Brighton Modelworld 15-17 Feb

Three of our members ventured 130 miles to the south coast for this show, Ray, Clive and I starting out at 7.30 Saturday morning. This was a good show if your modelworld consists mainly of model railways. The blurb on the website and literature implied that this was a show for all modellers, but we were a little disappointed. Perhaps it should have been advertised as a model railway show with a variety of other exhibits, as we reckon that around 85% including traders were rail-orientated.

The layouts and rail models on show were of an excellent calibre but where were the plastic kits, the resin figures, the model trucks? The show itself was very fragmented and we could not get hold of a guide, with models over two floors and many rooms we may not have actually seen it all.

The show was very busy and we were lucky not to get run over by the full size Daleks that were trundling around! A large selection of 1/6 scale military vehicles were giving demos every hour alternating with R/C buggies. There was a live steam 15inch gauge train selling rides across the room. It was also nice to see John McDonald with his nice large scale models built from Meccano (as seen at Model-Ex 2007). After we left the show we moved on to the Toy and Model Museum near the railway station. This small museum is packed with items old and new, a large collection of Bassett-Lowke items, construction kits such as Bayko and Architex, Hornby, Dinky, Spot-on. Model rail layouts, large scale R/C aircraft, Model engineering and much much more, well worth a visit. All in all it was not a bad day out.