GCR Winter Gala 28th - 30th January 2011 - The Banbury Cross

Thanks for sharing Ken. Fantastic as always!

 

Success for the GCR, recieved a newsletter from Bill Ford, president of the GCR :

This morning (Tuesday) marks the first day of the new accounting year, so
we can give you figures for the last year through the booking office.
Despite the economic trends we have performed very well with an increase
in turnover of £190,000. All paid staff and volunteers have put in a
tremendous amount of work and effort to reach these figures and we have
the benefit of a whole year of our new marketing team and can therefore
see the trend.

The winter gala was an outstanding success, breaking all previous winter
gala records by £10,000. If you take 2008 gala week the figure was
£46,000. In 2009 this increased to £59,000 and in 2010 to £78,000. Last
weekend produced a figure of £88,500 with photo charters of over £6,000
during the week which is not included in the £88,500. Our main problem
remains the downturn on the testing and income from the Army training,
filming and the cost of the Atkins appraisal study.

It is impossible to name all the people who helped make the gala such a
success but I must name a few of the many people involved. The first
essential ingredient is the pre-planning for all the events and the
make-up this year was simply brilliant, involving Tom Ingall, Martyn
Ashworth, Steven Chapple and Alan Pakes. In this instance we had to change
the whole event as guest engines that should have been available were not.
This brought the skills of David Wright and Steven Chapple, with the
expert planning put in so painstakingly by Alan Pakes. To add to this we
must mention the operations department and the loco shed as well as all
the out stations and the booking office team. All worked extremely hard
with special emphasis on the Saturday which reached Tornado levels of
visitors. RVP with the TPO set looked really stunning and is always a
major added attraction.

 

My two part video from the Sunday is on Youtube now...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lshN7bWUWYQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TazO658jv8

and some extra photos on fotopic...

http://ashleysmith355.fotopic.net/c1938937.html

I had a very nice day last Sunday and will hopefully visit again some point this year, when the weather is slightly warmer maybe!

 

[video=youtube;L2OdDR-h7dE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2OdDR-h7dE&hd=1[/video]
3rd pat, 2 more in the pipe line.

 

24minutes of video from my of the Sunday... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gai3IcKdH60

 

Have just upgraded from a point and shoot to a bridge camera. Haven't quite got the hang of it, but these are the results from the weekend.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40221490@N04/sets/72157625863807865/

Please let me know what you think.

And thanks to everyone who made the gala possible.

 

part 4, we start around Swithland.
[video=youtube;EQqLX42Z804]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQqLX42Z804&hd=1[/video]

 

a bumper final instalment for final part, over 13mins.
[video=youtube;_P3AgYKZdPk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P3AgYKZdPk&hd=1[/video]

 

Better late than never i suppose.

45305 on the friday
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oli_g_15/5441315862/sizes/l/in/photostream/

3717 on the Saturday
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oli_g_15/5441314158/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Cheers
Oli