Sandy Shores @ Salisbury Railex 2026 (Thruxton)

 

Well, after the rigmarole that rewiring the layout turned into, I'm pleased to say that I actually made it, layout in tow, to Salisbury Railex! Unfortunately, it just happened to coincide with the worst heatwave May has ever seen, and I was, unexpectedly, in what I can only describe as a glorified tent:

Above: Having not been to the location before, and having seen photos online, I assumed I would be in the modern glass building shown immediately above... unfortunately, a few of us were lumped into the 'Pavilion'. It was incredibly stuffy all weekend with no air flow to speak of!

Fortunately, everything worked perfectly - and I was very relieved to have no issues at all on the layout (except for operator error, of course!). I only forgot to switch the crossing polarity twice which, especially given the heat, is a win in my books as it shows the new control panel is much more operator-friendly. 

The show itself was good, albeit pretty quiet (probably due to the heat and remote location). The stewards were always on hand to help, but I felt really bad for the car parking attendants - some of who were stood outside for 5+hrs on an old tarmac runway in 35 degree heat! Thank you to the S&SWRS for a lovely welcome, and I hope you at least covered your costs putting on the show.

Above: On to the layout, and I even remembered to swap out the noticeboard with a poster for Salisbury Railex - just a shame the printer decided not to print the correct colours; it was meant to be a green background to match their website colours, not purple!

Above and below: I also had some visiting rolling stock briefly - a lovely young chap showed me a trio of Isle of Sodor locomotives (two minus their faces), which I must day looked absolutely gorgeous. He's done a great job on these - much better than I could ever hope to achieve!

Above: Once again, all three of my locomotives performed brilliantly despite the best efforts of the heat. The NS2F shunter here does seem to have a bit of a chassis wobble which sometimes causes it to be very hesitant, but after a bit of manhandling (!) it does work again for a few hours without issue. I should probably work out why it's not sitting flush, but the thought of me trying to reseat the chassis does fill me with dread...

Above: An overview of the layout. I do think it would look neater if I added 'wings' to the left and right to hide the ends of the backscene, but I don't know how I'd easily attach the left hand side as there is nothing to support it!

Above: The fiddle yard at the end of day 2 shows just how hot the 'pavilion' got - not a straight bit of track in sight! It makes me glad that there is room for expansion on the scenic part of the layout, and that I spaced the tracks far apart on the fiddle yard.

Above: Usually for an exhibition, I wouldn't have time to look at other peoples' layouts, and indeed only because there was a quiet spell on the Sunday did I get a proper chance to look at another layout on show - albeit only one that was next door to me; here's Michael Campbell's absolutely exquisite Loctern Quay. One of the things I spent quite a while discussing with him was the card system seen at the front of the layout - it's something that I think might be worth considering for Sandy Shores to alleviate the current mindless shunting that I do!

Above: My phone camera doesn't do it justice, but the colouring and attention to detail is spot-on on this layout. And just look at how raising the cottages up on the left enables you to have a much better look at the details, plus makes the scene more interesting despite it only being a few centimetres deep at this point.

Above: Raising up parts of the layout by only a couple centimetres really adds to the realism - look at the vehicle in the background that's at a slight angle. Such a simple change but one that immediately makes for a more realistic scene - very few places in the real world are perfectly flat!

Above: As mentioned, the layout is full of details: like this fisherman having a well-earned rest, slumped against a warehouse. Perhaps he's been waiting ages for someone to remove that sunken barge so that he can tie up his boat?!

Above: What's particularly impressive about this layout is that it's only about a foot wide, yet it looks twice that depth! I have to be 100% honest and say that I really dislike low-relief buildings - it's one of those compromises that suspends belief to me. Yet, here I didn't really notice them. Even the cottages at the front of the layout (not visible here) are low relief yet it wasn't until I looked at the layout for more than 15 minutes that I actually noticed!

Above: I'll leave you with this last photo showing a very, very novel feature. That gap between the buildings? What you're seeing is actually a sliding fiddle yard, not another siding! I love that Michael has really twisted the boundary between scenic side and fiddle yard. Unless you were watching the sector plate move, you'd easily never realise it was there. An absolutely fantastic feature and a great use of space - no trains disappearing into a hole in the sky like on my layout. Food for thought for my next project, that's for sure...

Thank you to everyone who had such nice comments to say about the layout - they were really appreciated, and I'm glad people immediately got the inspirational locations that inspired it, like Dungeness. I also had some people ask about Calshot, quite unexpectedly; that's going back quite a few years now! Anyway, the next booked exhibition is Marchwood on Saturday 5th September. If you're around, do pop by and say hello - and feel free to have a go controlling the layout and/or running your own OO9 stock.