We’re dead excited. Because this weekend is Key Model World Live – one of our favourite extravaganzas of trains, planes, cars, trucks, tanks, motorbikes and blimps. OK, so maybe not blimps. But pretty much everything else that moves is represented, with trains playing a major role. So we’ve been prepping our hearts out to unearth as many OO Gauge models as possible to accompany us to our last show of the season.
It generally starts with chaos: attempting to sort and cherry-pick the best models from the last month’s collections that haven’t yet made it to the website. This is when we realize that we have more boxes than a container ship and that those boxes contain more models than there are fish in the sea. But after all, this is why you love to visit us at exhibitions! Mint-condition models are separated from ‘rummage’, with engines in particular inspected and tested where necessary. Unboxed models are bagged (usually by Beth, who’s able to do roughly 15 things at once) – and gradually, order starts to emerge…
When Friday morning dawns, we combine as much muscle as possible to load tonnes of trains onto our green van and hired-in monster truck, before going through an extensive checklist of show essentials. Show orders, banners, stationary, tabards, bags, card machines, chargers to charge the card machines…everything you can possibly think of (and a lot of things you’d never think of) is then squeezed into the tiny remaining gaps among all those trains. But we love (almost) every minute of it.
Of course, back at base it’s business as usual: the trains keep on coming, and the showroom doors (and phone lines) remain open for those of you not able to make it to the show. This week we’ve been working our way through another mint-condition mountain of American HO scale models, including the largest collection of custom-weathered hopper wagons we’ve ever seen – perfect for building one of those state-side monster trains that takes so long to go past that you’ll have had two cups of tea and a nap by the time it’s done…
