DHAPR WAGON WORKS – SHOWTIME!

If there is one thing I’ve learned in my years on the model railway exhibition circuit, it’s that you don’t debut a new layout at a major show. Far better to start with a low-key event and work through the bugs when there won’t be many people watching.

This wasn’t an option for ‘DHAPR Wagon Works’. The plan, which wasn’t my idea, was that it would first appear at The London Festival of Railway Modelling in London. That’s one of Britain’s biggest shows, and one sure to be well attended by modellers and the general public. There would be nowhere to hide, not least because I’d be operating it from the front of the model!

So it was that I found myself arriving underneath the famous Rose Window at ‘The People’s Palace’ to find my allotted space as Stand 41. Years of exhibiting told me to expect nothing more than a single