NELMC Show - You missed it!

It is too late now, the NELMC show has been and gone, all the prizes have been won and the hall is now empty once again.

Paul Leech and Ron Martin discuss Paul's Biplane

I must say, it was a very good show, we all had a good day and the weather was kind to us this year. The trouble with holding a show right at the end of the year is we can be caught out with bad weather.

No snow this year!

It was unfortunate that, a couple of years ago, we had to cancel the show at the last minute. The weather conditions deteriorated dramatically during the week leading up to the show and London's streets were covered in snow and ice making travelling around treacherous.  A lot of our members rely on the public transport system to get to the show, as do many visitors. All the trains and buses experience delays and cancellations in these conditions making it impractical to go ahead. This was a blow to the club as it means an important revenue stream was severed that year creating a shortfall in income. Something a small club can do without.

No such problems this year. we had more models and lots more attenders than last year. We always struggle to get members of the general public to this event as it is a bit out-of-the-way.  Although the Underground station is just at the bottom of the road, we are a long way from the main shopping centres such as Barkingside. Maybe we should be looking at changing the venue for the exhibition. Our sister club, SELMEC gets hundreds of members of the general public in. Due to venue being in a much better location, just off the High Street, it is easer to promote and has a much better catchment area... 

How many? - 714

...but that is another story. As well as the models, more photographs of which can be seen on the NELMC website HERE, we ran a couple of competitions. Remember the jar of brackets I showed here a few weeks ago? Well there were 714 brackets in that jar.  Sue's version of a classic model Steam engine, shown in the previous post, had 724 parts. On the day we ran a guess the weight competition too, the jar and contents weighed 920g and Sue's model tipped the scales at 1055g. One of our young visitors got the closest to the number of brackets by guessing 708 - this was only 6 away from the correct number! Other prizes went to club members.

Ralph