2019 Brisbane Model Railway Exhibition

The Brisbane Model Railway Exhibition has found its way back to the May long weekend in Brisbane at the Brisbane Exhibition grounds.  However, it on now only a 2 day show.  For quite a number of years, the show had moved to the second weekend in May in lieu of the long weekend, as they had moved venues.  It had been held at Doomben Racecourse and the Big Marquee at the RNA showgrounds.  But we are now back at both the show grounds and the original weekend - the long weekend in Brisbane.  The exhibition hall had a flat concrete floor, the toilets were inside, the aisles were wide enough and the attendance to look at some great exhibits was good.  Access was also good.

I went in early on Friday and took two tables, 3 chairs and a few boxes of stuff and was back out inside 30 minutes.  I had other things to do.  Andrew Matt dropped in from Townsville, in the afternoon and had a more in depth tour of Cassino than occurred at his previous visit.  His last visit was when the layout was an open layout at a previous Modelling the Railways of Qld Convention about 3 years back, if I remember correctly.  This time Andrew got a private tour of each location with a few scenery features pointed out.  We also went through the electricals.  He picked up an NCE radio throttle and ran the Brisbane Limited from Grafton Yard to South Brisbane Interstate Station.  Along the way, he set points and took and returned staffs for the various sections travelled through.  At South Brisbane he ran around his train and then cut off the motor rail wagon and his express fruit wagon from the passenger consist.  The trains locos then hauled the passenger consist into track 4.  The train locos then ran to Park Road Siding.  Normally in the normal timetable, the locos would run all the way to Loco Pilly.  The shunt loco (7304) at South Brisbane then travelled to the end of the platform and pushed the motorail wagon to the end of the track and the fruit wagon was moved to track 5 and then the loco moved back to the Loco siding at South Brisbane where it started from.  A few minutes later, the shunt loco went back to the end of the platform road, but this time via road two and collected the motor rail wagon.  It then added the motorail wagon to the front of the express fruit wagon in track 5 and then moved both to the front of the passenger consist in track 4.  The 73 class shunt loco moved back to the Loco siding.  The train locos then ventured back from Park Road Sidings and joined onto the train in track 4.  They then moved the train back into the platform road and then departed south towards Grafton Yard where they terminated.  Soon after Andrew left to go watching trains down at Acacia Ridge in 1:1 scale.  Just as I was writing this, I forgot that the consist needed to be reversed at Grafton Yard.  I forgot!  It is difficult to get good help sometimes.  I will seriously chastise myself tomorrow when I fix up this issue.

On Saturday morning I picked up my partner in crime – Arthur Hayes MMR and we inhabited the Structure Building Stand (No. 52 in the program) under the NMRA banner.  OMG!  We did not stop talking all day and did very little actual work.  People asked questions and we caught up with lots of old friends.  We had quite a few enquiries about the NMRA and also just modelling in general.  I was dry as a dead dingo's ....  Today, was just a little bit less busy.  But we did exactly the same as yesterday.  Now my Mastercard is currently in shock. The wife will be when she see how much is on it when the bill comes in too.  Maybe I may have purchased another 1720 class loco and of course an ESU chip for it – no not sound as I’m not made of money.  I may have purchased another 8 sets of 12mm points and three lengths of 12mm flex track, so I can now complete Fisherman Islands Yard along with another extra dead end siding – maybe a loco siding, and two intermediate cross overs.  The rest of the points are for Acacia Ridge Yard and an idea of adding a head shunt and making the four narrow gauge tracks all connect at the other end - thus allowing run around movements.  So all my track for the layout should now be purchased.  I think I have said that statement before.  But I'm much closer to being correct this time.  I just have to lay it now – maybe tomorrow.

I did have the aim today of starting to collecting wagons for my narrow gauge grain train.  So I now have a 1720 class loco.  Ideally, I would like double headed 2300 class locos, but as I said before – I am not made of money.  I did pick up a PGC HWE grain wagon.  I was after some QGA (I think) grain wagons also sold by PGC, but they did not have any when I visited the stand today.  My partner in crime Arthur, was scratch building some 12mm wheat wagons at our display stand.  So I will probably go down that path as well.  I also hope to pick up maybe 1 or 2 packs of Southern Rail Models ready to run grain wagons with lids when they do their next run of these wagons.  Now one of the down sides of sitting next to one of the two most knowledgeable QR person walking on this earth, and by the way, the other one visited our stand yesterday hey – Arthur (also called Arthur) is that you learns lots of stuff.  Some of it you just don't want to hear!  Now Fisherman Islands is a bottom discharge grain handling facility.  However, some of the wagons that I will be building the HWE kit and similar ones that Arthur is scratch building – they are tippler wagons.  Arthur, just knows how to drive that stake right into your heart.  Oh well!  In my Fisherman Islands time period, it had both.  Tongue is now extended out of mouth and various sounds like Thhhhffffttttt are being emitted.  Refer Rule Number 1.  It is my layout and I will do as I want to.  

I also picked up some other items, like ballast from Matt’s Ballast, few Road Rager Ford cars at a nice price, and a HO medium point for Acacia Ridge Yard to replace one I stole to put somewhere else some months ago.  Now, I do have one dream.  My dream is to install a set of point sin Fisherman Islands Yard and create a return loop directly above Cougal Spiral - following the layouts support posts and having the track come back onto Fisherman Islands Yard again.  So I have not done much thinking about this, like if it would be 12mm, 16.5mm or both.  We will see maybe next May what develops.  I should have paid off my debt by then and be out of the wheel chair after the boss finds out what I spent.

I was most impressed with a couple of layouts at the  Brisbane show.  Walloon a QR 12mm layout from the Love family and an S scale  shunting layout.  I must admit I did not get enough time to see everything at the show.   So the venue is great.  Pack up was a bit of a pain, only because I had tones of rubbish with me.  Arthur and I took all the gear out the front of the hall and then across the road to a loading zone.  And in less then 2 minutes I drove up, we packed the car and we were off home.  I was home by around 5:00pm.

Bring on tomorrow when I start to install the new trackage.