On Saturday 7th March NG34MRS held our 2nd annual model railway exhibition. Following the success of the November charity model makers show, we returned to the Great Hale village hall.
Why not Cranwell village hall where we meet? We discovered at our 2025 annual show that we had a small car park and our visitors were contending the sports events on the adjacent pitches, with the resultant knock-on effect of street parking throughout the village. It was a nice problem to have but not something we felt we could inflict on Cranwellians again. The Great Hale village hall has a much larger car park plus the added attraction of the 8-sail windmill just down the road for anyone wishing to make the most of their day out.
So how did the show do? Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. We had 119 paying visitors through the door, which was on a par with 2025. As under-16s have free entry if accompanied by a paying adult the number visiting was therefore much higher.
Our friends from surrounding clubs joined in with their layouts and we also had the priviledge of being able to show and operate the Heckington Railway Museum’s “Heckington” layout whilst it is on loan to us during Network Rail’s refurbishment of the Heckinton station building. The public were able to have a drive of the trains as well and many locals were pleased to see it.
The aim of a model railway club exhibition is to swell the coffers to help clubs pay for club night hall hire, materials, insurances, rolling stock and subject matter expert lectures. This year we were pleased to add £1397 to the club’s funds. As we are running out of our current storage space for layouts this will allow us to fund some additional storage footprint at Cranwell for our Friday evening meetings.
The day wasn’t completely without charity and we were happy to host a team of fundraisers from St Barnabas Hospice. The club presented a donation to them, which added to their own earnings for the day, will help them deliver the much needed assistance they give to our community.
We would like to thank all our friends for attending with their layouts.
We would like to say thank you to our show sponsors of the day – B&H Models, Brickyard Models, Elaine’s Trains and Maxey Models – for their financial support and for providing much needed services to our hobby.
And finally, we owe a debt of gratitude to the catering staff volunteers, particularly to the Boston MRS team again, for keeping the event fed and watered. After all, what use is an exhibition if you can’t have a decent brew and a bit of cake while the trains go around.
Thanks for coming. See you again next year.