The Great Electric Train Crush

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Just came back from the Heritage Motor Museum where Hornby Magazine put on their "Great Electric Train Show". I will never complain again about the crowds at Warley. The previous two years they used the whole of the circular floor which meant there was a path from one end to the other which didn't involve going through the area at the top of the entrance escalators. This year there was a wedge of the floor that they didn't use and the area around the top of the stairs had the stands very close together. I'm sure that if the fire safety inspector had witnessed the crush in that area at the very centre of the building he would have shut them down on the spot. The crowds were good humoured and everyone cooperated in getting passed each other but the layout of the stands just hadn't taken into consideration the crowd puller effect of some of them.
A moment of amusement for me was when the guy on one of the stands selling and demonstrating sound chips turned to his colleague and said "pass me that pack of paracetamol". I'll have to go again next year just to see if the get it right.

[bsa77]

I used to do a show at Gaydon when I had my rc plane company, it was always squeezed in and a nightmare. Routeways that you couldn't get two people past. Certainly not safety minded in the event of a fire.

[Peterm]

A friend of mine is over there at the moment and is going/has been to that show. He's a big lad and is probably pretty unimpressed if it's that tight. I have to wonder why the organisers ? would squeeze so much in to a small space. I agree about evacuation problems in case of emergency.

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It wasn't so much Squeezing in as poor utilisation of the space. Most of the rooms had at least one corner that had nothing in it. Warley's ploy of putting the publishers and society stands first inside the door and the crowd pullers further into the hall, means that the crowd doesn't stop dead in its tracks once it's through the door. The top of the escalators should have at least had an "orientation space" into which people would be delivered.

[sishades]

Just got back from attending today's show. It was ok, I had few problems getting to see the exhibits, and was fairly quiet for the first few hours.

[Evaret]

I'm the 'big lad' peterm referred to a couple of posts up.

Some things worked well at the show. That the venue was easy to get to by car meant there was no navigating city streets. And there was plenty of parking which was a big plus. (however I think the bus from the station to the venue only operated on one day!)

But the actual venue was very faq. It wasn't so much the number of people. It was just that the layouts and vendor stalls were far too close together. If people were standing more that 2 deep looking at layouts, others simply could not move through the rooms. Parents with strollers and those with walking difficulties often just could not move.

I was also surprised to see the layouts were spread over a number of rooms, some of which were quite small, rather than a larger hall.

A major exhibition like this needs to be in a far better venue.

But I did enjoy seeing the layouts first hand, that I had only seen in magazines. Some of them were quite superb.

Cheers

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I guess the timing of your post means you are now back home. It would have been good if we could have had your comments on the forthcoming Warley show, which is in the biggest single hall at the NEC. It's the one where we all complain about the overcrowding, but as I inferred in my post their efforts to reduce the effect are far ahead of the Hornby Magazine event.

[Tricky Dicky]

At Warley there is usually a roped off section of Hall 10 unused because they rent it by the square footage so to widen the aisles it's a trade off of rent over income. Personally, I would prefer paying a little extra to avoid the crush although I suspect around the more popular traders more space would simply fill up with more bodies.

Richard

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It's been a long time since Warley used Hall 10, It's been in Hall 5 for quite some time, I don't think they could get the prototype locos into 10 (the doors are different and the approach is much trickier.
If you take a short cut across one of those roped off areas you get very dirty looks from the NEC staff, but they never say 'owt.