Maggie and I had always wanted to recreate Murder On the Orient Express, but hard to do on stage without a train. So we had the idea of working with model railway societies, filming their layouts and figurines and using these as a backdrop to our play.

So we entered the world of men! We worked with 2 model railway societies, one in Sale and one in Heywood. We based the two main characters Derek and Geoff on some of the people we met, an affectionate send up of the train set obsessives. Towards the end of the tour Maggie told me she had signed us up to have a stand at the Xmas Model Railway Society Exhibition, a huge affair held in a Manchester convention centre. I couldn’t quite believe she’d done that. “Well, I suppose it’s only a day,” I said wearily. Maggie went very quiet and then said “It’s a weekend”. So we had a stand where a G gauge train ran the length of a table and a screen behind it played out scenes from our show. Throughout the weekend, hundreds of small children queued in line to make the train run the length of the table. They were forbidden from touching any of the more serious layouts in the show and were very bored. This was something to do. One little lad queued up repeatedly throughout the Saturday. His mother commented that our stand had been a life saver, she’d never seen him so happy. The central heating in the convention centre was turned up to about 30 and we had banging headaches through dehydration. By the end of the weekend the engine was covered in gunk from so much contact with sticky fingers. But a few people had taken a leaflet and said they would come to see the show. I bet they didn’t…..