The Greatest Gathering

When I was a lad, I had a dream. The thing I wanted most. Not for fame or fortune, or even for world peace or anything like that. Not even for a kind word from that girl in class that I seem to remember that I quite liked at the time, and whose name would probably come back to me if I gave it a minute. No. What I wanted most was the ultimate railway exhibition experience.

I think I’d been to Crewe Open Day. It must have been about 1990. And my mind was blown by the number of trains that were concentrated in one location. But it wasn’t everything, my mind wasn’t quite blown enough, and I imagined how it would have been better had I curated the event myself.

What I wanted, was everything, in one place. More trains that you could ever possibly hope to ever see and appreciate in one day. Trains from across time and space. Trains from history, and trains from the other side of country. This weekend (1st August to 3rd August) that dream came true.

No. I didn’t curate my own rail event. Someone else curated the ultimate rail exhibition for me. That event, was called the Greatest Gathering, and I took a lot of pictures. Some of which I will share below.

Getting There

We drove to the event the night before and stayed at the Holiday Inn. I’ll have a bit of moan about that at the end – I have notes. The event was already sold out for the Friday and Saturday by the time I’d heard tickets were on sale, so I could only get tickets for the Sunday, so I thought we could make a weekend break of it in sunny Derby.

Transport was organized from the train station using vintage buses. Our Vehicle was a Volvo Plaxton B10m. Its always sobering when a particular make and model of a vehicle becomes considered to be vintage, or a museum piece. These buses were the buses I would catch to work not a quarter of a century ago. Ouch. Still, it was good to relive them.

The Event

There was quite literally too much to see. So I will just dump some of my better photos below and add a bit of commentary here and there.

Class 26 – Never once saw one of these out in the wild.

I feel like I should know what this is, but I don’t. Its a shunter, in intercity colours, but not something I would expect to see in on a real railway. Very cool though. The cab reminded me of an old derelict NCB shunter that was stationed at Hickleton Main Colliery when I was very little.

The inside of a Pendolino. I’m a regular traveller in to Euston on these, but it was interesting to see what they looked like without people standing in the vestibules.

It was interesting to see a class 23 here, what with all them being scrapped 40 years ago. This one is a rebuild. The 37 was open to the public to enter the cab apply power, pull the horn, that sort of thing. Wonderfully noisy.

A few specimens of hybrid power. Electro Diesel locomotives. They run either diesel, or external supply.

There was a ride on a steam train. Always good fun. Unless you get ash or grit in your eyes.

There was a ferris wheel. They say that your tolerance for height diminishes with age. I believe them. I can honestly say I will be very happy if I never go on another ferris wheel. Kids loved it.

Electric Multiple Units

Food was a disappointment. There were loads of food stalls to choose from, but the queues were long too, so we settled for a burger. There was a also a mobile bar, with a healthy queue as you might imagine, but when I was finally served I was told it was zero alcohol drinks only. Turn the other cheek and all that.

The toilet facilities were quite excellent though.

There was a selection of High Speed Trains. With the HST power car (Intercity 125), class 91 from the Intercity 225, a Pendolino class 390, A TMST Class 373 Power Car from the Channel Tunnel services, and a green Deltic for good measure.

The place was full of Class 66s. I see about a thousand of those any time I go near a railway so I wasn’t paying that much attention to them. But I did leave the event somewhat disappointed that I hadn’t seen a class 59. I’d really hoped that I would see a class 59 up close but I left empty handed. I only realised later that there was one there and that I taken a photo of it.

One of the highlights for me was the freight diesel section, mostly in BR blue. This took me right back to my spotting days.

There was plenty of steam to be seen. It was particularly odd to see Fly Scotsman getting so little attention. Here is a locomotive that we drove across dark country lanes to see stop and take water in the Yorkshire dales when she first returned to the mainline. We followed her to York for her first exhibition. We queued for an hour in County Durham to get a tour of the cab and walk through the tender. Yet here she was, alone, visitors walking by like she was a regular dumpster.

Another one of the highlights. Brand New class 99.

The Pacer and Sprinter drew more attention than you might have expected. A blast of pure nostalgia.

Abrupt Closure

With so much left to see, the big hand tolled 4 o’clock and the public address system blarted out that the “even”Greatest Gathering was now closed. Sod off!”

It was a bit of a ‘Release the hounds’ moment. There was so much I hadn’t seen. We didn’t see the model railway or the main stalls. I had managed to pick up a small item but I wanted to see the traders. I wanted to see the model railways. There were exhibits that I knew were in attendance but hadn’t seen. The class 398 Tram-Tram for example. And so many others.

So. Sensing that the security team was about to turn nasty. We obediently made our way to the exit. We did, in the end, find the model railways, but they were packing up and we were rushed through.

