Essex Group Meeting Saturday 26th July

[B.Meldon]

I have taken on the task of arranging Essex Group meetings from John Spurling who has had to give it up for personal reasons.
Meetings in Essex have been few and far between in the past couple of years, and when they did take place there was only two or three in attendance, including the host!!
There must be more 009 members in Essex!
Anyway to kick things off there will be a meeting at my place in Canewdon on Saturday 26th July starting at 2pm.
'Pitztalbahn' will be set up downstairs, so no need to go up the loft ladder to see Westdorf if you do not want to. I also have a new layout that is fully working, but may only have basic scenery finished, that will be downstairs as well.
If things go well I do have a couple of ideas for future group outings.

[B.Meldon]

Could anyone who is planning to come to my place next Saturday 26th July please let me know.
I have had no response so far, so I may cancel it!!

[Stan Williams]

Brian, I hope your meeting is a success next Saturday, but if this forum is the only place you have advertised it, from experience, I don t think you will have much response.
I use it to advertise our Merseyside &SWest Lancs NG Group, but only because its part of the 009 society, I could count on one hand over a number of years, people who have responded on here.

We have built up a bank of e-mail addresses of NG modellers,  freely given and we inform them every month, what our group will be doing.  We had 61 people attend our meeting on Saturday, including a new 009 society member, who joined the society about 3 months ago. He has now passed on his e-mail address.

I appreciate, you are not planning meetings that we have in the North West, but you have to be pro active.
Think of the Essex Group as a bucket that has a hole in the bottom, you are losing members/modellers all the time,
so you have to add new members or modellers into the bucket on a regular basis.

Stan.

[B.Meldon]

Thanks Stan.
I do have an e-mail list pased on to me by John who was managing the group and I have had a couple of these respond, so the meeting for Saturday is 100% happening. However unfortunatly several of the old Essex Group members, who e-mails I do have have moved away, passed away, or no longer have their own transport.
There will also be a recent new assistant opperator for Pitztalbahn comming round on Saturday to have a practice on the layout that has not been set up for a few years to make sure he has got the basics prior to its outing at the Shoeburyness exhibition that is on 2nd & 3rd August.

Regarding the Essex Group, I know it is going to take some time to get it back to how it once was when I was managing it 20 years ago. As you say new people are the key.

[JulienW]

If it's anything like the West Mids group membership you are more likely to get emails telling you that someone can't make it rather than confirming attendance, but I agree that's not much help when hosting at home.

Hope all goes well on Saturday Brian.

[B.Meldon]

I do have some coming on Saturday now, so its happening.
Pitztalbahn has got to come down from my loft anyway as it is booked to be at the Shoeburyness Model Railway Club's Exhibition on 2nd & 3rd of August:
https://www.shoeburynessmrc.org/

[B.Meldon]

Here is a link to a short section of video of Pitztalbahn at the Shoeburyness MRC exhibition over the weekend of 2nd and 3rd August 2025. It is the first time I have taken this 38-year old layout to an exhibition since 2016. It ran faultlessly. The only real issues being operator errors, some from me and embarrassingly less from a new operator of the layout!
If there are any other videos uploaded I will post links to them:

https://youtu.be/Ub4F7Vcxu1Y?feature=shared&t=619

[B.Meldon]

Here is another video of Pitztalbahn:

https://youtu.be/1eU2qTAw2TY?feature=shared&t=446