St Albans Model Railway Exhibition

My first railway related outing of 2012 was to the St Albans Railway Show at the Alban Arena.

General view of the show

There were plenty of good quality layouts on show with a smattering of trade stands as well. The Alban Arena is a large place with lots of smaller rooms all of which were used to display layouts.

An Irish diesel shed.

This led to a lot of moving around to make sure you didn't miss anything, not a problem in itself but a bit more signage to help visitors would be useful.

A crossing on a small American
layout

Although it was a local exhibition the number of layouts had attracted a lot of people and there we had the next problem, one of size. Although the venue is large it did seem that layouts were cramed in to get as big a show (in terms of layouts) as possible.

A steam tram loco.

Having said that I did enjoy the show but being able to get to see the layouts is important and many times, despite waiting, we could not view some of the layouts as there were other people looking who appeared to have camped out and were not planning on moving.

Would I go again? Yes but this time I would get there early to beat the crowds.