Welcome back. It's getting cold isn't it.
I visited the Epping Model Railway Club exhibition on the weekend and got my Gopher (Badger Bits) 44 class. I chose the original Mk1 in original colour scheme as my first. In the future I'll be buying several more but I had a budget so wanted to share my largess around rather than give it all to one business!
Apart from the locomotive I bought three building kits from Model Train Buildings, a church, a corner store and a station master's house. I also bought a brick veneer 3D printed house from Meerkat and a couple of packets of fluoro lights to be added to the Barra Town station from Kerroby Models. Enough work to keep me going until the Castle Hill Exhibition at the end of July and then the Liverpool Exhibition in October I imagine. As I've stated before, I'm not exactly the fastest modeller.
I was discussing speed of modelling with someone at the exhibition and we decided that you are much slower when you retire, not because you're older, but because you seem to have unlimited time, so do all sorts of other things like drink coffee, watch TV, read magazines, work in the garden etc. whereas when you're working you understand that your modelling time is limited and so do a lot more! As a founding member of Procrastinators International this appeals to me.
The exhibition itself was not too bad, but I did notice several exhibitors listed in the guide not actually present and attendance on the Monday seemed to be quite sparse. One of the exhibitors was complaining about being bored. I have to say my favourite N Scale layout was "The Beach" with the scenery being very nicely done, especially the actual beach scene and the jetty. The English N Scale layout "Sandford" was also nicely done.
Scenery wise the HO scale "Southern Highlands" was very nice but trains seemed to be few and far between (like the real thing?). It was good to see "Tarana" and "Dunblurtin" again with the later having a new owner.
There were several Micro-layouts on display. I quite like the concept so enjoyed seeing them.
The usual suspects were in attendance as far as commercial stands were concerned but I would have liked to have seen Frate-N and/or Peter Boorman and of course we never see Aust-N-Rail. Unfortunately none of the other commercial stands had any of these products either. I'll just have to wait till October. I'm just wondering whether manufacturers/distributors who know they are not attending a particular exhibition could appoint another N Scale exhibitor as an agent. A sort of N Scale manufacturers/distributors co-op. I understand that people can't be everywhere, but some sort of loose arrangement would see more N scale products in front of more punters and that can't be bad.
The best part of the week was that I actually ran a train all the way around the main line of Barra Town. I still have the sidings to wire up both in Barra Town yard and at the coal mine but for me this is quite an achievement. I'm not known for my electrical prowess. I'll have to design and build a control panel as well. Ah, no rest for the wicked!
Also during the week I sold some of my HO Australian locomotives, the money going towards more N scale. I decided that at my age it's about time I standardised on one scale or I'll never get anything finished. In the process I scored some NSW 4 wheelers and some European end platform coaches which I'll probably convert to early French built Vietnamese coaches or one of the ways and works vehicles that some have been conerted to.
All in all quite a productive week in my continuing adventure.
Until next time...
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