On 24 and 25 September, the Rail 2005 show was held in Leiden, a few months earlier than last year. Unlike last year, the 009 Society was not represented although several of us had received an invitation. The exhibition calendar proved to be too much to most of us. Despite this, a number of our members showed up as a visitor, and Henk Wust assisted Derk Huisman (not a member but a well-known modeller) with his Swiss layout Valdispère. The narrow gauge content of the show was excellent, though, and in addition there were several fine standard gauge layouts, for the inclusion of which I won't apologise! Photos by myself.

On 25 and 26 June, the annual narrow gauge model railway show at Valkenburg took place. There was huge support from narrow gauge modellers both from Britain and Holland, with the 009 Society taking pride of place. We had a slight problem with visitor numbers however when compared to last year, through a road closure, and probably due to the fine summer weather which drew away visitors to the beach. Despite this, the event was a success because of the atmosphere, the music, the Chinese dinner and the steam special which took us around the lake on Saturday. Photos by Mick Thornton.

The quarterly (which is the maximum we can manage!) Dutch Group meeting of 19 February was held at my place. The turn-up of 9 members was surprisingly good considering that we had called the meeting less than two weeks before and I had inadvertedly omitted Otto Schouwstra from the mailing list (sorry, Otto!). Several people had been thoughtful in bringing along cakes - in fact, we had far too much, but thanks all the same, guys - and all we really had to do was put on the kettle and provide coffee and tea. We welcomed our new member Hans van der Linden from Eindhoven, who travelled by train to Leiden (around two hours!) and brought an ingenious shoebox layout depicting a tunnel construction site, collapsible ultra-low-relief scenery and two hidden turntables. He claims he has a continuous run and demonstrated the principle, using both turntables. Dick van Beek brought a box full of expensive, but highly refined East German models over which we sat drooling. Later we ran his Rügen passenger train hauled by a Roco 'Heeresfeldbahn' engine over the CDR in my attic and took photos. Several of the others had brought their rolling stock, including Bert van Rhijn who had built a whitemetal Bagnall saddle tank for his brickworks layout. After the meeting most of us went on to a Chinese dinner where we raised a glass to the late Reinier Hendriksen's memory - as Loes wrote to me recently the 19th would have been his birthday.

On 12, 13 and 14 November 2004, the 009 Society flag was shown at the big Rail2004 exhibition held in Leiden, Netherlands. Apart from four Dutch Group layouts, Robin and Susan Winter attended the show with their Manx layout Port Foxdale. The Dutch Group turned out with Bryn Goch (Jaap Stuurman), Castle Rock (Henk Wust), Stichting Behoud Leemspoor (Bert van Rhijn) and Rae Bridge (by myself). Permanent operators were René Boers, Arjan Straathof, Jan van Mourik and Derk Huisman, with other members and my son Axel pitching in when available. Rail2004 is a very busy show and although 4mm scale narrow gauge layouts tend to be small when compared to the others, we drew quite an audience and gave away our entire stock of flyers by Saturday night. Also on Saturday we had a Chinese dinner together with Robin and Susan which we still remember with pleasure.