TVG2

Well its all over for another year but we're already planning the next one

Last Years Open Day

The 2007 Trent Valley Group Open day was a great success. Thanks to all who came along.

The halls were open from 10am to 4pm on Saturday 20th Jan 2007 and we had about 60 people along for the day [58 actually signed in but we know there were more!].

The theme for the event was "have a go" and we had DCC demonstration tracks, soldering, plasticard & wood modelling exhibits. There was resin casting going on as well.

Layouts available to run things on were

Henmore Dale

This is the Trent Valley Groups own exhibition layout that you may have seen at shows but this time you could see a lot more as we had the full layout including the boards were still building on display giving a run of about 48 feet from end to end, or if you run fiddle yard to fiddle yard via the terminus its twice that.

McMichael's Distillery

This small layout is a model of a narrow gauge industrial railway serving a fictional distillery.

The layout was brought along by David Tillet

DCC Demo layout

My DCC demo layout has a circuit of hand built 0n30 track, only finished the night before, operated by Lenz DCC and an 009 level operated by NCE digital.

Associated with this were demonstrations of programming with DecoderPro and LokProgrammer

Photographs

There will be two Albums of photos just as soon as I can get them sorted and on to the web

Click Here For Album 1

Click Here For Album 2 - The Henmore Dale Light Railway [still being worked on]

The Full Story

We're all glad that you enjoyed the day but its takes a lot longer than 10 until 4 on the Saturday. The true story goes something like this: -

Wednesday	The Derby part of the TVG meet at Tims house to lift all the layout sections downstairs from the back bedroom where most of them live into the passage ready for loading.
Friday - lunchtime	Van collected in York. EDM Models stock and demo layout loaded aboard and drive to Derby.
Friday - 5pm	Arrive at the hall. Some TVG on hand to unload van into hall.
Friday - 6pm	Empty Van departs for Tim's to collect layout. Back to hall at 6.30pm
Friday - 6.30pm	Start assembling Henmore Dale & EDM stand. Call it a day at about 8.30pm when the layout is proved running but as yet not all scenery in place.
Friday - 8.30pm	Go to the PUB
Saturday - 8am	TVG back at the hall to complete setting up and to welcome other traders/demonstrators/layouts and rush around to get ready for opening. This bit of the day is never long enough. Some early arrivals get press ganged.
Saturday - 10am	That's it were open. In truth this is a bit of an anticlimax as people arrived early and just joined in. the day flew by with lots of people chatting with the demonstrators or just chatting amongst themselves in the tea rooms.
Saturday - 4pm	Well its all over for another year, at least as far as the public are concerned. we're busy helping get our guests packed up and away. For Port Wynnstay, EDM and the TVG we have a great new feature for this year, we have the hall for Sunday so we just turn the lights out and walk away.
Sunday - 9am	TVG, PWM and EDM [truthfully we're all TVG really] meet back at the hall. The idea was that we could have a play with our own layout. What really happened was that we ran a few bits of stuff but spent an hour discussing how we were going to finish the scenery on the new boards.
Sunday - 10 am	Start dismantling Henmore - its a two hour task for the four us left by this stage.
Sunday - midday	Depart for Tim's with the layout in the van
Sunday - 1pm	Back at the hall loading EDM back into the van.
Sunday - 1.30pm	EDM depart for York via my Dads in Derby.
Sunday 5.30pm	EDM back in York and unloading the van

This is a personal view but the pluses for us this year in the TVG were: -

using the van to shift the layout was a major improvement on 8 or more trips with estate cars.
having the hall on the Sunday allowing the group meeting and an unhurried dismantling was much better than the usual mad panic to get done