[Mine Explorer]

Originally Posted by davidnclare

Ian 'an hour or so'
It is more like three hours.

The rally doesn't finish until 5pm. If I'm taking the steam U-Boat back to its home yard then I arrange with the section organiser to leave the engine line about half an hour early so I can hit the road and be back before dark. On each occasion I've done it, the roller has been leaving the rally gates onto the A458 at 5pm (so has technically been on site until the end!), which means it's taken less than 30 minutes (usually 15 to 20) to do the quarter to half mile or so from the engine line at slow walking crawl and to then join the queue and shuffle along the entrance drive. This means it's moving and not a huge problem around 16:30. On Monday night I drove straight off the field for the first time at 19:30 without sight of another vehicle trying to leave, and the road had been like that for some time as I'd been parking up the tatty heap a short distance away from it ready for Tuesday.

That means in the space of three hours it goes from moving steadily at roller speed through to nothing trying to leave at all. If you spent three hours waiting for the exhibitor's gate then I suspect you were severely lost, because the build up was gone before that, and as the backlog does shuffle forwards nobody sat queuing would have to wait anywhere near that long between joining it and getting out.

What IS unfortunate is that the exhibitor exits cut through the site a bit, so it's a pain trying to cut across the queue to get from one area to another as people wrongly assume you're trying to jump the queue. It also means those trying to reach the low loader park also have to try and join and then leave the queues to reach their trailers long before actually wanting to leave. I can't see any realistic alternatives for that though.

Originally Posted by weidner

Yes , Ian , I did have a high up source , albeit he may have been expressing his intent to see that it would be so .

Last time I spoke to the playpen's section organiser they didn't know where the playpen would be next year, although they did hope it would return. I believe there are portions of the rally organising committee who were against the playpen idea from the start, so there was no guarante it would return for subsequent years. I suspect it will equally be a 'discussion' at committee level over its location or even existance next year as well. I can only think of one person who might hold a high enough position to say with any certainty where it might be, and I'm not sure they're a great fan of the 'pen either.

Originally Posted by Cvrt0_0

Having driven a roller at Onslow I appreciate the situation with the lie of the land. I just feel it is a bit of an odd situation having the working demonstrations (steam threshing, stone crushing, sawing etc) up one end of the field and the play pen (well this year it was more threshing) up the other end.

Ah, the location of the playpen this year being far away from the engine line, as opposed to a general layout issue of the entire working field being seperate from them is I think what is called 'a bodge'! Having lost the usual playpen area on the main field they decided to find an alternative rather than do away with it altogether. In the rubik's cube shuffle there wasn't alternative space elsewhere so it got lumped in the already existing steam ploughing/cultivation area - thus meaning there wasn't enough space for a proper demonstration of that either. Not exactly a great sucess from any perspective, but the alternative would have been not to have even tried to accomodate one...

This year could either be seen as an unfortunate "one-off", or the beginning of the end. If it's decided that the traditional playpen space is not available in future years and everyone - visitors and exhibitors alike moan like hell about this year's alternative, then it will no doubt be easier for the organising committee to decide just to do away with it and not make any attempt at one in the future. We'll be heading back to the engines stationary on the peg for the weekend situation - which was the situation prior to 2010.

I know it is hard to please everyone, I appreciate space is finite and at no point was I suggesting 'displacing' people to make room for steam. But perhaps a rejig might be in order?

When I said 'displace' I was meaning being moved to elsewhere on the site. Clearly space for exhibitors to camp isn't optional, but it does occupy a large area. Public camping provides a welcome income stream so it would be financially daft to reduce or remove that. The public car park field is one great long slope, so not ideal to use for exhibits. The camping is the opposite end from the public entrance, move that across to make room for exhibits means all the public will have to walk through a camp site to reach the rally - that ain't gonna work. Visitors already have to skirt around the edge of the camping to reach the working field which is where the 'division' between sites comes from.

There are effectively only two entrances onto the site. If you make the current exhibitor's entrance the public one then the only large area for public parking will be the current working field. It isn't possible to move that to the other end where there's currently public parking as that ground is uncultivated park land for grazing - the landlord isn't going to want that ploughing up.

Whilst minor tweaks are possible, and sections can move (spit bangs have been in a variety of locations over the years, as have trade stands, craft and beer tent. The fair has also shuffled a bit), when faced with the site they've got it's hard to see how there can be any great major rethinks, and certainly nothing that solves the traffic issues outside the site.

Originally Posted by Mr. Fettler

Regardless of how good this show might be there is NO way I'd queue up in that.
Looks like Russia in the 70's waiting for bread.

It should be remembered that David's photo was taken at 08:30 in the morning - the gates to the rally didn't open until 9:15, so people are queuing up like that 45 minutes before the start! I accept that I understand the queues were pretty bad throughout the day as well, but the organisers can't do anything to prevent queues before the gate is even open. Even if the decision was made to open early, all that will happen is in subequent years it will become expected that it will open early and people will start arriving and queuing even earlier.

For all the critisim on here, that members of the public and enthusiasts are prepared year after year to stream into the site and form such long queues must surely mean the organisers are at least doing something right to provide an attraction that's that popular.

Originally Posted by triumphman

Mine explorer putting in a late entry for longest post of 2014. Good effort.

Well I could quote each post and pass comment individually, filling the page with posts in the process - or I could write one post and incorporate all references into it. If someone isn't in the least bit interested in my mutterings then it's easier for them to skip one long post rather than have to scroll through multiple ones...