Bournemouth Brick Festival 2026

The show took place on Saturday 28th March 2026, at the Bournemouth International Centre. I left home in Southampton around 6.15am, giving myself time to get to the venue via McDonald’s for a cheeky extra bit of breakfast. Arriving at around 7.30am, the earliest we were allowed in, I signed in and unloaded the car fairly quickly, and was setting up by about 8am once I had the car moved and parked in the car park for the day.

The layout at Bournemouth Brick Festival 2026

Set-up was relatively quick, made easier by having a smaller layout configuration than I’ve had in a while, and was finished in plenty of time for the show to open at 10am. I even had time to take some photos before the public came in, more amazingly…I remembered to take the photos in the first place! I often forget to take many as I’m usually so busy up to the last moment.

A view down the tables showing my layout next to Lee's Silverstone layout

I had the pleasure of exhibiting right next to Lee Stanley and his Silverstone Formula 1 pit straight display. Lee is a lovely chap and can be seen very often at shows around the south of England (some sometimes further north). He had set up the cars on the grid to match the qualifying result of the Japan Grand Prix from that actual morning - a possible spoiler for some visitors! We were positioned right by the entrance to the room so I think it’s safe to say that 99% of visitors came and saw our displays.

A new feature that I haven’t exhibited before were some sounds: a whistle now sounds when the train trigger button is pressed. I have a Raspberry Pi Zero with a battery power supply and a speaker attached hidden in the station building. This listens for the signal that my pyBricks program emits from the train, the one that the level crossing gates and signal listen for, and randomly plays a whistle sound. It worked very well, and did its job giving almost instant feedback that the button has worked and a train is about to move.

The Raspberry Pi Zero with battery and speaker

The train doesn’t move for two seconds after the button is pressed, so that the level crossing gates have a chance to close, and some people were previously thinking that nothing was happening, and I had the thought about sounds to help with that. The only issue I did find was that some of the sounds were too quiet, I have since rectified that so hopefully that won’t be an issue at future shows.

The one thing that didn’t work so well (again!) were my level crossing gates. They still aren’t always opening, I do still feel that it is primarily down to Bluetooth interference, and it certainly seemed to happen when more people (and their phones) were around the display.

However this morning I have made some more tweaks to my code so there is a chance the gates will work better in the future. The next time that I’ll be able to put the sounds and level crossing gates to the test again will be at the Brick Adventures show on May 16th.

Sarah Jermyn's display

Part of Peter Goodwin's display

The show was busiest from when it opened until sometime between 1pm and 2pm when there started to be gaps in the crowd around my layout. It’s quite typical for a Brick Festival to get a bit quieter towards the end of the day, and that gave me the opportunity to have a bit of a wander around the other exhibits and vendor stands. There was a good mix of displays on show, as well as the large number of vendors, so it did feel like a good show for everyone (public and exhibitors alike!). It was nice to see more trains on display, from Sarah Jermyn and Peter Goodwin. If you’d like to see more of what was at the show, I suggest you have a look on YouTube as there are a few videos on there already

All-in-all a good day, I was packed up and leaving by 5pm, and home well before 6. I will certainly consider display at the Bournemouth Brick Festival again.

The next time I’m displaying a similar layout will be at the already mentioned Brick Adventures show, but the next outing for my LEGO models will be as part of the Plymouth Brick Railway’s collaborative layout at the Exeter Brick Festival on April 26th.