Page 13 - January February 2016
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National Convention Bid Update – Heart of England
At the AGM in Derby, I announced that the British Region were considering bidding for the NMRA National Convention to take place in the UK. The first available date would be summer 2022 – 7 years away! There was a huge positive response, with a number of people volunteering to help with both the bid and the convention itself.
For those who haven’t been to a National Convention, they are quite a lot larger than ours but feature many of the same great ingredients: layouts (normally through tours to owners’ homes), a train show, clinics, a silent auction and contest, plus they also include prototype tours and general interest tours. They run for a lot longer, starting on a Sunday, with tours and clinics through to the following Saturday. Friday includes entry into the National Train show which runs until the final Sunday. We would look to re-create the same style of convention over here but with fewer expected attendees, e.g. a typical US convention may have 1,600 attendees but we would expect nearer 500 from the US. Key differences, such as layouts or the train show, are being looked into to see how best we can achieve a similar experience.
Any overseas visitors travelling to a UK convention expect to see UK outline tours, layouts and traders. This bid therefore needs to rely heavily on the best of the UK, whatever outline or scale they model. That means that we need to look wider than just the NMRA British Region and tap into our members’ other interests and also into other clubs and societies.
Those keen members who wanted to help organise the bid had a number of discussions on potential locations over the month after the AGM and met up at Warley to decide the city that the convention would be held in. A number of cities had been discussed including York, Oxford, London, Manchester and Birmingham. The cities were assessed against a number of criteria such as proximity to major international airports, attractions within 2 hours, hotel and convention centre availa- bility, and distance to the convention committee.
At the end of the discussion it was clear that any major city was close to a large number of attractions and could potentially host a convention. However, some were more convenient for travelling and had more local support. York was a strong contender but a long way from a major airport as well as from the majority of the committee. It also had fewer local attractions within 2 hours compared to a more central location in the country.
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After a long discussion, the unanimous decision of those present was for the bid to be made for Birmingham. It is close to a major international airport, has a large number of reason- ably priced hotel rooms within 10 minutes’ walk of a major convention centre, a lot of local UK clubs who regularly come together to support each other, e.g. at Warley, and had the largest number of attractions within 2 hours’ travelling time. Those attractions that can’t be reached within 2 hours’ travel may be included in advance or rear sections, i.e. weekends before and after the convention, held elsewhere, e.g. Wales for the narrow gauge trains.
As part of the discussions, those present divided up the list of items needed for a successful bid and each person took on a task:
Kathy Millatt – Convention Bid Co-ordinator, National Liaison, Financial Model, Coaches/Transport and General Interest Tours Chris Ibbotson – Accommodation and convention centre
Ant Quinlan – Tours: prototype and railway interest Patrick Grace – Treasurer and VAT
Mike Arnold – Layouts, Clubs, Train show, SIGs
Paul Evans – Insurance and CMRA liaison
Nigel Bowyer – Publicity
Mick Moignard – Bid review and sanity check
One exciting discussion we had at Warley was with Paul Jones, their exhibition manager. He was able to put us in touch with a number of key contacts in the Midlands region and was incredibly supportive and enthusiastic about the bid. It is clear that we will be able to call on a wide range of clubs to help when the time comes.
Since Warley, team members have been working away at their areas, with a lot achieved already. The bid requires a lot of lists but little real detail until it is accepted. The key discussions that we need to have are around the hotel and convention centre, and we are currently exploring these with the relevant contacts.
We are still working on a name, but the Heart of England is currently favourite to feature in it somewhere. We are also still looking for a volunteer to work on the non-rail programme or anyone with contacts into prototype or industrial tours who may be able to expand our list of potential tours. If you are interested, please contact me at kathymillatt@yahoo.co.uk.
fEbRUaRy 2016
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