Page 7 - NMRA Roundhouse March-April 2018
P. 7

 Freemo South IV, 3 and 4 March 2018 – It’s (S)No(w) Joke!
It promised to be an exciting weekend with a new larger, better lit venue in Epsom, Surrey together with partici- pants from the Midlands, West Country and Essex as well as more local con- tributors. However, what the organisers hadn’t anticipated was the intervention of ‘The Beast of the East’ and Storm Emma deciding to visit our shores. Having spent the week studying the BBC Weather website the call was fi- nally made on Friday that we would go with whoever turned up on Saturday.
It seemed a good omen when Geoff Tiller arrived with me in Horley on early Friday afternoon having made it along the A12, M25 and M23 despite more snow falling. Arriving at the venue Geoff and I were very pleased to see some keen souls had arrived early and were either setting up or descending on cars as they pulled up to help unload
their kit. While Geoff worked his magic freelancing a new module set up with what was now on-site the usual bacon butty sustenance was prepared. The assembled mass worked like trojans to assemble the layout before a break for a late lunch with operations starting around 2:15pm and continued on till 6 where we parted ways ahead of a full day’s fun on Sunday.
On Sunday operations resumed using the car cards and waybills prepared by Ian Pidgley and Alan Crooks in
lieu of JMRI. With fewer modules
than originally planned we pushed on until around 3pm, managing to run 10 scheduled trains. As well as the action on the track we had the regular high levels of swapping tips and advice generating offers of building more new modules. Hopefully these will come to fruition with Andrew Cocker’s ‘Millar- ville’ and my ‘Steyning Park’ modules both now being retired.
And so we went our separate ways after another great weekend with (hopefully) renewed enthusiasm for our hobby and for future events.
In closing I’d firstly like to thank those who had committed and didn’t make
it due to the weather for their efforts
to try and their support of the event in the first place – hopefully we will see you all next year (tbc). For the 25 or so who did make it to Epsom thanks for supporting the event and for mucking in spectacularly to make it go so well. Specific thanks go to Chris James for sorting the venue, Geoff Tiller and Tom Winlow for the layout designs, Geoff and Martyn Read for their JMRI work, Andrew Cocker for sorting the electrics and DCC, Ian Pidgley and Alan Crooks for creating car cards and waybills on Friday night / Sat for the whole layout and to Martha, Aidan and Eoin (Mrs S and my boys) for their assistance with the catering.
Dan Spalding
April 2018 - ROUNDHOUSE 7






















































































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