Playing Trains

Well, it's been a very railway-focussed weekend. I made it to ExpoNG on Saturday which was as good as ever. Not as many layouts as I remember from the past but more than enough traders to throw my money at - a 50HP Baldwin Gas Mechanical should be appearing beneath the Christmas tree this year!



More impressively though was the first outing of Colin Lea's Rhyd Ddu. I've been following it's build on his blog for the last few years and I'd been really impressed by the way it looked in photos. However it was even better in the flesh. Too many layouts I've seen pictures of seem to end up as less than the sum of their parts but Rhyd Ddu was quite the opposite. Here's a picture of Colin hard at work.




Apart from that I spent a day actually operating a layout at an exhibition. Batcombe is

a relatively straightforward OO BR southern region terminus owned by a friend of my dad. It was straightforward and really enjoyable although the exhibition was a bit more modest than ExpoNG being in the Woodchurch Memorial Hall in Kent where we were trying to raise money for their roof fund.

We may have been quite modest but one participant - The Gresley Beat - wasn't. A 32' long model of the Kings Cross Top Shed area filled the main hall on its own - we were definitely playing second fiddle. Here's a pic that doesn't even start to do it justice.

And finally there is, of course, my own layout. I've been relearning a lot of lessons that I'd forgotten during my lay off. Trying to make this double curved turnout was certainly challenging my ability and patience but I seem to be getting over the hump with it. I've got some alignment dowels and traverser rails in the post so hopefully I'll be able to get a few boards together and actually run some trains.