Milton Keynes – I know it well from all the times I’ve whizzed through it

Would have been nice to spend a bit of time in this exhibit, looking at the layouts. I’m planning a model railway of my own. I need inspiration.

On the Way Out

Finally, as we were being herded toward the exit, I found one of the sections I knew I’d missed. The electric locomotives. In particular, the unique class 89. I have a couple of stories about the class 89.

On the way out we crossed an imaginary line, a point of no return where, once crossed, there was no re-entry. It was here that we saw an elderly gentleman pleading with security personnel, begging them to let him find the group from which he’d become separated. There is a fine line between crowd control and being a dick. This maybe the umbridge at the lack of a bar speaking, but I saw crowds of football hooligans in the eighties being corralled on to the specials by mounted police treated with more civility than the frail and inoffensive railway enthusiasts at the end of this event.

The Hotel

I’m not one to moan relentlessly, but as we were leaving the hotel on the Monday morning, we were asked about our stay by the receptionist. We said everything was great. She said “Really?” Like she didn’t believe us.

Ok. So the hotel was busy. It was full of mostly trainspotters. I’ve never seen that before. But it was fine. The food was nice enough. I’d had a curry, and though I’ve been spoiled by the curry experiences on offer down on Drummond Street next to Euston Station, it was still an alright curry.

A Chicken Makhani for £16.50 – Marinated chicken breast in a rich curry sauce, served with basmati rice and sourdough Naan. 1080 kcal. I am tempted to look up the recipe for this one. The other food was alright. The kids had pizzas. Cheese Toastie and chips, also not bad.

Woodfire wings for £7.95 – BBQ mesquite-flavoured chicken wings served with a garlic mayo dip. 586 kcal. I’d heard of mesquite from The Simpsons, so was pleased to try these. Its maybe time to investigate buying a smoker.

The breakfast though. An all you can eat buffet, included in the price of the hotel. There was no egg, no sausage, no hash brown. There was one slice of bacon left, which I had with a slice of bread. Bread that, and I hadn’t noticed at the time and only noticed in my photo, had the impression of finger marks. Grim.

All you can eat breakfast – That was all there was to eat, so not technically a lie.

There was me thinking the grimmest part was the finger nail clippings on the hotel room carpet. Best not dwell on things of that nature.

All in all. a great time was had by all.

09/08/2025 0

Trains in the Attic

I was probably about ten years of age when my mate’s dad proudly showed off his model railway collection. Both my mate and me were seriously fascinated by trains at the time and on this one occasion while we were playing trains at his house, my mate’s dad asked if we wanted to see his own trains. Naturally we said yes.

It was very much a look don’t touch sort of thing. I was known to be clumsy and my grubby hands spoke for themselves. But anyway. Box after box emerged from attic, and each box contained one locomotive or another in pristine condition. And not just trains, but wagons and carriages too. Station buildings and unbuilt kits of village churches and corner shops. He even had a large collection of minitrix, the road system that went alongside the trains. I was super impressed, and I decided there and then that when I grew up, I too would have an attic full of model trains and railway kits packed away never to be enjoyed.

Well. I am all growed up now, and with very little effort on my part, I achieved the dream. I too have model trains boxed away in the attic. But now that I have this, I’m not sure that its really what I want. Model trains are supposed to be enjoyed, not stored away until some distant descendant sends them to the landfill or job lots it all on Ebay once we’ve left the mortal coil. No. Its high time I had a model railway of my own.

Six years on from that epiphany and I’m still no closer to enjoying my collection of trains. Simple truth is, I don’t know what I’m doing. These things take a lot of planning. You need baseboards and electricals and plans and ideas. I’ve got none of that. All I have is boxes of trains, some of them are mint condition, still in the box. Some of them are massively in need of repair, having belonged to my own father when he was about the age that my youngest son is now. And that’s when it struck me. Before I begin my railway, I will need a fleet of working trains, and a lot of my trains need restoring.

This one for example. It used to sit in the siding on my old teenage model railway. Its one of two carriages that I never saw running properly. Having belonged to my dad, and being heavily played with by the looks of it, it was already in a poor condition when it was passed along to me. But I find the above image mesmerising, there is a sense of scale here that I scarcely believe I took the image myself with an inexpensive smart phone. I could almost step in to it, and climb aboard. It deserves to run again. It demands a restoration.

But what would it take to get something like this running again? The front coupler is knackered and will need replacing with something more modern. There are details broken off from bogies that will need restoring, its supposed to have a third rail contact shoe for picking up electricity from the power rail, I don’t know if the model even had one of those to begin with, but it should have one nonetheless. The buffers are missing. The whole thing is filthy, there is chipped and worn paintwork. By the yellow splashes on the window, I’m guessing that this has been touched up at some point before it came in to my possession, which would explain why it looks nothing like the other examples that I have found of it online.

