News Supplement - 15 December 2007, ©2007 Carl Arendt
RailExpo 2007 – First Impressions from Paris
By Richard Glover, Our Special Correspondent
This year the largest French narrow-gauge exhibition, Expométrique, was retitled as RailExpo and held just south of Paris on 23-25 November under new sponsorship. Richard Glover, a long-time member and officer of the Greenwich & District Narrow Gauge Railway Society (GDNGRS) in England, has been a regular exhibitor at Expométrique, together with fellow Society members, for a number of years. He was also an exhibitor this year at the new RailExpo show and agreed to share his observations with us. Richard also took some photographs of small layouts on display, and shares them with us as well. —Ed.
At first sight the new exhibition looked very similar to the Expométrique it replaced. However, the new organisers, TDS, were much in evidence and GEMME [largest French narrow gauge society and former Expométrique sponsor] was in a side room. Some standard gauge layouts had appeared, although most of the models displayed were narrow gauge.
Operation was a bit hit and miss, as sometimes happens at French exhibitions. One of the exceptions was the new layout from Escadrille Saint Michel, which operated constantly and faultlessly, as usual. ESM's new layout (7mm scale, 14mm gauge) depicted an iron mine served by a two foot gauge railway with overhead electrification (photo at right). Full trains emerged from the mine and were shunted into the buildings to be unloaded, before returning empty to the workings. [See video here.]
A new group, Passions Metrique et Etroite, also made a good showing with a modular system using scales from 1:19 to 1:22.5 on 32 mm gauge track. See their website for more information.
GDNGRS's main offering was Willesden Junction (4mm scale, 9mm gauge), based on an actual location (and name) on the WW1 60cm gauge trench railways in Flanders. Constructed by our member Pete Wilson, at around 24ft long it was the largest layout the Society has ever exhibited. The layout needed four operators at a time to keep things moving, but ran without major problems for the three days of the show.
The other two society layouts were my pizza, Starbottom Lane (above), and Chris Krupa's new micro-layout, West Sapple (below). The pizza made sure something kept moving and was used as a test bed for a new kit for a 20hp Simplex (not shown) being prepared by one of our members.
Chris started West Sapple (4mm scale, 9mm gauge) at last year's Expométrique, so it was nice to see the finished product. It attracted a fair amount of attention and Chris is considering a second module to depict a scene further down the line. Chris remarked that as many people photographed the fiddle yard (a single track cassette) as the scenic section!
Another modeller (whose name I forgot to record) was there with a pizza (below, left), this time based in a Brie cheese box (H0 scale, 9mm gauge). Nearby (below right) was a layout by a lady modeller (H0 scale, 9mm gauge). The notice alongside explained that rivet counting and exact scale were the masculine approach to railway modelling, while her model emphasised the feminine style. The layout represents a garden railway thoroughly "feminised."
Full photo coverage of all the layouts can probably be found on the Internet. [Here's one good example. Click on the various "Voir le Diaporama" buttons. –Ed.]
Another aspect worth mentioning was the variable state of layout illumination. In this, RailExpo was similar to all other exhibitions I have attended.
In general the diorama-style layouts, which are usually fully enclosed, were well lit. They used daylight fluorescent tubes, halogen spots, or a mixture of the two. In an HOm modular layout one of the modules also had a most effective thunderstorm — in addition to sound effects small, flashing bulbs were mounted on the backscene to represent forked lightning.
On the other hand, the large scale, modular layout by the group Passions Metrique et Etroite mainly relied on available lighting. The Grand Dome is well lit, but not enough to fully bring out scenic colour. This does illustrate one of the disadvantages of this type of layout, when there is no uniform approach to presentation. Over the years I've seen many good layouts spoiled by poor lighting, and this is still a neglected part of the hobby. [See a discussion of this subject in Scrapbook #60. –Ed.]
Finally, the main focus of the exhibition was traders [dealers]. Only a few of them were narrow gauge specialists — and most of those came from the UK! The French seem more interested in narrow gauge models in O scale, and there were several diorama-style layouts based on the Bachmann On30 range. This year there were fewer small traders selling interesting detail parts and kits and rather more traders selling standard HO straight out of the box. The exhibition website has lists of all the exhibitors.
RailExpo was still an enjoyable show, and the number of visitors was similar to the previous year. Aside from operation the level of modelling was generally high. I, for one, would be happy to go back in 2008.
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