Australia Day and Beyond....

 I'm just recovering from the excitement of Australia Day. We went down to our local park and watched the bands and the fireworks and ate sausage sandwiches. Mmm!

I mentioned last time I had joined the Australian N Scale Facebook Group. I have also discovered a NSW N Scale Facebook Group so I've joined that as well. The two seem to complement each other.

I've been doing some work on my Barra Town layout. I try to do a little bit every day but it doesn't always work that way. I'm finally close to completing my Harry's Hardware kit but as you can see it now has a different name. A little more touching up and a few extra details (I have a dog to put on the verandah) and it should be finished.

Also I've been doing some work on the layout itself:

 

The next thing I want to do is to start work on the station area itself with ballasting, a fence at the back of the platform, a ramp onto the platform, an upgrade of the L&J Station kit etc. I have all the bits and pieces, just trying to find time to do it.

There's been a conversation on the Australian N Group about how to store your models.  I found this A4 document drawer set in Target so I'm going to try them. I have to get some foam and create some divisions and we'll see how they go. More next time.

Some modellers feel that they might not be strong enough, but the plastic is hard, and N Scale models are pretty light.

I have bought several new buildings for my Ga Hong Ha Vietnamese layout:

The really new ones are the pink cinema on the left and the "Bank" on the right. They all need the Japanese signs replaced with Vietnamese ones. There are lots of buildings in Vietnam painted pink. Vietnamese people seem to prefer bright pinks, greens and blues rather than the pale creams, grays etc we have. The models are Kato and Tomytec models, fantastic value for the price. Some models I get from local hobby stores but increasingly I get them from Japan. The local hobby shops are becoming just too expensive, sometimes four or five times the price compared to Japan even with postage. For example I bought one building in Australia and paid $35. I found out later I could have got the same building  in Japan for about A$7 or A$8. Go figure.

One more thing then I'll let you go. I bought two more Gopher Models FO coaches so now I have a set of four:

Look nice don't they.

BTW: I understand the Gophher 44s now won't be available until at least April. I hope this is not true. Earlier would be nice.

Talk to you next time.