2016 Modelling the Railways of Queensland Convention

This weekend has been spent doing activities associated with the 2016 Modelling the Railways of Queensland Convention.  Yesterday the actual convention was held at the Ekibin Bowls Club.  It was a nice open and airy venue and I had a ball.  First off there was setup of the hall and presentation area 2.  This was followed by important things like help set up the demo layout, stacking drinks into the fridge along with the cheese cakes for consumption following the night's BBQ dinner.  Then there was giving help to the various demo guys and some shops by assisting to carry their stuff down to their stands.

Then registration began, and there was plenty of hellos to people I had not seen for some time and plenty of hellos to people I had not met before.  After Arthur’s introduction speech, my session was first up in presentation area 2.  I was behind the 8-ball as we were running late and my session was timetabled to run a little later than normal.  Oh - No!  We had a good turn up of attendees at the session and there was one old bugger heckler from Sydney consistently asking questions.  Hopefully I was able to get across some of my thinking and why I implemented the things I did, the way I did it.  Additionally I hoped that the attendees could get a feeling for operating a train on the layout in the second half of the presentation.

I enjoyed the lunch while talking to other attendees.  I also had the opportunity to attend other sessions during the afternoon and learn some interesting information.  So thanks to the presenters for sharing their information with us all.  I certainly learnt some things both operationally on QR practice and also picked up some more modelling tips. 

During one of the sessions I did some work on one of the modules of Gilligulgul.  I installed some fencing along the railway corridor.  I ran out of fence posts so I will have to create some more and install them next time I see the layout. 

I was lucky enough to pick up a prize in the raffle draw at the end of the day and selected a QR buffer stop donated by Queensland Scale models.  I also had another ticket drawn out later, but decided to not collect and let the masses have an opportunity to win something.

After attending the separately registered dinner which was a BBQ put on by the bowls club, we had Arthur give us a great recap of his life as a junior fireman up in Mackay during the sugar season when he was a young 18 years old.  So to the people who had a hand in organising everything, especially Arthur and committee who met on various Thursdays when I was at work - Guys and Girls – you did an awesome job.  Thank You.  See you all in 2 more years.

Today the convention sort of continued at alternate locations across the south side of Brisbane.  Various layouts were opened to Convention attendees to come and have a visit.  Funnily, the open layouts were all related to members of the Tuesday Nighters group.  Peter, Arthur, Geoff, Darren and myself.  We all had a quite a few convention attendees rock up and have an inspection of our various layouts.

I was lucky enough to conscript a couple of my normal operating crew – Shelton and Greg (Greg also bought his two mini me’s) to run some trains as I was talking and walking around showing off various features.  Darren had the same idea as he had scheduled another three guys from our operating sessions (Anthony, Mark and Brendan) to assist him.  It got quite cramped at time in various locations in Cassino, but everyone got on quite well in the cosy environment.

I also invited a mate to pop over – George from up the road to have another viewing.  Luckily Shelton took some photos of the attendees checking things out on Cassino.  At various times, we also had numerous flashes going off all around the layout as other convention attendees took advantage and snapped away, after something must have caught their eye.  Although I have been working on this layout for almost 11 years, I still think there is another 10 years left to complete the scenery.  There is lots of ballasting to do, more ground cover work to complete, then the various buildings to scratchbuild, and then more fencing and then the detailing of all the various scenes around the layout.  Did I mention trees?  I need another 1000 at least I think.  I am very blessed to have an understanding and tolerating wife, and a great groups of friends – both the Tuesday Nighters and the extended Operating Crews of the various session that we all cross over at.  Without these guys and the inspiration that they instil in me, the layout would be nowhere near as far along as it is now.

Hopefully, some guys might get some enthusiasm and desire to convert that long term plans into something physical following this weekend, and we might hear about it at the next convention.  Thanks for the weekend everyone.

Below are three photos sent over by Shelton.  Thanks Mate.

Some of the first groups of visitors.  Yes Eddie is there providing assistance in moving people around on the layout tours.

The second group of visitors.  Noel the audio guru from the Convention was among that group.

Our esteemed Secretary of the Convention seems to have found his seat while others are wandering around.

Just before the visitors arrived, Shelton was able to assist me in re-attaching a PECO Point motor to a set of points at Dutton Park and testing it out.  This point moved about 6 inches with all the track modifications last week and I never got around to moving the point motor.  Not sure if we used that point in the running that occurred  as visitors were wondering around, but thanks Shelton.