Author

Tom Cunnington

Date

15th May 2026

Reading Time

3 minutes

Copenhagen Field’s first outing of the year was to the York show – over the Easter weekend at the racecourse. The team loaded up the van on Thursday evening and headed north in time to start setting up at lunchtime on Friday. Thankfully the larger layouts are on the ground floor of the multi-level racecourse stands. and we were able to roll straight into our spot.

We set up fairly quickly, but in doing so managed to have a misalignment deep down in the hidden fiddle yard which created reliability problems on the Saturday on the North London Lines.  So we had a minor breakdown / rebuild of that part of the layout before the show opened on Sunday – generating these rare shots.

It did the job, and running was much better on Sunday and Monday. On Saturday we split up for different dinner / drinking options and some us ended up being served by a robot …

On Sunday we had a chance to run the EP for the forthcoming N gauge Baby Deltic – it looks lovely and I suspect there will be a couple on the layout before long for our diesel years occasional running. The IEP was a popular element at York when we have it the occasional spin too.

The racecourse does give the rare chance for a direct aerial view of the layout – which adds a different perspective:

And we were in the ‘shop window’ for the queues before the show opened each day:

Our leader was unfortunately under the weather for much of the show, and it was great to see everyone step up during the three days the show was open and we did the breakdown without his usual supervision …  and almost got it right. Lorry loaded we set off and got to Keen House around 11pm to unload. We missed a team picture, but thanks to the gang as ever.

Our next outings at a home fixture on 6th September for the Mini exhibition with the LURS, followed by a trip to Swansea at the end of September. The layout is due up in the second half of July in readiness for those shows.