Paws beyond the Potteries - a Model Railway Show

Ay up, everyone!  It's Hanley Bear again and I'm going to write another blog post about a great day out I had two weeks ago, with Grizzly, Polar and the cubs, Dudley and Waverley.

Grizzly's model railway club (the Alsager Railway Association) had organised a big show at the Bentley Car factory near Crewe, with some of their own club layouts on display as well as visiting ones.  Waverley and Dudley love model railways and wanted to go very much, and so did I, so we all jumped into Polar's bag.

Polar and Grizzly were going to help sell tea, coffee and snacks, but when we arrived the show had only just opened and the cafe was quiet, so Polar took us bears for a look at the layouts.  I liked looking at the posters of the posh cars, and imagining I was driving them!

The club's big layout is called "Lawton Hey" and is based on South Cheshire and North Staffordshire, so it has an industrial side with works and factories, like Crewe or Stoke, and countryside with a canal wharf.

That's my favourite part, because I like the canal area and I like watching trains going over the viaduct.  

Polar and I spent a lot of time looking at how the canal water was made, using layers of varnish, as we still need to do the water in the canal in Grizzly's layout, though that will have to be much dirtier.

Little Dudley found another ARA layout, which is their 'O' gauge colliery.  Because the scale is larger, it's possible to include even more details than at 'OO' scale, although the wagons are still too small to carry a Small Bear.

Dudley thought it was good that the information around the layout also included details of the mining disasters there had been in our area, which had killed many humans and human cubs, and pit ponies too.  We are glad that bears do not work in mines.

Waverley was busy looking at the layout opposite, which was based on a coastal town in Devon, and wasn't from the ARA.  What caught Waverley's eye was this little boat, which he thought was a Clyde Puffer.

This layout, called St John's after the maker's father, had some amazing details inside the little houses and in the signal box, which all lit up so you could see them.  It looked so cosy that Waverley wished he was even smaller than he is, so he could go into one of the cottages and have tea and scones!

Another layout that we all liked, because it was fun, was set in the Rocky Mountains and had a real waterfall!  After my accident in Hanley Park, I was careful not to fall in the water while I was watching it!

We like to see layouts with pretty landscapes, steam engines and old-fashioned station buildings, but we like good modern layouts as well, and there were several of those, with diesel depots and modern factories.  

We got lots of ideas for things we could make for Grizzly's layout from looking at the ones at the show, but it's hard work making notes in a small bear brain, and we were looking forward to trying the cakes and snacks at the cafe.

Luckily for us, there were still plenty of tasty home-made cakes left, including banana bread and bread pudding, so we had a good snack lunch, but Polar said we had to stay in the bag and not get fur on the food while she was serving people.

The club had a very successful weekend, and we promised to tell our pals about it so maybe next year even more humans and other small bears will visit.