And this is just the dummy car, the unpowered trailer.

The motorised car is in an even sorrier state. Its missing the motor bogie, and its missing huge chunks of the body. Part of the undercarriage has a hole burned through it, possibly as some sort of repair in the distant past. The roof is distorted, either by age or heat, and its no less filthy than the trailer car. Plus we’re also missing the glazing, and probably the interior detail, if this model ever had that to begin with.

This is going to be quite a project, and have some research to do.

09/08/2025 0

Forgotten Something?

You know that feeling you get when something doesn’t ring true? I’ve been getting this a lot lately and I’m almost embarrassed to mention it in case I be carted off to the loonie bin.

There are certain indisputable facts on which all can agree. Such as modern Humans, people just like us, having existed well in excess 200,000 years, closer to 300 with more recent discoveries. We also know from the evidence available that the last ice age ended about 12000 years ago, abruptly, and with catastrophic sea level rise.

History doesn’t have much to say about the ice age because there are no written records of it, but stories of massive destructive floods have been passed down through oral tradition, but because no one thought to write it down at the time they can be easily dismissed as myth, campfire stories invented to entertain the tribefolk in the long winter months or something.

So the story goes, that modern humans, homo sapiens, appeared on earth about 300,000 years ago, give or take, and lived a hunter gatherer lifestyle for about 294,000 years, give or take, until about 6000 years ago, when there was a spark of creative genius and they invented religion, agriculture, writing, and architecture, practically over night. At this time they built massive structures, way beyond our capability to explain, nevermind replicate, all over the world, and then forgot how to do it.

These people were very clever but they had not yet fully understood the importance of documenting all of their developments.

So we know that writing was invented 6000 years ago because that’s how old the oldest discovered writing is. People wrote on stone tablets because they had not yet invented paper, which is lucky because stone tablets have a greater longevity than parchment.

But this is where I struggle. The pyramids are an iconic mystery but their origin doesn’t seem to be up for debate even though the evidence is tenuous at best. There is a bit of graffiti inside the great pyramid that bears the name Khufu, and that is the only tangible thing that can be used, without it, there is no connection to the Ancient Egyptians apart from them being present in ancient Egypt.

The Pyramids are one thing, but the Sphinx was also supposed to be built around the same time, even though it’s clearly weathered by thousands of years of precipitation. I live in North West England, I know what water erosion looks like.

The general insinuation when you don’t readily believe that a statue carved out of solid rock in a desert can show signs of extensive water erosion is that you must be some kind of deviant.

“Well if the ancient Egyptians didn’t build the pyramids, who did? Aliens?”

It’s a hell of a stretch isn’t it? Accept their story, in the face of everything else you know, or get called a name. I don’t have any skin in this game, it’s fascinating to me, but if it doesn’t ring true, I can’t help but ask questions, it’s not my fault the evidence isn’t there.

All in all, I find it baffling that the cataclysm at the end of the ice age doesn’t factor more prominently into human prehistory. What’s more plausible? That humans sat on their hands for 300,000 years, and, at the last minute, and in isolated pockets across the globe, made astonishing leaps forward, beyond what we can fathom today, and then forgot. Or that Humans didn’t take 300,000 years to get their act together, and that by the end of the ice age they were doing rather well for themselves.

Anyone that has a lawn to maintain knows how quickly nature takes back any square centimetre that goes unattended. My garden shed is thirty years old and is rotting away. Soon there will be nothing left of it.

Forty years ago, when I was a young scally exploring my village, I felt the world was permanent. That everything was the way it always was, and I’d be amazed when parents told me about the olden days. I had no idea that my home was only a few years old, and I definitely had no idea that it too would be bulldozed just 20 years later, gone without a trace and replaced with more modern houses. The place is unrecognisable.

Back then I would play on a disused railway. The track was long gone and bridges were filled in. The cuttings themselves have been filled in since and the land returned to agriculture. The only trace of the railway ever existing is now in the maps, and a rough edge that can be seen by lidar.

These substantial changes in a small area happened within my own lifetime. What would remain after thousands of years? And what would survive the cataclysms? Ten million square miles of low lying fertile land was flooded at the end of the ice age. Who knows what went under the waves.

I don’t care either way, I just want a satisfactory explanation, and there are so many questions being ignored because they don’t fit. The experts appear to get cross when anyone says ‘but what about..?’. Doesn’t seem very professional.

Either way, I suppose that, in the end, time will tell.

12/01/2023 0

Getting There

The Event

Abrupt Closure

On the Way Out

The Hotel

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