2011 Brisbane Model Train Show

Saturday I spent the day at the 2011 Brisbane Model Train Show.  The layouts looked good, the crowd was excellent and bank account was not too damaged - well yet!  I did get two people come up to me and say G'day who follow my Blog - well one was a follower and one a lurker.  We ran into the usual people with the same smiling faces as always.  Brendan from Gundagai Model Rail Layout fame entered another nice loco into the Modelling Competition.  He picked up a few bargains as well - the bugger.  I also saw Darren from Nimmitabel Extension many times during the day.  I also had a good talk to Ron from Eureka and the fabulous guys from Auscision.  It was a real shame that the Auscision show specials were all Victorians B's and a few EL's.  I was tempted but could not buy one as they didn't run on the North Coast.  I also purchased a few cradles and coils.  I had to compare their cradles and coils against mine.  I was amazed how close mine were in scale, as they worked off plans and I worked off guestimates.

I set up a netbook behind my display and was running the driver's view of my layout.

On the Friday while setting up my stand and helping the Club's HO layout come together, I caught up with Ian from Muswellbrook and Merriwa Railway who was working on the Coffs Harbour layout.  I could not believe the number of members our Club had in attendance at setup.  There had to be close to 15 or even more there.

Today I went back to the show, for a few hours, with my Son Kyle.  He had his first look around at a large show, having attended quite a few small local shows previously.  He was most interested in the Lego display and wanting to control a train on one of the couple of U-drive layouts.  While there I ran into old Jim, Peter from the Tuesday Nighters.  Peter was travelling in a pack from the Sunshine Coast.  I also ran into a few past members of our Club whom I had not seen for a couple of years.

Tomorrow Splitter Swamp Creek Geoff (aka the Train Stealer - you thought I had stopped calling you that hey Geoff?) will pop over and I will take him to work on the Structure Building stand.  I have a few wagons all scratch built from styrene on display as well as a number of details items, picnic tables, outhouses, table and chairs, screen doors to name a few.  I expect to further damage the balance of the bank account tomorrow.

On a sad note, during the week on Thursday we received some sad news that one of Club's longer serving Members Richard McTaggart passed away that day, after a very long illness.  His Funeral will be held next Friday and I hope to be able to attend.