Sunday, October 8, 2023

Back Home

After last week’s blog post we jumped in the cars and went to Marcus’s place for dinner and an Ops Session.  It was great to catch up with Marcus.  Most people ran a train at Marcus’s and had a great time.  While there, Marcus also replaced the RJ12 connection in my Powercab.  It now works like a treat.  I also purchased some new battery terminals as the old ones were tarnished by a previous battery leak or two.  These were replaced when I got home.  Nothing like a throttle that works as good as new.

Some of the crew at Marcu's Place for dinner

Next morning we started our way north, and went to four layouts on our Layout Tour Day.  We went to Rob Peterson’s, Alistair Gilmore’s (Some of us had been there before), back to Marcus’s, and then David Howarth’s.  We were running late and could not get to Ken Scales place.  We stayed that night at East Maitland.  We had a BBQ dinner after a run to the shops for some snags and other items.

At Rob Peterson's N scale layout

John Z working as one of the station masters

Trains running

Control's Desk

More trains running

BBQ Dinner on Monday evening

Next day (Tuesday) we started hitting the stations up the main line to Werris Creek.  We seemed to catch quite a few trains on this section of the trip.  We left Werris Creek for Armidale just after the Explorer left and we saw it at a couple of locations on route north.  We had dinner in the Bowls Club and stayed in our usual motel.  On Wednesday we were planning to visit Rohan’s layout, but he had a plumbing emergency that he had to deal with so we did not catch up with him.  We still had a few stops at Glen Innes, Tenterfield, Warwick and Aratula before we split up and made our separate ways home.  My car got back to my place, and then Pk took over driving Glen and Clinton home.


Muswellbrook dock with a captive coal wagon

A Hunter Set about to head back to Newcastle at Muswellbrook

Tenterfield Station

Tenterfield Station

Tenterfield Station again

Tenterfield rest break eating a sausage roll

Willow Tree waiting for a number of trains to roll through for Tuesday lunch

Werris Creek Station from the overbridge

Armidale Bowl Club

We did over 2,100 kms, saw many trains and railway locations, went to a convention, dropped in on lots of layouts, and maybe some of us actually learnt a thing or two.  I know I did.

Not being content with all this railway activity, on Friday Night Darren and myself along with Brendan went over to Geoff’s place for a night of pizza, drinks and modelling.  I started to work on my entry for the RMCQ Christmas Modelling competition.  This model will be something very different and will cause some in the competition to scratch their heads.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks Craig for including pictures of Alistar Gilmore's layout. I understand that this layout is being gifted to Junee, and a few of us down here are getting excited about rebuilding it in the old Junee Barracks building (well that it the current plan)

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  2. I have had two visits to this layout and it is just brilliant. Hopefully it will not be lost, It is amazing to see it being operated.

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