TOBAZ PROMOTIONS
Quality Rail & Bus Collectors' Fairs
What's New
Why the change of date to May, we keep getting asked? It all because of the change of the date of the end of May Bank Holiday to the first weekend in June. This is now a long weekend Tuesday is a Bank Holiday as well as Monday.
Stafford 2012
This is probably a record. Stafford in March 2012 is full already (August 2011), with a waiting list for stallholders.
Reading 2012
Due to the move of the May Bank Holiday to the 2nd June in 2012, Reading Rail-Bus will move back a week to Saturday 26th May in 2012 only.
Wolverton Works Open Day (or not)
With a month to go to the event the organisers have cancelled the 2010 Wolverton Works Open Weekend. This is incredibly annoying for us as we had put ourselves out to cancel our Stafford event on the same weekend. This cancellation has cost us money. The organisers of Wolverton say that the lack of advanced ticket sales has forced them to cancel. I should say postpone rather than cancel as they plan to have another go in 2011. We have some views on the lack of ticket sales and would be happy to discuss these with the organisers if they should be reading this.
Many people have already got in contact with us asking us to re-instate Stafford in August this year. It is a nice idea but totally impractical. The hall may not be available, we have just spent money advertising that it is not happening and there is now no time to run new adverts. So, sorry cannot be done.
Bristol September 18 2010
We had a conducted tour of the new school last month and it certainly is an improvement on the old one. Of course, like everything new it is costing us over twice the amount to hire the hall so we are having to put up the entrance fee by £1 to £3. We are sure you will think the extra money is well spent
Stafford August 2010
For the first time since we have been running Fairs (August 1995) we have decided to cancel one of our previously advertised dates. This August's Stafford will not take place. Unfortunately the Railway Magazine has decided to hold a Works Open weekend on the date we had booked. Given that many of our stall holders will want to be present at the Open Day we thought we should move our date. We could not move to the previous weekend as both of us, along with many stall holders, will be attending the Bluebell Railway's 50th Anniversary Weekend. (An event not to be missed). Moving later would mean 3 events in a row and we felt stall holders, and ourseleves, might like a holiday. But don’t despair Bristol is on 18th September so you will not have to wait long.
And talking of Bristol, this year we shall be moving to the new school building currently under construction. It is on the same site just a bit nearer the railway.
Chiswick 2010
With events up and down the Country be cancelled due to the weather, Chiswick was one that did go on as planned. Thanks to all the stall holders who attended and, of course, a big thank you to all of you who came to buy. Attendance was only down by 10% from last year and even with that small drop many stall holders reported bumper sales.
Credit Crunch?
We have now seen two events, Stafford and Bristol, pass by while the Credit Crunch is occuring. Has it made a difference? One the one hand, probably. Attendance was down at both events, not by very much but down all the same. On another, probably NOT. Dealers at these two events report boyant sales, many breaking sales records.
I think we need to tell Network Rail when our Stafford event takes place. The date always seems to attact some problem with the network. On March 1st 2008 the line to Stafford from London was closed by containers as was the line from Carlisle. We missed seeing many of our regular visitors. Let us hope that in August Network Rail and our visitors have a better day.
Even with our costs still rising we are holding our entrance fee at £2 for our non-Reading events again this year. The costs of running the Reading event rise faster than the others so we have no choice but to raise the entrance fee there to £3 from June 2008.
We are sorry, but from 2007 we are going to have to raise the entrance charge to our events by 50p. Costs of running these events go up and up continuously, hall rent, advertising, etc, etc. Entrance to the events will now be £2 except for Reading which will stay at £2.50p. Given the high quality stalls at our events we still believe this is very good value for money, especially given that some collectors events now charge up to £4 entrance.
Please note that the change of date of Bristol 2006 published in the September edition of the Railway Antiques Gazette is INCORRECT. The event has not moved from 30 September, a date that has been advertised for over a year.
Stafford in August 2006 will be our 40th event.
We started in August 1995 at Stafford, adding Bristol in 1998, Chiswick in 2001 and Reading in 2003. In that time we have provided collectors with about 3 miles of stalls and had a visitor for each foot of stall.
To give motorists something to read while waiting in the traffic outside the Rivermead Leisure Complex
we erected an advertising banner for our Rail-Bus 2006 event. Strangely, Reading Council do not allow
RAC/AA advertising signs around Reading but do allow banners to be placed in the grass verge outside the
Leisure Complex!
On a sunny day the free Routemaster shuttle approaches Rivermead Leisure Complex, Reading passing
our banner advertising the Rail-Bus 2006 event. Hundreds of our visitors make us of this service; it has already
been booked again for our 2007 event.
We hear rumours of an auction being planned for 2006 using St Leonards Hall at Stafford. We would like to put on record that we have no connection with this auction and are unable to give any information about it.
Our Routemaster waits at Reading station for it's next load of passengers on their way to Rail-Bus 2005.
Visitor numbers to Reading in 2005 broke all records for all our events.
A new folded A4 leaflet has been produced containing details of all our events.
Pick up a copy when you visit us.
There was a record number through the door at Chiswick January 2005. New and old stallholders brought with them the widest range of material yet seen at Chiswick. An excellent day for both buyers and sellers.
As Crewe Works are holding Open Days on the 10/11th September 2005, the railwayana event calendar for September has changed. The Sheffield Auction is now on the 17th and our Bristol event has changed date to the 24th.
At the June 2004 Reading event we operated a free Routemaster bus between Reading Station and Rivermead Leisure Centre. We are pleased that this addition to the Reading event was a great success with 341 single journeys undertaken. This free bus service will now be a permanent part of the event.