layout was assembled and our banners were put up.

Trains seemed to be fairly busy throughout the event. Each time a train arrived, another influx of visitors came into the building. Many conversations were had with people about the layout, modelling techniques and DCC running, about the club itself including both Oxrail and joining the club.

Many flyers were handed out. By Sunday, these had run out, and further flyers had to be obtained from our base at Collindale Road ready for the Bank Holiday Monday.

The teams had a great time, not only talking about our hobby but also running trains. Who wouldn’t enjoy running layouts for three days over the bank holiday weekend?

However, it was all too soon to pack things away. The layout was disassembled, and put back in the van, for the team to make their way home.

It was a good weekend. Whilst watching steam trains drift past the door whilst operating a model layout is good, the conversations we had with many people about the hobby and club membership were perhaps the best.

To find out more about the Carterton layout, then click here. And don’t forget to find out about Oxrail 2024 by clicking here.

Details about visiting the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire railway can be found by clicking here.