A LOWER than usual attendance at the Chippenham Model Railway Show has been blamed on the Rugby World Cup by show organiser Geoff Endacott.

The show at Sheldon School sports hall saw 15 model railway layouts but numbers through the door, possibly linked to Scotland and England in World Cup action, were below previous years.

Despite less than 500 people attending, the model lay outs were warmly greeted by enthused guests at the show.

Show organiser, Geoff Endacott, said: “People seemed to enjoy it, attendance was a bit down but that can happen when the likes of the Rugby World Cup are on.

“They all seemed to enjoy it, it’s a very relaxed atmosphere at the show, it’s nice when you have lots of people but the Chippenham show is a bit quieter and a bit more relaxed.”

The show, organised by Bentley Model Railway Group, welcomed just under 500 visitors in total to see the layouts which ranged from present day USA to Australia in the 1990s and Lancashire in the late 1960s.

A mixture of different model railway traders also attended the show with everything for the model railway collector from precision paints to electronic components.

The date of this year’s show was moved by a week due to the availability of club members and BMRG vice chair, Tim Williams, believes that could be one of a number of factors could have influenced the disappointing attendance.

He said: “I am very surprised at the drop; we have seen drops at other shows but not at that number.

“I think the show itself everyone who went quite enjoyed it. It was a really good show, we were very happy with the quality of the lay outs.

“There were two that stood out for different reasons, Broadford (small town in Victoria, Western Australia) was a very long layout, not a huge amount of scenery but gave the impression of wide open spaces I thought it looked particularly good.

“On the smaller side, Ron Pybus, had a layout of Manchester Colleries which gave a nice compact impression of colleries in the 60s and 70s.”

The next model railway exhibition by the BMRG will be at the Calne Leisure Centre on January 23 and 24, 2016.