Carrington Rally: no more paper, no more confusion.

The show

Carrington Rally Steam & Heritage Show is Lincolnshire's oldest steam and heritage show, now in its 67th year. What began in 1959 as an informal gathering of local traction engine owners has grown into one of the most well-attended heritage events in the region, held every year on the May bank holiday weekend and run entirely by a dedicated team of volunteers.

The show draws exhibitors and visitors from across the country, with steam engines, vintage tractors, classic vehicles, craft and trade stands, and working displays filling the showground across the setup period and show days. Thousands of entrants arrive over several days, each needing to be checked in, allocated their passes, and logged correctly before the gates open to the public.

With a show of this scale and history, getting the gate right is not just an operational nicety. It is a matter of respect for the exhibitors who have been coming back year after year, and for the volunteers who give their time to make it happen.

The challenge

Before Peg & Pitch, Carrington Rally ran their exhibitor check-in the way most shows do: printed lists, handwritten tick sheets, multiple copies circulating between the gate and the secretary's office, and a great deal of back and forth when something did not match up.

The problems were familiar ones:

• Stewards working from different versions of the same list
• No way to see in real time how many passes had been issued or which exhibitors had arrived
• Queries at the gate requiring a phone call to the secretary to resolve
• End of day reconciliation taking far longer than it should
• Paper records that were difficult to search and easy to misplace

None of it was insurmountable, but it added friction to every part of the process. The team was experienced and managed it, but the show had grown to the point where managing it on paper was becoming harder to justify.

The solution

Carrington Rally came on board with Peg & Pitch ahead of their 2025 show. Their exhibitor list was uploaded into the system and the gate team were up and running within an afternoon.

On show day, stewards used their own phones and tablets at the gate. The checkout terminal gave them an instant search across all 2,500 entrants, a clear view of what passes each exhibitor was entitled to, and a single tap to issue. Every transaction was logged automatically with a timestamp and the name of the device it was issued from.

Back at the secretary's office, the organiser had a live view of everything happening across every gate simultaneously. No phone calls needed. No chasing up stewards. No waiting until the end of the day to find out where things stood.

The result

The 2025 show was a resounding success. The gate team found the system straightforward from the first use, the secretary had full visibility throughout the day, and the end of show reconciliation that previously took significant time was done in minutes.

The things that used to create friction, chasing up missing passes, figuring out who had issued what, resolving disputes about what an exhibitor was entitled to, simply stopped being problems. Every transaction was there in the log, timestamped and clear.

Easier to manage, simple to use, and reliable when it mattered most.