Trip up the Range

Today I picked up Lefty at his house and we travelled from Brisbane's southside up the range to Toowoomba.  This was the weekend of  the Darling Downs Model Railway Club's yearly exhibition.  The weather for the trip was a mixture of rain, drizzle and bits of blue sky.  As we got closer to Toowoomba, the sun came out and the day turned out to be quite good. 

Upon arrival Lefty and I split up and made our own way around the exhibition.  This was my first trip up to Toowoomba for quite a few years.  The exhibition had quite a range of layouts from O Scale down to N scale.  It also had some not model railway exhibits.  But my eye was on the look out for some NSW HO layouts.  Of course there was my Club's layout Brendale running a mixture of trains with quite a few NSW ones interspersed between US and UK outline.  There was also the Logan and District Model Railway Club's HO layout that runs both 16.5mm and 12mm trains.  There was of course Cooparoo by Phil Hadley doing the same, and Riverbrook with some NSW trains (among others) on it, and the relative newcomer of the show circuit - Splitters Swamp Creek by Tuesday Nighter Geoff, assisted by Darren and Brendan. 

On the QR side we also have Freestone by John and Johnno Love, Bob's Dagabar, Ron Everingham's Beauraba Sidings and some Timber industry and sugar mill layouts also on display.  I think there might have been other outline layouts there but I'm biased.  We also had Al Cutmore from AR Kits and Adam from Wuiske Models showing off their goods along with PGC Scale Models, Black Diamond Models and Southern Rail Models.

Apparently our mate Geoff, took out the NMRA Modeller's layout for the show.  Well done Geoff!

One of reasons I go to a model railway shows is to obtain some nice scenery ideas, detail ideas and catch up with the many modelling mates that also attend.  Well with a show put on the DDMRC you were sure to see Smithy, Bill and Bazz among others.  I had a special request from Bazz about the blog again, to include some photos as I think he struggles to read.  He is a very good modeller NSW though, good artist and average joke teller.

Below are just a few photos of the show.  I expect Lefty will also post some and so will PK.  Apparently there was a rather large derailment on the Brendale layout that was caught on film.

A scene from Coorparoo with the lights red set and the crossing gates down.

A few seconds later the trains has gone through and the gates have gone up and the lights now allow the traffic to flow through the intersection.

A scene from Brendale that I think comes up quite well.  The local Church of the Reverend Paul Cummings.  Out the back the grave diggers were busily filling in the plot for one of the new arrivals - or is that a departure?  I like this scene as I did the carpark, the fencing and planted the headstones.

Across the track from the church is the Austeel Shed's compound.  I also built the sheds and the wire fencing and most of the detail items.

I think the above two scenes stack up quite well with other scenes on other layouts on display at various exhibitions.

I certainly liked this scene with the shearing shed and the cattle and sheep loading races.  I plan to build the combined sheep and cattle loading races at three locations on Cassino.

I was amazed at the sheer numbers of members from our Club in attendance manning layouts at this show.  Apparently there were 20 in attendance at the pub last night for a nice dinner (and that was not all of them). 

Well I was going to end this post with a photo and a paragraph about Lefty changing scales from On30 to HO NSW.  Apparently he took many photos of Splitters Swamp Creek in order to get ideas for the next extension of his layout in his shed which will now be NSW outline.  The three photos that I took of Lefty ogling the layout and recording his detail shots to copy off for his layout extension did not come out.  You will just have to believe me.

On Monday this week I received my bulk order for BCW wagons from Werris.  Monday night I took mine straight down the shed and gave them a run.  I thought they were just brilliant.  I took PK's to Tuesday Nighters and showed the crew and they all though they were great.  There were just in different modelling eras to a lot of the guys.  On Wednesday I took Greg's to work and today I took Darryl's up to Toowoomba to give to him.  To our dismay two of Darryl's six weathered BCW's were almost in kit form.  The room came off very easily and the sides were separated from the ends.  I think the assembler must have had a liquid lunch and when they came back to work forgot to apply the glue on those two wagons.

During the week I made a few alterations to the timetable and printed out the changed timetable sheets for each train.  So hopefully the upcoming running session will run a bit more smoothly and won't have three train in the one location for a cross at a two track crossing loop.

Yesterday I spent about an hour down the shed and applied two bucket loads of plaster around the track area heading into Murwillumbah.  I also had to remove the masking tape from the track in a couple of locations after the plaster set so I can clean the track during the coming week and run a train in preparation for the running session on the 10th.  I've already had three appologies for next weekend, but I think we will have a full crew in attendance.