GDSF 24/08/2018

[Ian Comley]

I will try and upload some of the photos directly here later when I have some more time.

However, for those of you who could not get there and are interested to see some of the more interesting items (in my eyes) here is a link to my Flickr album of yesterday

https://www.flickr.com/photos/756535...57700597146805

A couple of fairly heavy rain showers caused the play pen gaps to be closed from just after lunch, restricting movements. Also note that I only really photographed the subjects which were of particular interest to me/I hadn't seen before.

[carl_byrne]

Many thanks for the pictures.

Cheers Carl.

[mark the spark]

Great pics

[Steamhead21]

Good Pics

[Steam Boy Hertford]

Lovely photos, I get round to sorting mine out over the next few weeks.

[glen233]

thank youj very nice photos

[Mr. Fettler]

Many thanks for sharing
you must have walked a fair bit that day

[Ian Comley]

Yes it’s a fair old trek around the site. I had to double back through the main 500@50 display areas to check for some that had been in the playpen on my initial pass, but at least this year I was spared the climb to the top of the ploughing area as those of particular interest to me were down the bottom of the area - though I missed the overview of the site from the top.

[Steamhead21]

Anyone else take pictures ??

[Triton]

Looking at the comments there seems to be some common comments. Queues to get in, no programmes, poor toilets.

To be fair to the organisers they had no idea of knowing how many people would turn up to the event. Perhaps the pre booked tickets should be limited in numbers with say, a 25% increase on the admission charge for paying on the day. If the pre booked tickets were made available for specific days and once a days allocation was sold you would have to try and book on a alternative day or pay the on the day prices this would enable the organisers to have some idea as to how many visitors there would be on a specific day and the number of Marshalls, car park usage would be known in advance. The tickets could be colour coded so that you entered the site at a specific gate and this could help to reduce the queues at certain gates. To be fair, car parking must be a major headache as you need a lot of Marshalls to control where people park their cars unless of course you have a system like Disney have in Florida. In a ideal world, you would sigh all of the car parks in zones and around the perimeter of the site you would employ road trains running in one direction which would pick up at each zone and take the punters to the entrances. During the day these would run at frequent intervals and visitors could join the trains at a convenient point close to where they parked their cars and the trains would take them back to where they parked their car at the end of the day. There would be fixed road train stops which would be clearly signed so that visitors would know when to get on or off. Finally, the toilets, whenever I see photos of GDSF there never seem to be any toilets in sight! At these events there has to be a plentiful supply of loos including accessible ones for disabled visitors and above all, they should be serviced at least once an hour and there should be sufficient staff and vehicles to do this. At smaller events like the Torbay Steam fair you see this being done. To organise such a large event must be a logistical nightmare. Mistakes have been made this year due to the sheer size of the event, however, I am sure lessons have been learnt and the appropriate remedial action will take place next year.